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Testing the Waters
Sermon by Leah Grace Goodwin
for Sunday, March 2, 2003
Scripture: 2 Kings 2:1-14, Mark 9:2-9, Psalm 50:1-6
Most people love a good drama. Ask any network TV mogul.
In fact, I think it’s fair to say that, like it or not, the human psyche revels in - maybe even depends on -- the dramatic moment. We find reassuring meaning in the epic magnitude of those times when the throat catches, the heart pounds, and every second vibrates, strained nearly to the breaking point with almost more meaning than it can hold.
And boy, did we hit the jackpot with this Sunday’s scripture readings. Mark and 2nd Kings have got it all - lonely mountaintops, dazzling white raiment, phantasmagorical prophets, overshadowing clouds, mighty rivers rolled back like so much parchment, fire and whirlwind. Whoever wrote the narrative for the Ascension of Elijah story should get an Academy Award for best screenplay.
Now, Elijah gets the bulk of the special effects budget in this story, with his dramatic (and highly flammable) exit, but I want to think about his protegee, Elisha. I suspect he has a great deal to tell us about a variety of subjects, among them discipleship, loss, and grief, not to mention the challenge of public life. And we will touch on all of these ideas along the way. But what grabs me hardest about this tale is Elisha’s faith. Elisha is faith -FILLED: he is willing to leap into unknown territory, to take a shot at stunts that seem impossible, even absurd, by human standards. He is also faith-FULL: devoted to his master, his God, and the “stiff-necked people” that are his countrymen.
That faith, my friends, that devotion and hope and divinely dependent recklessness, is what the Spirit calls me to speak on today.
A little context would help us cope with this rather mindboggling tale.
So - it is, roughly speaking, the eighth century before Christ. Israel is divided into two kingdoms, with two rival rulers, and the region is in upheaval. Elijah is the preeminent prophet of the day. He has a plethora of miracles under his leather belt,, not least of which is his recent success in winning a sacrificial altar-lighting contest with the prophets of Baal. Elijah is a cowboy, a renegade. Oscar Wilde once said that a person “should always be a little improbable” - and indeed, Elijah was more than a little improbable. I imagine he would have been an amazing master and teacher to Elisha, and a difficult one.
Elisha, meanwhile, is Elijah’s protegee, his student, his servant. He has followed Elijah ever since the day the prophet found him plowing a field and threw his mantle, that symbol of prophetic power, over Elisha’s head. He is fiercely loyal to his master. Three times Elijah suggests that Elisha should stay behind, and three times Elisha refuses. “No, master”, he says. “As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.”
And so they set off on their journey from Gilgal, to Bethel and Jericho and finally to the Jordan - all significant places in the history of Israel. Essentially, they are “strolling down memory lane”, except that the stroll is more like a forced march, and this memory lane is hot and dusty and full of people reminding Elisha of the uncomfortable fact that his master is about to leave him. When they arrive at the Jordan and cross it, Elisha’s heart is surely heavy with the weight of grief. His gut is very likely flipflopping with anxiety about filling his master’s shoes. And when Elijah departs, all fire and wind and horses and chariots, Elisha is left to wonder if, in fact, he saw what he was supposed to in order to inherit that double portion of Spirit he wants so desperately. “Father, father!” he says. “The Chariots of Israel and their horsemen” - as if to say look, look I see them! Just for the record, I see them!
But for all its pyrotechnic splendor, Elisha receives no confirmation that this was, in fact, what he was supposed to see. There is no receipt left behind to account for the Spirit he was supposed to have gained. There IS, however, a river to cross and a prophetic job to do.
There is a story that, I think, comes fairly close to what Elisha might have felt in that moment, as he stood alone on the far side of the Jordan. Here goes:
Once, there was a tourist who wandered too close to the edge of the Grand Canyon. He lost his footing and plunged over the side, clawing and scratching to save himself from certain death in the chasm below. After he went out of sight and just before he fell headlong into empty air, he encountered a scrubby bush, which he grabbed desperately with both hands. The tourist was terrified. He called out to heaven. “Is anybody up there?”, he yelped. A calm, powerful voice came out of the sky. “Yes, there is,” it said.
Well, who knew? thought the tourist. “Can you help me? Can you help me?”
The calm voice replied, “Yes, I probably can. What’s the problem?” The tourist replied, “I fell over a cliff, and now I’m dangling here in space holding onto a bush that’s about to come out by the roots. Help!” The voice from above said, “I’ll try. Do you believe?” “Yes, yes,” said the tourist. “I believe!” “Do you have faith?” “Yes, yes! I have strong faith!” The voice, still aggravatingly calm, said “Well, in that case, just let loose of the bush and everything will turn out fine.”
There was a tense pause.
Then, the tourist yelled, “Is anybody else up there?”
We have all had moments when a second opinion seemed in order, when none of our options seem like good ones, when we have only emptiness at our back, a rushing river before us, and no likely means for getting out of the situation satisfactorily. And, facing a gawking crowd of prophets across a rather intimidating river, left only with the bundled wool of Elijah’s mantle in his hand, the residue of the whirlwind behind him, and the promise of a hefty portion of spirit, it seems reasonable to assume that Elisha felt less than confident about his next move. “Now what?” he thinks. “I miss my master, I’m supposed to succeed him, and I have to get across this river. Everybody’s staring at me, and all I have is his cloak and the vague hope that if I smack the water like I watched my boss do, I might pull off the same stunt he did.”
While we’re at it, we might consider the possibility that, miracle-working ability aside, Elisha may not have wanted to cross back over that river. Crossing back over the Jordan meant re-entering his homeland and returning to society after what had very likely been a a comfortably reclusive life with his teacher. Mostly, crossing the river meant taking his master’s place - shouldering the burden of prophecy.
But, in his heart, Elisha knows precisely “what now”. Having picked up Elijah’s mantle, he stands at the bank of the river. He faces the fifty prophets, all of whom are waiting with bated breath to see just what this man can do - to find out just how much of Elijah’s spirit the Lord has seen fit to bestow on Elisha. He decides to go for it, to leap into the unknown faced with the distinct possibility that he will fall flat on his face, literally in front of God and everybody.
And Elisha, whether by dumb luck or in a fit of desperation or because he knows better than to rely on his own power, wallops the water, raises his head to the heavens, and howls one of the shortest, most desperate prayers in the Bible.
“Where is the Lord, the God of Elijah?”, he demands.
Where, indeed?
The answer, not surprisingly, is not handed to us on a silver tray. The water parts, Elisha crosses over, and it seems clear that the Lord has been somewhere in the vicinity. But where? And why does Elisha bother even to ask the question?
Well, I wouldn’t presume to have the answer to either of these questions - but, I’m willing to test the waters myself, and take a stab at a possible answer.
Different traditions believe different things about where, precisely, God is.
Since leaving for divinity school, I have devoted a lot of time and spiritual energy to the theology of the Swedenborgian tradition. Emanuel Swedenborg was an 18th century scientist, a genius, a man of reason who, in his 50s, had visions that prompted his to write 30 volumes on the nature of God, humanity, and the relationship between them. He firmly believed that we are all created in the image of heaven, that not only is the Lord present with us, but embodied within us. The Lord, says Swedenborg, is the source of life that dwells at the deepest part of each person’s being. Swedenborg has this to say about where God resides:
The soul is the human form, from which nothing whatever can be taken away, to which nothing can be added. It is the inmost form of all the forms of the whole body. People are souls. The soul is the essential person because it is the inmost person… Still, the soul is not life but is the … receiving vessel of life that comes from God.
And he also says this:
A human being is an organ of life, and God alone is life. God pours his life into every part of the human being, as the sun pours its warmth into every part of a tree… God grants people a sense that the life in them seems to be their own [when in fact we are vessels for the life that is from God].
What Swedenborg is saying here, in his typically roundabout way, is that the Lord God, the God of Elijah and Elisha and all those prophets staring from across the river, the God of you and me and everybody else on this earth - that God is within us. Our life does not come from ourselves. Our life is not our own. Yes, we have free will, and yes, we should assert our liberty - but we do not live from ourselves.
It’s a terrifying idea - but also a liberating one. If we are merely vessels for the Lord’s life, physical embodiments of His essence, then we can also be human lightning rods for His love and wisdom and Spirit. Maybe this is where faith comes from. Maybe faith means hoping that our life and our gifts are not, in fact, ours. They are God’s. And if they are God’s, then there is no limit to what we, in his name and with humility, can do.
Someone once said that “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny things compared to what lies within us.” The idea leaps to life in Elisha’s predicament.
What lies behind Elisha?
Everything - and nothing.
Elisha stands on the far side of the Jordan a shaken and bereft man. He is a prophet without prior work experience on his resume. He is alone, and he must decide how, or even whether, he wants to cross back. Behind him is absence, emptiness, the world outside his homeland. Behind him is the smell of scorched earth, a burned-out crater to mark the fingerprint of God, and an absence that hangs heavy on his heart. Behind him lie memories, and shadowy promises of a spiritual inheritance.
And what lies before him?
Everything - and nothing. A ragged cloak, a huge river, a people sorely in need of prophecy, duties that demand his presence.
And -- finally - what lies within him?
I think, and I would not presume to know, that this question lies at the heart of Elisha’s anguished cry: “Where is the Lord, the God of Elijah?”
Maybe, for Elisha, and oh, I hope for all of us, the Lord, the God of the prophets and the apostles and of Christ himself -- is within. We cannot prove that God’s life dwells at the heart of our being. We cannot prove our own spiritual inheritance with science or statistical charts or calculus or any hard evidence that would satisfy our minds - but we can hope. We may not be prophets like Elisha, and maybe we’re not standing by a rushing river -- but we can take up our mantles and strike the waters that lap at our feet, whatever form those waters may take, and we can find the Spirit of the Lord that burns at our core.
Test the waters. Go ahead, give it a shot. You never know -- they just might part.
Amen.
Copyright 2003 by Leah Grace Goodwin
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