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Our stories this week tell about Elijah the Prophet and Jesus the Christ being Taken Up, a way of describing Death in a hopeful way.   But the stories aren’t about Death at all, rather about the passing of a spiritual indwelling to the next generation of faithful Believers.  This is the time of year when Seniors “pass the torch” to Freshmen, when retiring clergy “pass the staff” to the newly ordained.   What takes up our energy, our time and our psyche?  What’s left to be Passed On?

Elijah has been mentoring EliSHA (play on words intentional) to carry on after he’s gone.  This week we find the Old Man and the New Kid at the Jordan River, that frontier between the familiar and that which is yet to be.  (II Kings 2:1-14)  They’ve just crossed the river with dry feet by striking the water with Elijah’s mantle.  (Aha!  the Law and the Prophets!)  Elijah flings the mantle to Elisha as the Fiery Chariot sweeps him home to God, and the power is passed on…

Paul has no recourse to Chariots of Fire when he upbraids the Galatian congregations for their selfish living.  (Galatians 5)  Having experienced  the new freedom of Christ, they’re taken up by all sorts of neighborly abuse (see the list in vv19-21; has he missed any of us?)  Our own arguments of today often say, “Nothing is forbidden, isn’t this the Land of the Free?”– as we gouge our customers, steal their spouses, forget the street-people and gorge ourselves in front of the malnourished!  Yet the Fruit of the Spirit take us up from abuse to reconciliation and service this side of the Jordan…

Jesus knew that he was soon to be Taken Up.  (Luke 9:51 ff)  Having “set his face to go to Jerusalem”, he made his farewell tour from Galilee south through Samaria.  He wasn’t welcome there, since the Samaritans believed that worship could be successful at Mt. Gerazim as well as Mt.Zion–and they had Jacob’s well, besides.   No, Jesus was going to the Center of Jewish Spirituality and political tradition, and nothing would dissuade him.  He was Taken Up with this conviction that Jerusalem must be the venue for his death.

With what are we taken up?   Is it the momentary pleasures which trip up the Galatians of all ages?   Or is it the steadfast resolution that the public climax of our earthly sojourn must announce some sense of Rightness with God seen in our faces?  The mantle, the torch, the staff have all been passed.  What will happen now??

God Bless Us,Every One                 H   B   King

For openers, this isn’t a philosophical question of existentialism.  Good thing, since there doesn’t seem to be any answer, in that discipline.  No, this is theology, the Reality of an all-present God, which confronts us in next Sunday’s readings.  Not for navel-gazing or dreaming in the stars, “Why are you HERE?” could be an amazed expression which translates, “I didn’t expect to find GOD here!”

Elijah was drained.  He had just killed off the priests of Ba’al, and was now running from royal wrath, first to the desert and then to Mt. Horeb (Sinai). (I Kings 19:1-15)   And God asked, “What are you doing HERE, Elijah?”   Alone and afraid, Elijah was on pilgrimage to the place where he knew that  God had once been found; still he was a bit surprised to see Yahweh so far from his home.

Galatia.  Now THAT’s a strange place to experience God!   The mountains of what’s now Central Turkey were full of wild Celtic tribes, hardly a scene for a refined Jewish scholar and Roman citizen.  Yet Paul writes, “…for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith….And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.” (Galatians 3:26,29)  What are you doing HERE, Paul?

The Gentile Gospel writer, Luke, tells a funny story (Luke 8:26-39) about Jesus healing a  fellow named Legion from his many demons, and sending these demons into a herd of pigs, who promptly rushed over the cliff and drowned!   (“See, we knew they were unclean!”)  What’s really special about this narrative is that it happened in SYRIA, near what we now call the Golan Heights.   What are you doing HERE, Jesus?

As a seminarian, one of our assignments was to go one evening each week to Greenwich Village, “deep in the heart of New York City.”  We were to wear garb which identified us as clergy, and to mingle with folks in bars & coffee-houses, perhaps to provoke Holy Conversation.  My friend Ed and I were in one of these dives when a woman said loudly to her companion, “They’re EVERYwhere, aren’t they!”   Glad ya noticed, lady!

Who’s surprised more, faith-bearers or skeptics, when God is discovered Out of Town?  Or maybe it’s God discovering US, even where and when we expect God least…….

God Bless Us, Every One           H  B   King

No, this isn’t about marriage — but guess what.   If you think you can get in the Last Word with God, you’ve got things a bit askew….to put it mildly.   Readings for this Sunday upcoming are sort of like parables, that is, they tell a moralistic story.   I like to picture what’s being described as a way of entering into the scene.  Join me?

The Old Testament portion is most of Chapter 21 of the First Book of Kings.  We’re still following Elijah in his relentless crusade to drive idolatry from Israel, especially going up against vapid King Ahab and his conniving Queen Jezebel.  One Naboth owned a vineyard which was in the family since the resettlement of Canaan; he wouldn’t sell it to Ahab, who wanted a cucumber patch.   Ahab went home to pout; Jezebel wasn’t put off so easily.  To make a long story shorter, she had false charges of blasphemy brought against Naboth, and he was stoned to death.  “Grow your cucumbers, dear,” she told the King.   BUT Elijah found Ahab in his new plot, and told him, “in the place where dogs licked up the blood of Naboth, dogs will also lick up YOUR blood.” ( v,19 )  Nice folks.

Well, Paul’s writing to the Galatians 2:15-21) isn’t really a Parable.  But I can paint a picture in my mind when he says “it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” (v.20)  In my picture, I see a transparent, shadowy figure of Paul enclosing a quite firm image of Jesus.  This combination certainly makes me think about my ethics as I carry about such a Divine Presence…

Luke tells stories so well!   Here in chapter 7 of his Gospel account we see Jesus at a formal dinner when a Woman of the Streets barges in weeping, bathing his feet with her tears and drying them with her hair.  Simon, the host, is appalled; but Jesus forgives her sins.  This, again, is God’s Last Word:  :”forgiveness” goes beyond her errors to restore her into the synagogue, the community, and the culture.  The Old is gone, the New has come!

Elijah delivers God’s Last Word to Ahab as a reminder that his immoral living will catch up to him soon.  Paul says that God’s Last Word is constantly unfolding within him, changing and re-forming him.  And Jesus announces to the outcast woman of shady background that her life has re-started from this moment on, a loving Last Word from God.

A long-lived refrigerator magnet in our house was a styrene “peanut” caterpillar with inked eyes and segments.  Around the cardboard circle to which he was glued was the motto, “Please be patient:  God isn’t through with me yet”

God Bless Us, Every One                  H   B    King

I’ve been there.  Have you?   When you’re at the bottom of the barrel, when the money or food or life itself give out?  Readings you may hear this weekend tell some heroic stories and affirm a Holy Presence even when gloom seems to have snatched away any reason for living.   They won’t give a glib answer, a “buck-up, shake it off” sort of advice which means so little to the hurting.  They DO address God’s sharing of our mortal pain, and remind us that there are moments of grace even when the shadows are deep.

Begin, please, with the prophet Elijah (I Kings 17:8-24).   To set this up, Elijah was on the lam from Queen Jezebel:  remember how he had shown Yahweh’s power greater than the Ba’al, and had slaughtered all the Ba’al  priests when their barbecue wouldn’t light.  Very angry, Jezebel promised Elijah that he’d be dead meat by sunset!   “Better hit the road,” God said.

So now we find him at Zarepath, outside of the Queen’s domain, penniless & starving.  His one hope was that the Lord had told him about a widow who would help him.  Sure ‘nuf, said widow was gathering one last stick to make one last fire to bake one last Jonny-cake before she & her son died of starvation.  Elijah promised that her jar of meal and her cruze of oil never would become empty ’til Good Times came again… and so they remained full enough.

Then the son of the widow, her only son, died.  Elijah prayed for the child to revive; and he did!  Another happy ending!   So here’s Elijah, exiled from home–was he beyond Yahweh’s territory?–and at the bottom of the barrel.  And a destitute widow and a dead son, all at the bottom of THEIR barrels….but God wasn’t through yet.

Paul’s biographical statement to the Church(es) of Galatia (1:11-24) shares how God has worked in his life to get him to be an Apostle of Christ.   Not exactly the bottom of the barrel, but such a radical change!  “The one who formerly was persecuting us is now proclaiming the faith he once tried to destroy.” (v.23)

Luke’s Gospel presents a story about Jesus going to the town of Nain. (7:11-17)  There he encountered a funeral procession:  a young fellow, his widowed mother’s only son (!) had died.   Jesus said, “Young man, I say to you, rise!” (v.14)  And as he did, the people glorified God.  Just when one would say, “This is the bottom of the barrel for sure,” God makes things different….

A caveat, here:  some of you may be saying, “but I’VE had a child die, too!”  Or maybe you’ve come to your last meal.  Or maybe you’re running for your life in a foreign and alien place.  Where was Elijah when you needed him?  or Jesus??  These lessons have nothing at all to do with rewarding the righteous or comforting the faithful. What they are is an acknowledgement of God’s grief with ours, a reminder that pain has existed across the ages and that the Creator hates it just as much as we do ourselves.

The individuals in these readings were met by God and changed in some way.   How shall we receive the Presence of the Holy when the Bearer of the Flame comes near?

God Bless Us, Every One                 H    B    King