Kings of Summer: It's Not All About Us

July 14^th, 2013     “It’s Not All About Us”         Rev. Heather Jepsen

Sermon Series: Kings of Summer

2 Kings 2

          Today we continue in our sermon series “Kings of Summer”.  As many of you know I have challenged myself to preach strictly from the Old Testament this summer and we have been following the story of Elijah in 1^st and now 2^nd Kings.

          We began our study with Elijah’s call narrative and early miracles.  Called to speak against Ahab, King of Israel, and his wife Jezebel, who have been encouraging the worship of Baal; Elijah has been speaking for the voice of YHWH throughout Israel and beyond.  Elijah first brought word of a drought and three years later brought word of rain.  There was a showdown between YHWH and Baal, and Elijah called down fire from heaven to prove who the true God of Israel was.  After getting out of control, Elijah bottomed out and ran into the wilderness to hide.  God came near Elijah in a still small voice which gave him the courage to get back out into the world.  Elijah would need that courage as he was called to speak the truth to power, naming the sins of Ahab and Jezebel, who were responsible for the death of Naboth and the stealing of his vineyard.

          Where we pick up the story this morning, Ahab is dead and power in Israel is beginning to shift.  Elijah’s work is done and it is time for him to pass on his mantle of power to his chosen successor, Elisha.  You may remember a few weeks ago when we read of the call of Elisha in 1 Kings 19.  There, after returning from his encounter with God on Mount Horeb, Elijah passed Elisha working in a field and threw his mantle upon him.  Elisha immediately sensed the gravity of what had occurred and prepared to follow after Elijah.  Before he left his homeland, Elisha slaughtered his oxen and used the material from his plow to build a fire, feeding the meat to his family.  This drastic act symbolized Elisha’s break with his old life.  A dozen oxen and plow were a large financial commitment.  Elisha was clearing his slate, burning his bridges, and heading out to follow Elijah unencumbered.  Elisha was ready for the call of the prophet.

          One assumes that Elisha began to follow Elijah right away but we don’t hear specifically from him again until this scene.  The time has come for Elijah to be taken up and like heading to the airport to catch a plane, Elijah heads into the wilderness to meet the chariot of the Lord.  Three times he attempts to leave Elisha behind saying “Stay here; for the Lord has sent me on to Bethel.” (And then Jericho, and then the Jordan.)  Three times Elisha declares that he will not leave the side of his master.  “As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.”  A company of prophets follow them, and they too encourage Elisha to stay behind.  “Don’t you know your master is leaving?” they ask over and over again.  “Yes,” Elisha replies, “I know, be quiet.”

          It is unclear why Elijah wants to leave Elisha behind.  Perhaps he is not yet willing to give up his power and authority, or perhaps he is trying to avoid the pain of saying goodbye.  Elijah has never seemed that enthusiastic about Elisha as his successor, so perhaps he is just trying to shrug the guy off.  No matter his reasoning, Elijah and the company of prophets are unsuccessful.  Elisha will not be deterred and he will stubbornly hang on until the bitter end.

          On their way, Elijah rolls up his mantle, strikes the surface of the Jordan and alá Moses the waters split.  Elijah and Elisha cross, leaving the company of prophets behind.  This will be the last sign of Elijah’s power.  After they cross, Elijah asks Elisha what he can do for him before he leaves.  Elisha asks for a double share of Elijah’s spirit, referring to the practice of the first born son receiving the primary share of the inheritance.  Of course, the power of the prophet is not Elijah’s to give, so he says that if Elisha can see him leave, then maybe he can have it.

          Suddenly as they walk and talk, a chariot of fire and horses of fire descend upon them and Elijah is taken up in a whirlwind.  Commentators worry that modern believers will struggle with such a story but I find this no more strange than the other things we have read about this summer.  From children being brought back to life, to fire descending from the sky, to God passing by the mountain, we have seen numerous “supernatural” events in these stories.  The God of the Old Testament is a God who sends fiery horses and chariots as prophet transportation.  That makes sense to me!

          Elisha witnesses the event, calling out “Father, father!  The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!”  Elijah disappears and Elisha tears his robe in symbolic grief, it is over.  Then Elisha turns and picks up Elijah’s old mantle which must have fallen from his shoulders in the great event.  Throwing it upon his own back Elisha heads back where he came from.

          He too, strikes the waters of the Jordan, and it becomes clear that he has inherited the spirit of Elijah, he has become the next great prophet.  The waters split and he walks through to rejoin the company of the prophets waiting on the other side.  He tells them of Elijah’s departure and they don’t believe him.  They want to send out a search party just in case Elijah may have been dropped again somewhere out in the wilderness.  And so for three days they look high and low but to no avail, the great Elijah really is gone.

          Now that the company of prophets also believes that Elisha is the chosen one, he is ready to begin his ministry.  His first miracle is to clean out the water in a local well.  The water had been making people sick and by throwing salt in the well, Elisha is able to make the water potable again.  His second miracle is a bit stranger.  In another one of those “wait a minute, what?” sections of the Bible, Elisha curses a group of young boys who have teased him and two she-bears maul forty-two youngsters to death.  Wait a minute – what? 

          The main point of this reading today is clearly the transfer of leadership.  Elijah has been the prophet, but now he is done and a different prophet with a different skill set is needed.  That is the easy sermon to preach on this text, especially if you skip that part about the bear, which the lectionary would have you do.  But that’s the easy way out; chariots of fire are a lot easier to talk about than death by bear.  So, in the spirit of this sermon series, in the spirit of embracing these difficult Old Testament stories, let’s talk about death by bear.

          Elisha is traveling from Jericho to Bethel and runs into a group of rowdy youngsters.  As he passes by they taunt him and mock him, “Go away, baldhead!” or “Go up, baldy”.  It’s hard to translate the insult but it sounds like Elisha might have been follicley challenged.  The text is clear, he turns around and curses the lot of them in the name of the Lord, and they die. 

          As you can imagine, throughout the ages commentators have attempted to explain away this scene.  From claiming this was an attack on his prophetic office, to speculating the youth were trying to keep him from going to the sanctuary in Bethel, to assuming that to taunt the prophet was an attack on God himself, all sorts of reasons have been given to explain Elisha’s act.  Unfortunately none of them are convincing.  Basically some kids tease Elisha about his appearance, he gets mad and curses them, and they die a painful and frightening death.

          As modern readers we can’t help but be offended by this story.  Elisha’s act is way out of proportion.  That’s all there is to it, just another prophet killing people with the power of God.  And of course, this is not the first time it happens.  We all remember Elijah ordering the Israelites to take the 450 prophets of Baal down to the creek to be killed.  We read last week about the glory of the gruesome deaths of Ahab and Jezebel.  And in the chapter immediately preceding this one, Elijah is approached by messengers from the new king of Israel, and he calls down “The fire of God” from heaven to consume the captain of the army and his fifty men.  Not only that, he does it again to the next group of 51, all because he doesn’t like the message they are bringing from the king.  Now that doesn’t seem right either. 

          Once again in this sermon series, we come face to face with this God of the Old Testament that we don’t like.  From the gory deaths of Jezebel and Ahab, to the mass murder of rival prophets, to fires that kill messengers and men, to bears that maul small children; the acts of the prophet done in God’s name are violent and rude and offensive and just plain awful. 

How are we to understand these stories?  How are we to understand the God of the Old Testament?  I am beginning to think that the problem might be that we are reading it wrong.  Maybe we are coming from the wrong place when we want to make an ethical judgment on what is essentially a theological story.

What I am saying is this; as modern believers we are approaching the text looking for it to tell us something about ourselves.  That is the modern position.  “What does this have to do with me and my life?  Tell me something about me.”  That is how most of my sermons go.  And these difficult stories don’t do that.  They don’t have an ethical point.  They are not written to tell you something about you, they are not written to tell you how to live your life, and they are not written to set an example. 

I think we need to be reminded that the collected writings that appear in 1^st and 2^nd Kings were collected together in the form we find today around 550 BCE.  Gathered during the time of exile, the books were a reminder to the people of Israel of their history and their God.  They are in essence, theological texts, reminding the Israelites who God is, rather than wisdom texts like Proverbs which would remind the Israelites how to act.  These texts are thousands of years old and there is no way the authors ever imagined people in our day and age would gather together to read them.  The purpose of these narratives was to tell the ancient Israelites about God, not to tell us about us.

          The modern believer is essentially reading the Bible to find out about themselves.  How should they act?  Who is God calling them to be?  My answer as a preacher for today’s lesson is “It’s not all about us.”  When we read of the passing of power from Elijah to Elisha we can discern that God works through multiple people and multiple generations.  It’s not all about us.  Even the story of the kids teasing Elisha reminds us to consider the feelings of others.  It’s not polite to tease.  It’s not all about us.

          But the main theme here is a theological one.  Elijah and Elisha function as characters that show the power of God to the reader and to the nation of Israel.  We can’t look to these stories for examples of how to live; they are horrible moral and ethical examples because they were never written to function that way.  Rather we can look to these stories to understand who the God of the Old Testament is, and the God of the Old Testament is a sovereign God who has the power to bring life or death into any situation at God’s will.  We should find hope that the God we have come to know, even the scary God of the Old Testament, more often than not desires to bring life to all people; especially those living on the margins.  It may not be about us, but we are part of the greater story, we are part of that great curve toward justice. 

          This has been a difficult set of readings but I think it has been good for us.  Through studying these narratives we have come to know a lot about God and a lot about ourselves.  The God of the Old Testament is a God who has the power of life and the power of death.  The God of the Old Testament is jealous, and will not tolerate the worship of idols.  The God of the Old Testament is just, and will always be working on behalf of the little guy.

          As the followers of God, we are called to worship God alone, to look out for the rights of others in our world, and to speak the truth to power when called upon to do so.  We should also be reminded when reading the Bible that it is not all about us.  It’s about the great curve of God’s great love story, and while we are part of the story, we are certainly not the main character.

          As you know, I will be taking a few weeks off after this Sunday and you will get a break from this series.  That is probably a good thing.  After going to such strange and uncomfortable places I think we all deserve a break.  When I return to the pulpit on August 11^th I will have one final sermon to add to this series.  Until then, we would do well to remember that it’s not all about us.  And as you enjoy your summer, stay safe.  And for heaven’s sake, if you see any bald prophets don’t tease ‘em.  Amen.