Sermon for Evensong on the Sunday before Lent, Quinquagesima, 19th February 2023
2 Kings 2:1-12
[Matthew 17:1-23]
https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=543147410 (Authorised Version)
This story begins, it says, ‘just before Elijah was taken up to heaven in a whirlwind’. Taken up to heaven in a whirlwind, as you are. As you do. Or maybe not. Something is going on which is rather different from something which flashes up on Apple News on your phone. Maybe it’s a bit like some of the Apple News things which point you to an article which is hidden behind a paywall. So however tantalising it is, you never get to find out what the story was, at least not from Apple News.
But one suspects that it’s not just a question of getting the story from the right medium. If Elijah is supposed to have been snatched up to heaven in a whirlwind, it doesn’t matter whether Apple News or the Guardian or the Mirror or even the Times reported it, it’s something quite different from our normal experience. I think we would tend to say that it was a story, a legend, and even that perhaps it wasn’t literally true. But maybe it was a story with a message.
It was about Elijah. Elijah is said to be the second most important prophet in the history of the Israelites, after Moses. And just like Moses, there aren’t any books actually written by Elijah but there are lots of stories about what he did, in the Bible. I recommend that you have a look at the 1st book of Kings to read about all the doings of Elijah.
There are things that you will immediately notice about him. First of all, he is a prophet – and we will come back to that in a minute. Second, that he is in competition. Wherever he goes he bumps into more prophets, and not only that, but also as a prophet, passing on the word of God, he finds himself in competition, not only with other prophets, but with other gods. Competing with other gods.
The Israelites had been commanded to love the one true God, and they sort-of did, but some of them hedged their bets by also worshipping the Baals and making the Golden Calf and worshipping that. In the books of Kings you will see that each king is rated by whether or not he had stayed true to the one true God or whether he had followed the Baals and chased after idols.
Now usually, when you are listening to a sermon, you can rely on the preacher doing a quick review of what the Bible readings are, and maybe telling you a little bit more about them, and then trying to relate them to our lives today. What would Jesus do? Would we have made the same mistakes? Would we have touched the forbidden fruit, and if not, why not?
But here? Prophets? Going up to heaven in a whirlwind? I’m not at all sure it’s something we can really relate to.
Let’s look at it again – after the striking beginning, ‘Once upon a time, before the whirlwind came’, Elisha asks Elijah for an extra helping of his prophetic mojo, and Elijah says that he will only get it if he gets sight of him as he goes up to heaven. Then comes this tantalising bit of the story – I don’t know whether you would agree with me – but for a while, we don’t know whether Elisha did actually manage to see Elijah going up in the whirlwind, because it looks a bit as though the chariot and horses blocked the view. Let me read it again for you.
And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.
And Elisha saw it, and he cried, My father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof. And he saw him no more …
What do you think? Did he get a clear look at him?
Well fortunately, the author, the chronicler, the writer of the books of Kings, puts you out of your misery a few lines further on, because it says that he has definitely taken over Elijah’s powers. But what were these powers? What was special about Elijah? He was a prophet. We have said that. But what sort of prophet?
I don’t think we have today any prophets like Elijah or Moses. If we talk about prophets, today we talk about people who claim to be able to forecast the future. Suppose we say that so-and-so has prophesied that Manchester United would win the Cup, for example – or if Jimmy was giving this sermon, of course you’d have to substitute Arsenal, and then – well then, the illustration wouldn’t work.
But you know, seriously, a prophet will tell you, or will claim to tell you, what’s going to happen next. But that’s not the sort of prophet that Elijah was. Elijah didn’t just foretell the future.
What he did was to become, or to pass on, the voice of God. The words of God, the idea of God. Elijah didn’t just foretell the future: but arguably he didn’t even do that.
What he did do was to tackle the people of Israel and try to put them back on to the straight and narrow, back on the road to salvation. So instead of acting essentially like a warm-up man at a TV studio and rousing the masses to celebrate in unison, singing anthems together like a football crowd, as the prophets of Baal did, instead of doing that, Elijah, and Moses before him, were not afraid of tackling Israel head-on and telling them what they were doing wrong.
So what about the message for us today? In Elijah’s time, the prophets were in direct touch with God, and then more recently the priests were the only ones allowed in the holy of holies in the Temple, able to withstand the fire of God. And then in the 16th century along came John Calvin with the idea of the ‘priesthood of all believers’. For him, you didn’t need priests in order to be with God. Take it to the Lord in prayer. Anyone can do it.
I think that maybe as a Reader I’m in that tradition, in the sense that I’m not a priest: not ordained, I haven’t got a dog collar. I’ve studied theology, and I’m not shy about trying to share my faith, to give you ideas about the Kingdom and perhaps occasionally to take a leaf out of the book of the prophets, by steering you gently away from doing things which I don’t think Jesus would approve of.
If Elijah and Elisha, as prophets, were the mouthpieces of God to the Israelites, today our preachers, even humble Readers like me, have to try to bring you the word of God in the Bible and in our theology and tradition. The great preacher Charles Spurgeon had a sign on his pulpit which said, ‘We would see Jesus in you’. We want to see Jesus.
I hope that I can rise to that calling. Here, today, I need to be properly cautious and humble in the face of the Almighty. I don’t know how that whirlwind worked. I sort-of suspect a Doctor Who-style mechanism isn’t really doing it justice, and then again I remember that Nikita Krushchev asked Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, who was a Christian, to tell him whether he found anybody above the clouds, and Gagarin said, no, he hadn’t seen a man with a white beard and a golden throne anywhere in the stratosphere.
But nevertheless it is a great vision, a great movie, a great prophecy. Elijah caught up in a whirlwind, and his apprentice, his successor, Elisha the young prophet, believing that he is only going to be able to carry on the mission with the necessary strength if he doesn’t blink and doesn’t miss Elijah going on up, and then, in just the same way things happen in our lives, things get in the way, a chariot and horses comes thundering in and blocks the view.
What it means for me, as your new Reader, is that I have to try to see clearly, not have my vision blocked. I have to be close to the Lord, and to pass on His word: not only that, but also I have to be willing to call things out, if I think I can hear Jesus muttering in the background.
I hope that you will pray for me: indeed that you will pray with me, as we embark on the spiritual journey through Lent. This Wednesday is Ash Wednesday. Let’s pray and reflect together in these days in the wilderness, in the wilderness in so many ways today, and let us try, together, to follow Jesus’ commands of love.
hughdbryant 