Picking up the mantle (from Sunday, June 26, 2022)

 Reading:  2 Kings 2:1-14 … and Reflections

 

Instead of reading the Scripture in one piece, then offering a single, whole sermon from it, the reading will be offered in pieces, with a few breaks in it, for thoughts and questions that come from it, or in reflection upon it.  And maybe this in its own way is in keeping with how the truth comes to us in life – not all at once and in one piece, but step by step and bit by bit.

 

So, we jump into the story …

 

When the Lord was about to take Elijah up to heaven in a whirlwind, Elijah and Elisha were on their way from Gilgal.  Elijah said to Elisha, “Stay here; the Lord has sent me to Bethel.”

 

*

Let’s stop here, before we go any further. 

 

This is an exceptional story!  It’s a biggie in the pantheon of stories in the Hebrew Scriptures.  It’s about Elijah – the greatest prophet Israel ever knew, and Elisha his protégé. 

 

Elijah was sent by God at a particularly critical time in their history and in their life as God’s distinctive people in the world, called to live out God’s way of humility and compassion, of peace and justice, and of serving the well-being of all.  And in the way he carried out his calling, Elijah and the stories about him became almost mythic in nature. 

 

Elijah, for instance, was the one who stood up to the king and queen and 500 prophets of Baal, and not only survived, but won the day. 

 

Elijah was the one whom the necessarily-silent minority of true God-followers among the people, looked up to for hope and encouragement. 

 

Elijah, at his end, was taken to heaven in a chariot of God, without tasting natural death. 

 

Elijah is the one for whom Jewish families ever since set a place at the Passover table, in anticipation of his return to be among them. 

 

Because Elijah is the one who will come again at the end, to set things right, to sum up all history, and to bring God’s good will for all life and all people on Earth to its perfection and completion.

 

Elijah is a larger-than-life servant of God, and this is a special, extraordinary story.  One of a kind.

 

Or … is it?  Or might we also feel, or say there are elijahs around us, and even among us all the time?  Maybe shadows and echoes of Elijah.

 

People – deeply faithful souls, men and women who bring God’s good will for others to fruition and to expression in their time, by their faithful service, and by the gifts, the strength, the creativity that God gives them.  In every age, and every place on Earth -- including our own, are there not elijahs to look up to, and to draw inspiration from?

 

Yesterday, there was a gathering in our sanctuary to celebrate the life of Betty Bridgman.  Was she not such a servant of God?  Such a holy and dedicated women raised up, and used for the good of others?  In her own way, a prophet of God’s love being lived into the life of the world – in China, in Africa, and at the end, here among us?  An elijah?

 

And are there others?  Other elijahs whose lives and whose faithful service and witness you’ve read of, heard of, and been inspired by?  Maybe even that you’ve known?

 

Let’s get back to the story.

*

 

But Elisha said, “As surely as the Lord lives and as you live, I will not leave you.”  So they went down to Bethel…

 

Then Elijah said to him, “Stay here, Elisha; the Lord has sent me to Jericho.”  And he replied, “As surely as the Lord lives and as you live, I will not leave you.”  So they went to Jericho…

 

Then Elijah said to him, “Stay here; the Lord has sent me to the Jordan.”  And he replied, “As surely as the Lord lives and as you live, I will not leave you.”  So the two of them walked on.

 

Fifty men from the company of the prophets went and stood at a distance, facing the place where Elijah and Elisha had stopped at the Jordan.  Elijah took his cloak – his mantle, rolled it up and struck the water with it.  The water divided to the right and to the left, and the two of them crossed over on dry ground.

 

When they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, “Tell me, what can I do for you before I am taken from you?”

 

“Let me inherit a double portion of your spirit,” Elisha replied.

 

“You have asked a difficult thing,” Elijah said, “yet if you see me when I am taken from you, it will be yours—otherwise, it will not.”

*

 

There’s something to note here.  This is a story of Elijah, the great prophet.  And it’s a story of Elisha, his ready and willing protégé.  Someone eager to see and learn, and to grow into the way of his master.  Into his holiness and his constancy of witness to God.  Into the way he makes a difference for good, and for the well-being of others wherever he is.

 

It reminds of what I heard, while preparing for the celebration of Betty Bridgman’s life, from younger cousins about their childhood experience of her, and its effect on their lives.  She was older than them, and a distant member of their family – someone they heard about living in Africa, and using her skills and her life to do good things for others there.  She came home every 3 or 4 years on furlough, but, even then they didn’t really get to see her or get to know her, because she was out on speaking tours.

 

But the stories, the spirit, and the family-feeling of connection to her life of selfless service, helped shape their view of themselves, of the family they were part of together, and of being open to God’s call to serve the well-being of others in their own way, their own situations, and with their own gifts and opportunities.  Elishas to her elijah.

 

And haven’t we all been shaped by people like that – models and examples of faith and of faithful living who inspire us to want our lives to be good and holy as well?  Just think of your own history, your family’s story, people you’ve come to know along the way, maybe some of the people here at Fifty – maybe some who are here today.  Just look around … and think, too, of some not here – either just not here today, or gone from us…

 

Who have you been inspired by along the way – either long ago, or more recently?  Who have you wanted and aspired to be like?

 

And how have you gone about being an elisha to their elijah – staying close, not letting them out of your sight, not letting them out of your heart and mind, until you too begin to inherit a measure – your own measure – maybe even a double measure of their spirit?

 

Let’s go back to the story…

 

*

 

As they were walking along and talking together, suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind.  Elisha saw this and cried out, “My father! My father!  The chariots and horsemen of Israel!”  And Elisha saw him no more.  Then he took hold of his garment and tore it in two.

 

 

Elisha then picked up Elijah’s cloak that had fallen from him and went back and stood on the bank of the Jordan.  He took the cloak that had fallen from Elijah and struck the water with it.  “Where now is the Lord, the God of Elijah?” he asked.  When he struck the water, it divided to the right and to the left, and he crossed over.

 

*

 

The mantle of the prophet was something worn by the prophet as sign and symbol of their being somehow anointed, appointed and authorized by God to speak God’s truth into the world, to live out God’s love for all in ways that no one could miss, to call others to live together in new ways and as God desires.

 

A question, though: was the mantle Elijah wore, just his?  Did he see it as a personal possession?  His achievement?  His crowning glory?  His claim to fame?

 

Or … was it God’s mantle?  One that was bigger than Elijah and his life story?  One that preceded Elijah, and was worn by others before him?  That was given to Elijah to wear in his time and his circumstances, until it would not be his time any more?  And it would then pass to someone else – in this case, Elisha, to be used by him, in his way, and in his new and different circumstances?

 

Which means that when Elisha picks it, it’s not for the sake of having a relic of his departed master.  Not as a memento to hang on the wall.  Not as an heirloom to put away for safekeeping, and to bring out just on special occasions.

 

No, it’s something to pick up and use as his master did.  To open up a way through the chaos and fluid mess of his day.  To create a path to new life for people around him who are looking for a new way.

 

And to use in new ways even beyond that – ways Elijah would never have guessed, or would have needed to think of, as he – Elisha, now carries on step by step, day by day, challenge by challenge, year by year in the ever-evolving revealing of God’s good will at work in the world.

 

When Elisha picks up the fallen mantle, no doubt he is looking back at what was.  But even more, he is looking ahead to what shall be, and what shall need to be.

 

Which makes me wonder – if churches, congregations, communities of faith have a mantle given to them, put upon them, draped around their shoulders by God.  To identify them as God’s people.  To give them strength in bearing witness to God’s love for others around them.  And to help them know what their task, their life, and their purpose really is.

 

In the first years of thus church’s founding, over 200 years ago, was a mantle of Christian witness and service given by God, that that first generation lived out in their own time and way?  And then each generation after, as it fell from one, was it picked up by the next – and each time did it have a slightly different pattern woven into it, a new kind of call, a new way needed to be living out God’s love for the world?    

 

Until here we are today, facing a new day again as we begin to regather after being separated and isolated by the pandemic. And is the mantle still here – in some ways the same mantle that’s always been here, and has been this church’s strength … and in other ways, a mantle with a few new things woven into it, embedded into its pattern, suited for what God needs us and calls us, to be doing today.

 

For the past year, our church Council has been stewing, discussing, praying and discerning about this – looking at what kind of mantle, with what kind of pattern, God has for us right now as a church.  And they’ve discovered five things – five directions and areas of attention for our time and energy that we are called and suited for – that God and the community around us need us to put into practice over the next few years:

·        Nurturing faith

·        Seeking truth and reconciliation with the First Nations

·        Caring for the elderly

·        Feeding people’s needs

·        Strengthening the fabric of community for others and among ourselves

 

There they are.  Five directions in which to focus our time and energy.  Five things that help us know who we are.  That help us know what we are about.

 

And that raise the question of whether we are ready and willing to pick up the mantle God has for us, and to bring it to life?

be real ... ? (sermon from Sunday, June 19, 2022)

 Scripture Reading:  1 Kings 19:1-14 

In this reading, the people of God are not doing well, and are making bad choices to try to solve things.   

As a people and a kingdom, they are on a downward path.  After starting out well under Kings David and Solomon, for generations they have grown corrupt, divided and demoralized.  Now, under King Ahab, they are falling into even greater disarray as they face the greatest drought they have known for some time.

Ahab’s solution is to make the worship of Baal the official religion of the kingdom.  Baal was – and still is, a god of prosperity, affluence and comfort.  He deals in big spectacles to show his own power, and he accepts the sacrifice of others for the sake of one’s own good health and worldly success.

When King Ahab marries Jezebel, a neighbouring queen and a devotee of Baal, he effectively declares the worship of Baal to be the official religion of the people of Israel.   At this point Elijah, a prophet of God, can take it no more.  In a great public contest, Elijah stands up against 500 prophets of Baal, and with God on his side (or, because he dares to let himself be bent towards God and away from the idolatry of the day), defeats them all. 

This resounding victory, though, only guarantees that Elijah is now on Queen Jezebel’s hit list, and he begins to run for his life. 

Now Ahab told Jezebel everything Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword.  So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah to say, “May the gods deal with me, be it ever so severely, if by this time tomorrow I do not make your life like that of one of them.”

Elijah was afraid and ran for his life.  When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there, while he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness.  He came to a broom bush, sat down under it and prayed that he might die.  

“I have had enough, Lord,” he said.  “Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors.”  Then he lay down under the bush and fell asleep. 

All at once an angel touched him and said, “Get up and eat.”  He looked around, and there by his head was some bread baked over hot coals, and a jar of water.  He ate and drank and then lay down again.

The angel of the Lord came back a second time and touched him and said, “Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you.”  So he got up and ate and drank.  Strengthened by that food, he traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God.  There he went into a cave and spent the night.

And the word of the Lord came to him: “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

He replied, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty.  The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword.  I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.”

The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”  Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind.  After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake.  After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire.  And after the fire came a gentle whisper.  When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.

Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

Reflection 

Just bread?  And water?  This is all the angel of God has for Elijah as he sits alone under a broom tree in the desert, afraid for his life, and on the run?

This is not the Instagram moment Elijah might have hoped for.  Not something he can throw up on Facebook as a happily curated moment, to tell all his friends, “having a lovely time, too bad you’re not here.”

Could God not have sent a little roasted quail?  A jug of wine, to reward him for what he has done as God’s servant against the prosperity priests and prophets of Baal?  Would it have killed God to have given Elijah even a little of what people were promised by Baal?

No wonder Elijah is depressed, despairing, and at that moment quite angry with God, the world, and his life in it. 

Not unlike a lot of people today.  I can’t tell you the number of conversations I’ve been part of, or have overheard recently about how unhappy and angry people seem to be after the last few years of the pandemic.  It’s come up here at church with some members of the Quilt Club and in our Zoom book discussion of “Gratefulness” by Diana Butler Bass, and elsewhere in random conversations on the street and with neighbours.  And with my barber.

And I feel it myself – an anger that flares up at random moments in the course of daily life.  I can be home alone, on the road, in the middle of trying to write a sermon or do something good.  And something happens – as simple as dropping a book; banging a shin; seeing a terrible decision made by some other driver; or my laptop typing producing a mess – or is that a mass? – of mistakes that I have go back and correct. 

All normal, real things.  But at that moment the little pin-prick of frustration touches the deep-down reservoir of uncomfortable feelings built up over the past two years, and they come out as sudden, unexpected, out-of-proportion anger.  The feelings of powerlessness, of loss and grief, of anxiety, of limitation, frustration and disappointment, of jealousy, of not being in control.  Feelings we’re not used to having to live with as part of real, human life.

Last week in our Zoom discussion of Diana Butler Bass’s book “Gratefulness,” the group talked about the great joy we feel now when we can go to a concert, attend a hockey game, take a trip, see the world again, get together at restaurants and festivals, practice what Diana Butler Bass calls occasions of “social gratitude” – big, shared things that help us celebrate the goodness of life, and to grow in gratitude rather than resentment, as a basic attitude about life. 

We also noted, though, that so many of these things are quite exclusive in who can enjoy them.  They require money, a certain kind of leisure and personal freedom, mobility in general.  And we wondered if basic happiness and gratitude depend on access to such special things.  On Instagram moments.

I learned recently of a new app on the block – an alternative to Instagram, Pinterest and Tik-Tok.  It’s called Be Real, and what it does for you and your friends who sign up for it, is to send you and them a signal at the same time every day – a different and random time each day, to take a picture of yourself in the next two minutes and post it for all of you to see who all of you really are in your daily life.

The app takes a picture from both the front and the back of your phone, so what’s posted is what you look like as well as where you are.  An un-varnished, un-curated, un-edited, day-by-day sharing of our daily reality.  With the pictures disappearing after a time, as well.  No attempt here to build up some kind of everlasting monument or homage to our life.

People who’ve used the app, say they like it more than they thought they would.  It helps them know they’re not alone in dealing with daily realities of life, both happy and hard.  That we don’t always have to be or do or appear to be something special, to be real and worthwhile.  And that the sacred – the holy, is discovered in the mundane and the normal.

Just think of Elijah, alone in the desert overwhelmed by despair at the state of the world and of his life in it.  What he’s offered for the healing of his soul and the renewal of his life is simple bread and water, because this is what he needs for a journey to the holy mountain.  Once there, a place of temporary refuge and rest.  And the next day, a holy and singular encounter with God – not in some great spectacle, nor a great show of power, nor a world-shaking event, but in a quiet whisper, a near-wordless awareness, a deep-down feeling of something holy at the heart of the present, painful, and precious moment. 

If we were to keep reading to the end of the chapter, we’d also find a promise from God that all is not as lost as it seems.  That although they are not front-page news there are still thousands in the kingdom who have not sold their souls to Ahab and Jezebel’s prosperity god.  And that when Elijah goes back to keep facing and living in the world as it, he will find he is not alone, and that the world in its day-by-day normal reality, is still a vessel quietly filled with the day-by-day love and enduring presence of God.

One day this week I took an early morning walk to the local cemetery.  I stayed there a while, and the sadness rose up within me and flowed through me for some time.  It was good to be there, even though not easy.

After a while I rose from my place, left the cemetery and began to walk through the park beside on it and on my way home.  As I walked, I noticed the morning sun slanting through the trees.  The sky above, true and pure blue.  I noticed the grass, the flower beds, the waiting playground equipment.  Heard the birds’ morning chorus.  Shared and also overheard the “hello’s” and “good morning’s” of others out for a walk. 

Further on, out of the park, I saw the crossing guard arrive at his post on busy Sydenham Road that runs – sometimes races, right alongside the Catholic school.  With traffic vest on and STOP sign in hand, he looked at his watch to be sure he was on time to keep the kids coming to school that day safe from harm.  We waved hello at each other.  Some minutes later, as I neared home, I heard the sounds – some days happy, some days not, of my next-door neighbours getting their kids ready for their walk to school.

An ordinary morning.  Nothing spectacular.  Mundane – in every sense of the word.  Just the ordinary stuff – the bread and water of day-by-day life. 

But, oh, so sacred and holy.  Thanks be to God.

 

Can we choose to know awe? Let's hope so. (Sunday, June 12, 2022)

 Scripture Reading:  Psalm 8

 

O Lord, our Lord,

    how glorious is your name in all the earth!

You have exalted your majesty

    above the heavens.
Out of the mouths of newborn babes and infants
    you bring forth praise
to protect creation against your foes,
    to silence the enemy and the avenger.
When I look up at your heavens,
    all that has been formed by your fingers,
the moon and the stars
    that you set in place,
what is humanity that you are mindful of them,
    and human beings that you care for them?
Yet you have made them a little less than the angels
    and crowned them with glory and honour.
You have given them dominion

    over the works of your hands,
    and placed everything under their feet:
all sheep and oxen
    as well as the beasts of the field,
the birds of the air, the fish of the sea,
    and whatever swims in the paths of the sea.
O Lord, our Lord,
    how glorious is your name in all the earth!

Reflection 

When you step outside at night, especially outside the city – past the city’s artificial glow, the congestion, and the constant traffic hum, and you look up at the sky, clear enough to see the stars in their unending wonder spread out as far above and around you as you can see, what do you feel?

I remember that Wayne Child’s favourite hymn was “How Great Thou Art.” We played it at his funeral, and I can’t help but imagine he thought of it every time he was up north at his brother’s wilderness hunting and fishing lodge:

Oh Lord, my God, when I, in awesome wonder
Consider all the worlds Thy hands have made
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder
Thy power throughout the universe displayed.

Then sings my soul, my Saviour God to Thee,
How great Thou art, how great Thou art …

For myself, even just on our back deck on the edge of Dundas, when I stand under the night sky, I feel contentedly part of something bigger, far more vast than myself.  I feel connected deep down to all that is, ever was, and ever will be, with nothing lost along the way.  I feel myself and all I’ve ever known, held within a great embrace, cared for, even loved. 

This isn’t everyone’s experience, though, and not what everyone feels.  Edward Shillito, an author who wrote and lived through both the First and Second Great Wars, and saw how the terror and tragedy of those years affected people, once wrote, “The heavens frighten us; they are too calm; in all the universe we seem to have no place.”  This vastness and cold distances of the cosmos can trigger a kind of vertigo – a feeling of homelessness and utter vulnerability, when we realize the cosmos does not revolve around us.

Some years ago, Rosalia Bohonis lent me a book written by a survivor of the plane crash in the Andes that claimed the lives – in terrible ways, of most of the members of a Brazilian soccer team that he was a member of.  As he and a few others were able to wander, stumble and agonize their way through that frozen, forbidding mountain range, the image he came to have of God was of a being far removed, cold and impassive, and not at all intimately engaged in his well-being.

I wonder if that’s the way many people feel in society at large these days.  Does it seem that we face issues and problems too big to be managed?  That the forces of the world are somehow against us?  That the powers are distant and uncaring?  And that really, we are on our own – small and anonymous, to survive as best we can? 

It’s the kind of feeling that might trigger freedom convoys.  The kind of powerlessness to effect big change that makes people hunker down all the more happily into private Shangri-las.   The kind of anxiety about our own well-being that can drive us to become acquisitive, possessive, and wanting to bend the world if we can to our own design – make it suit us, rather than us have to fit into, and live in harmony with it. 

In our fear of not counting and of not being counted, we are sometimes led into exactly the kind of chaos that the Bible says God in the beginning had to overcome and call into order, in order to make the world be.  The kind of self-centred jumble that ever since has remained the greatest enemy to the world – a constant threat to undo what God has made good. 

And it’s so strong, so common, and so much a part of how the world works these days, that when Stephen Mitchell, a poet, translator and religious scholar, published his version of fifty of the Psalms from the Old Testament, he expressed the last part of Psalm 8 this way:

…what is man, that you love him,

            and woman, that you gladden her heart?

Yet you made us almost like the angels

            and crowned us with understanding.

You put us in charge of all creatures

            and placed your whole earth in our hands:

all animals, tame and wild,

            all forests, fields and deserts,

even the pure air of the sky,

            even the depths of the ocean.

Unnamable God, how terrible

            is our power on all the earth!

It’s quite a different ending from what the Psalmist is led to express.  In the original and ancient version, after affirming that God has made us just a little lower than the angels in giving us dominion over all the earth – making humanity a kind of lieutenant or under-study to God, empowered and taught to love and care for Earth as God does, the psalmist ends with a positive word of thankful praise: “O Lord, our Lord, how glorious is your name in all the Earth.”

And the thing is, both are true and honest.  Both the modern despair for the fate of Earth, and the ancient praise for the glory and grace of God in making all things and raising us up as lovers and stewards of the Earth God has made.  And the question is, which we – which I, will choose to live by and live towards.

For myself, as much as I lean by nature and habit towards the aloof and the separate, the analytical and even cynical, the fearful and self-protective way, there is something in me that yearns for and wants to choose the way of openness and engagement; to be part of what’s around me, rather apart from it; and to give and share myself for the well-being of all, rather than try to save myself from being immersed in it.

And I’m told by those who seems to know, that the way – at least, a way to do this, is to learn to live – or maybe more accurately, to allow myself to live, with a sense of awe and wonder at what is before me.  With a sense of astonishment.  An ability and a willingness to be surprised by the glory of what it is in front of me, which comes only by taking the time to actually look at it, and see it for what it is, what is in it, and how I – how all of us, are part of one single, gracious, sacred reality.

I’ve recently been introduced to a poet named Mary Oliver, and I wonder where she has been all my life.  And why no one told me about her before.  In a poem called “Messenger,” she writes:

My work is loving the world.

Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird –

            equal seekers of sweetness.

Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.

Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

 

Are my boots old?  Is my coat torn?

Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect?  Let me

            keep my mind on what matters,

which is my work,

 

which is mostly standing still and learning to be

            astonished.

The phoebe, the delphinium.

The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.

Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

 

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart

            and these body-clothes,

a mouth with which to give shouts of joy

            to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,

telling them all, over and over, how it is

            that we live forever.

What do you think?  Is that the kind of open wonder, the kind of unrehearsed awe, the kind of simple astonishment known by babies and infants, and shared with us in their wide-opened eyes, their simple smiles, their gurgles and chuckles of delight at what is given and is all around them? 

And is that the life-saving wisdom and the world-saving way that the psalmist says we need to grow down to, that we need to rediscover as a bulwark, as a defence against the fear-driven, self-centred chaos that always threatens the undoing of what God has made?

So, just a few questions: what in this world makes your heart tremble in joyful praise of God, and makes you fall to your knees in humble thanksgiving? 

What in the world reminds you of the immensity and vastness of what God has summoned into being?

What in the world overwhelms you with beauty and leaves you speechless? 

What in the world can you not help but see as a vessel of God’s glory filled to overflowing, and overflowing into the world? 

And when you think on and look at these things, how do they invite you to be in the world that is given?