What can we say June 26? 3rd after Pentecost

    2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14 is a text that, personally, reminds me of the death of my great professor, doctoral advisor and mentor, Fr. Roland E. Murphy. He was a Carmelite – a Catholic order dedicated to Elijah. And as a Carmelite and Old Testament scholar, he died with considerable panache on the Feast Day of Elijah in 2002! This got me to pondering what happens when a great person, a great Bible scholar, a great knower of God dies. I blogged about this, and him. Could a sermon reflect on mentors, inviting people to find or even be one? Can you tell about yours – if you’d lucky, like I am, to have had one?

  {Parenthetically, if you are interested in mentoring as it relates to ministry, you might enjoy this collection of essays I edited with Jason Byassee and Craig Kocher called Mentoring for Ministry: The Grace of Growing Pastors}.

   Elisha has been attached to Elijah since that moment when he was out plowing and he unexpectedly had a mantle thrown over him (1 Kings 19), and when he abruptly left his oxen right out in the field, like Jesus’s fishermen to come, and traipsed off after him. Understandably, he refuses to let Elijah slip away. Twice he declares, “I will not leave you” – reminding me of the terrific scene at the end of Fellowship of the Ring, when Samwise Gamgee jumps in the water, not knowing how to swim. Barely surviving, he explains, “I made a promise, Mr. Frodo. Don’t you leave him, Samwise Gamgee, and I don’t mean to.” But Elijah will leave Elisha. His strange movements are a clue he prefers to go off and die alone.

   This unfolded “when the Lord was about to take Elijah up to heaven by a whirlwind…” Same whirlwind that God used to answer Job? Back then, nobody except or had really heard about eternal life. Being swooped up into heaven? Elisha, humbled, in awe, and pondering what he’ll need without Elijah, asks for a “double share” of Elijah’s power. Somebody counted, and surprisingly enough, Elisha’s miracles are precisely double those of Elijah, 16 to 8! Jesus told his disciples they would do even greater things.

   Elijah departs in the whirlwind? In a flaming chariot? Chariots of Fire is a fabulous movie with many profound moments pondering sabbath observance, and joy. Watch it for fun, and in preparation to preach!

   The mantle Elijah had thrown on Elisha when they first met was the mantle draped over Elisha’s shoulders as Elijah departed. Did it fit? Was it too big? 

Another Lord of the Rings illustration: the wise wizard Gandalf somewhat foolishly left the course of affairs in Middle Earth to the diminutive, fun-loving, timid hobbits. “Despair, or folly?” asked Gandalf. “It is not despair, for despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not. It is wisdom to recognize necessity, when all other courses have been weighed, though as folly it may appear to those who cling to false hope. Well, let folly be our cloak, a veil before the eyes of the Enemy!”

   Galatians 5:1, 13-25 materializes in the lectionary just prior to July 4 – with consummate timing, as Americans are days from chattering on about freedom in untheological, even anti-Christian (weirdly) ways. Paul most assuredly does not say You are free! So freely choose God! or God gives you freedom and hopes you’ll choose good instead of sin. No, it’s that Christ sets us free, implying we are (as Augustine, Luther, Wesley, Barth, all the great theologians have clarified) most assuredly not free. Our wills are bound, shackled, to sin, self, world. Our only hope is to be liberated by the miracle of God’s Spirit – and once free, it’s not so we might do as we wish, but so we might then bind ourselves freely and joyfully to God, to do God’s bidding – as Wesley put it, My life is no longer my own.

   Take note of his counsel: do not submit “again” to the yoke of slavery. You were, maybe even just this morning, a great submitter to this yoke of slavery, which is mere “self-indulgence,” which Paul says is a grave misuse of freedom. Paul’s words, genius or inspired, recognize that a battle is being waged in the soul. Do we even notice any longer? Flesh vs. Spirit (which isn’t visible vs. invisible). “Flesh” is idolatry (and today’s most popular idolatry is political ideology!), jealousy, anger, dissension (sounds like my denomination!) vs. the Spirit, which is tangible, real life as motivated by God’s Spirit.

   “Don’t bite and devour,” which we love to do, even in the privacy of our own minds. I love Frederick Buechner’s thought: “Of the 7 Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back: in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.”

   “Eat fruit, not others!” The “fruit of the Spirit” is one of those shining moments in Scripture we could ponder forever. People ask What is God’s will? Galatians 5:22 could keep you occupied every minute for decades. I’m especially fond of Phil Kenneson’s thoughtful book, Life on the Vine. Jesus said “You will know them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:16), and “My Father is glorified when you bear fruit... I have said these things so my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete” (John 15:8).

   Thomas Merton said “a tree gives glory to God by being a tree.” Am I like a tree? My life is not my own: I depend on the sun, the rain, the grace and power of God which I do not control, but only soak up as precious gifts. I live in the light, but my roots go down deep where it is dark - so perhaps I need not fear the darkness? What is growing on my branches? Am I bearing fruit? or am I just some driftwood that used to be a tree?

   Holiness is not a matter of gritting your teeth and trying really diligently to do what God requires. We may grit our teeth, and we do try hard. But I am not able to do what God wants of me, I am not capable of the life God wants for me. A changed life is the gift of God's Spirit. Paul described this new life, the life for which we were made, as “the fruit of the Spirit.” Not “the fruit of my good intentions,” but the fruit of the Spirit: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.”

   Not only are these not against the law. They are not the law! Paul does not say, “You must be joyful, patient, faithful.” Rather, if we just calm down and let the Spirit have its way with us, we discover to our delightful surprise traces of joy, peace, gentleness in our lives, all gift, all the work of God in us. These nine (love, joy, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control) are what trees look like when giving glory to God, swayed only by the wind of the Spirit, watered by the grace of Baptism.

   A preaching possibility: lift up a story, a face, a short biographical sketch of someone who lives such a fruitful life. Whom do you know – in your world or in history, who has been loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, gentle? Notice how a joyful person is also a patient person, the kind person is peaceful. They feed off one another, depend on one another.

   Consider joy, so different from happiness. Like all fruit, joy requires time, tending, maturity. Evelyn Underhill notes that “it is rather immature to be upset about the weather... Pursuing the spiritual course, we must expect fog, cold, persistent cloudiness, gales, and sudden stinging hail, as well as the sun.” Joy is about consistency in the spiritual life. Joy knows God is incapable of drifting away from us, and the very fact that we turn our heads and grope after God in the dark is God’s gift that gives birth to joy.

   Luke 9:51-62 is (to me) hilarious. They didn’t welcome us – so, “Lord, shall we command fire to come down and consume them?” (picking up on consuming and getting consumed in Galatians 5, and Elijah’s over-zealous slaughter of the prophets of Baal, 1 Kings 18).

   My denomination’s slogan is “Make disciples!” – which sounds fun… but Jesus explains what disciple life is like. “Foxes have holes,” but we have no place to rest. “Let the dead bury their own dead.” Disciples put their cozy past behind. For St. Francis, it meant a ferocious break with his own father Pietro. For you, it means…. What? For your people, it means… What? Hard not to think of John Wesley, missing his own wife’s funeral – although his failure wasn’t entirely out of zeal for the Lord!

   “When the days drew near for him to be taken up”: as we see in Luke, volume 2 (Acts 1), the climax of Jesus’ work is his ascension, when he leaves the church behind to be his Body, just as Elijah left Elisha to carry on after him. Jesus turns his face to Jerusalem: in the first half of his ministry, Jesus is an actor, in control, impressive, striding across the stage of history – but then in part 2, he is increasingly passive, acted upon, headed to die. He is “handed over.” This (as W.H. Vanstone pointed out in The Stature of Waiting) is the plot of our lives: we are active, but then late, we are increasingly passive, acted upon – and that is Jesus’ glory, and our glory (so counter-cultural…). More to come (and I think this is a perfectly valid way to wind up a sermon… Stay tuned for the rest of the story next week and in the weeks to come!).

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  Check out my non-leadership leadership book, Weak Enough to Lead.