Sunday, Feb. 26 - Transfiguration Sunday
February 26, 2006 -
It was his first Sunday as the new pastor. The eager young successor to a beloved long-term pastor went to the main entrance of the sanctuary and greeted people atop the front steps as they entered the sanctuary for worship. Seeing an elderly woman climbing the stairs with some difficulty, he quickly went down to help her make her way up. She took his arm, and they slowly made the climb together. When they finally reached the top of the stairs, the old woman collected her breath, straightened up, and adjusted the tilt in her hat with her white-gloved hands. Thank you, she said. Now, could you tell me who’s preaching here this morning? The new pastor told her the name of the new pastor without revealing that he was the new pastor. Whereupon the elderly lady turned round nimbly and said, Well, then, could you please help me back down the stairs?
What I didn’t tell you is that the church was Wilshire. And the young pastor none other than … Willsie Martin. Oh, yes, and the church was actually Wilshire United Methodist in Los Angeles, California. Got you! [Homiletics (Feb.2006):71.]
But I know a little how the good Reverend Martin felt that day. Since nearly 17 years have passed since my first days at this Wilshire church (and since most of the elderly ladies of those early days have climbed up the stairway to heaven, don’t you know?!), I can tell you that I had some interesting experiences in trying to follow the beloved long-tenured pastor, Bruce McIver. Some didn’t give me much more of a chance than the California woman. Most didn’t tell me directly, but word gets back. He’s not my kind, one would say. He doesn’t tell enough stories, another opined. Most didn’t come right out and say, He’s a Yankee, but the implication was there when they spoke of my being too direct or assertive. I got a letter from one man who left in the first few weeks, telling me he just didn’t like my style. I don’t think he meant the cut of my suits, do you? One woman took 12 years to transfer her loyalties. In the receiving line after Bruce’s memorial service, she looked at me and said, Now you can be my pastor!
Well, you can probably tell from the tone of my voice that I don’t harbor any resentment toward anyone about any of that. The fact is, I had one of the easiest goes of it anyone could have when following such a warm and loving man as Bruce McIver. The transfer of power, so to speak, went without a hitch between us. It was the people that had a harder time of it.
And these are the same dynamics at play in our text today from 2 Kings. The prophet Elijah was a proven man of God. He led a company of prophets for some years during a time when such spiritual leadership was crucial for Israel, because it didn’t come from the White House. Kings like Ahab, who was married to the Phoenician queen Jezebel and introduced Baal worship to Israel, were threatening the integrity of Israel’s faith in the one true God. Elijah led Israel to walk with God in the same way Moses once had. But now, after a successful and dependable tenure of service, Elijah knew that his time had come to depart this life.
Earlier in his ministry Elijah had been passing a field and saw Elisha working his plow with a team of twelve oxen. He tossed his mantle upon him, symbolic of a call to join him in his work. Elisha left everything to follow in the steps of the great man and train to be a prophet. Elijah tried to stop him, telling him to turn back, just as he does over and over in our text today at the end of his life. Elisha will have none of it. He slaughters his oxen, using the plowshare as a sword, and throws a going-away feast for his friends and family. He never looks back once he gets his call. And he doesn’t look back or turn back at the end of Elijah’s life, either, even though he wonders whether he will be up to the task of succeeding the great man.
After Elijah parts the waters with his mantle rolled up like Moses’ rod and they go to the other side together, Elisha asks for a double portion of Elijah’s spirit. This doesn’t mean he wants to be twice as powerful as his mentor; it means he wants to be Elijah’s principal heir, inheriting the two-thirds share of his father’s wealth that would go to a firstborn son. He is asking for a spiritual inheritance. He wants to be a worthy successor to Elijah.
Elijah does something important and curious. He points away from himself to God. He tells Elisha that he has asked a difficult thing, which is to say that he has asked something that is not in the power of one man to give to another. If Elisha is to be God’s man to follow him, the gift and call will have to come from God. He will have to experience God for himself and carry on in the power of God’s spirit.
After Elisha sees his mentor taken up to heaven in the chariot of fire, he uses the mantle to part the same Jordan River and cross back over to where the company of prophets awaits. They see that he has performed the same wonder of the waters that Elijah had, in the same way Joshua had done after succeeding Moses. They could sense that he was indeed called to lead them. But even after that, oddly enough, the verses that follow our text say that the prophets went looking for Elijah. He had gone up to heaven, but they had a hard time letting go of him. It took time for them to transfer their loyalties.
Now, there are so many things to learn from this wonderful narrative. Transfer of power from one generation to another is no easy matter. It depends on all the parties involved working together.
A secular if not spiritual miracle over the past 200 and a quarter years of human history has happened every four to eight years in the American experiment that is our democratic republic. When you look at how difficult it is to see a peaceful transfer of power in Iraq today, consider how remarkable it is that every time a new president is elected—even when that president comes from the opposition party, and even if the vote is highly contested, as it was in the Bush-Gore election of 2000—a commitment to our system of governance and a determination to preserve the principles of democracy allow us to move on without violence.
Family businesses have succession problems, too. A father, say, builds a good company, and then a son comes along, and everyone hopes he will up to the job of taking over for the next generation. But just having the same last name does not mean it will work out. Even if he gets a double portion of the inheritance, he has to have his own experience that matches the father’s commitment; he has to work hard and use good sense himself if one expects him to succeed.
One of the reasons we have an estate tax in this country is that we have said we want to avoid the inertia that comes from primogeniture. The old gentry system of Europe, for instance, where wealth is inherited and the kids feel entitled to it without doing anything themselves for it, works against the American spirit. Our idea of opportunity for each new generation to do something for itself builds responsibility. People should be rewarded for their own labor, not just live off someone else’s.
Iraq is on the brink of civil war today. What are the roots of this? You can say that our intervention is the cause, but that would be too shallow an analysis. Sunni and Shi’a Muslims have been fighting each other for the upper hand in Muslim identity for centuries. This goes all the way back to the 7th-century argument over who was to succeed the Prophet Muhammad as leader of Islam. Sunni Muslims, who constitute 90 percent of Islam worldwide, believe that Muhammad’s lieutenant and father-in-law, Abu Bakr, was the legitimate successor, because he was chosen by the community of elders in the culturally customary way after the prophet’s death. The Shi’a, however, believe that the prophet had specifically anointed his son-in-law, Ali, as the worthiest successor, and that Abu Bakr had obtained the office through trickery and political deceit. The animosity between these groups therefore has a long history, one that shakes up others in its tragic wake.
These days some of us are working with diligence to call and nurture the next generation of church leaders who will follow us. While we cannot and should not appoint our successors, we can and should look for those women and men of good gifts and graces to answer this call to serve the church with all their hearts and souls.
For our part, ministers must do as Elijah did and cast our mantle freely upon others who seem spiritually fit for the work. We must not withhold our blessing or think only about our own legacy. I can tell you that at this stage of my life, I am far more interested in what happens in and through the ministries of our residents as they leave this place than I am about myself. I am going to die one day, like all the rest of us. I am not counting on anything like a sweet chariot to swing low and carry me away. But I am counting on many young ministers to take up the work and do wonderful things much greater than I ever could. That will be one of the finest measurements of our success as a church—whether we can pass the mantle successfully to the next generation.
And it’s okay for someone to want this as much as Elisha wanted to follow Elijah, even if he is confused about where the prophetic power truly comes from. Some people say that if you want to be a minister, if you seek ordination, you must not be truly called. But don’t tell Elisha that. Elijah kept telling him to turn back, but Elisha understood that he did not have a choice deep in his soul. Taking up this work was something he could not not do. He only knew that he needed greater power than his own to do it.
Our job is to bless those who come after us. Ministers must not withhold our blessing from those who would be our younger colleagues. Parents must not compete with their children for supremacy of significance in the family. Parents do well to remember that they will die, and they should want every one of their children to live as if each is specially favored with a double portion of spiritual inheritance. If you favor one of your children over another, shame on you. They will carry their competition with one another way beyond your lifetime, to the detriment of your family legacy.
But at the end of the day, this transfer-of-power work must come from below, so to speak. The community must accept the leadership of one coming along after another. They cannot hold on forever to the leader who has gone to be with God forever. And the best way to do that at pivotal moments like that is to practice now.
Your acceptance of our young ministers and the encouragement you give them now is indispensable to their future leadership of the church. Any time you praise a teenager or spot a child with spiritual gifts and say a word to her or him, you transfer power more than you know.
God is at work in the world and in our lives in ways that defy mundane description. Mantles given and taken, chariots of fire that make thin the visible and invisible worlds, and miracles of water parting and people sensing God in one another: these are all examples of a mystifying holiness and holy mystery. If you are not caught up in it all yet, you are missing in action, and what’s more, you are missing the action. Isn’t it time to join in?
under the chosen Sunday to hear audio of sermon (mp3 format) (beginning March 11, 2007).
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