Monday Morning in the Preacher’s Study
First thoughts about next Sunday’s sermon
(6thSunday after Pentecost, June 30, 2013)
John W.B. Hill
Our North American
culture is succumbing to a cult of ‘freedom.’
When freedom means nothing more than escape from constraints and
regulations, we quickly become captive to delusions and enslaved to our own
self-indulgence (what our second reading calls living according to ‘the
flesh’); and the self-indulgence of our consumer society is generating a global
race toward a climate crisis.
The alternative to
all such enslavement, we are told, is living by the Spirit, yielding to the
Spirit’s guidance. This alone is
freedom.
Elijah was a man of
the Spirit, and the story of his career (in the semicontinuous first readings
of the past few weeks) shows how the Spirit was leading him to question his own
assumptions about the ways of the true God.
Originally convinced that the faithlessness of God’s people could be
healed by a show of power and vengeance (the great sacrifice on Mount Carmel),
Elijah came to see that as a delusion.
He retreated to Mount Horeb in defeat, hoping to recover the vision
given to the prophet Moses in that holy place; instead, he discovered that God
was not in the wind or fire. In the
‘sheer silence’ that followed, the Spirit told him to anoint Elisha as his
successor, to ‘pass the mantle.’ Time
for a prophet with a clearer vision of God’s ways!
This must have been a
hard pill to swallow. Today’s episode
(Elijah’s ‘swan song’) depicts a devoted disciple following a cranky and
dejected master. Elijah now retreats to
the far side of the Jordan; he will expire where Moses expired, somewhat short
of his goal.
So what is the
meaning of the whirlwind, the chariot of fire, and horses of fire? Chariots are war machines, and fire recalls
the sacrificial fire on Mount Carmel.
Was Elijah finally consumed by his own craving for vengeance?
More to the point,
will his successor see more clearly the ways of Israel’s Saviour? We will have to wait for next Sunday’s
reading to give us a clue.
Today’s gospel begins
the teaching section in this version of the gospel, and Luke marks that
beginning by announcing, “When the days drew near for [Jesus] to be taken up,
he set his face to go to Jerusalem.” Why
this expression of new resolve? Luke acknowledges
this turning point, as all the synoptic gospels do, one way or another — a
change of direction foreshadowed by events such as the beheading of the Baptist
and the transfiguration. For Jesus
recognizes that his offer of the new peace of God’s kingdom is being rejected
by God’s people because it clashes with the sacred institutions of
Jerusalem. He faces a resistance to
God’s will just as massive as the resistance Elijah faced.
Indeed, the figure of
Elijah and his stubborn fight against idolatry lies just below the surface of
this gospel episode, for the Samaritans were the descendants of the northern
kingdom whose monarchs were so determined to kill Elijah. Yet Jesus’ response to their hostility is in
complete contrast to Elijah’s: whereas Elijah called down fire on his foes (2
Kings 1), Jesus’ rejects such resort to violence. But the crisis is just as real: God’s people
are once again rejecting God’s way, and the consequences will be horrific, as
Jesus himself foresaw.
That is why we hear
such stern conditions for discipleship.
If, in this time of crisis, Jesus knows he must “set his face” toward
Jerusalem, his followers must do so too.
No one who “looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” Fair weather disciples are not disciples of
such a master in such a crisis.
What will it mean,
then, to be disciples in this moment
of crisis, when a self-indulgent society is careening toward ecological
destruction?
John Hill is a presbyter in the Anglican Church of
Canada (ACC). A member of APLM Council, John also serves as chair for the
Primate’s Task Force on Hospitality, Christian Initiation and Discipleship
Formation in the ACC. He will be a workshop presenter at APLM’s “Stirring the
Waters” conference this week in Chicago.
