ELIJAH WAS A HUMAN BEING LIKE US

‘you bear the name of Christ’

One familiar theme in many great stories throughout literary history is that of the impossibility of loving, or even giving credibility to, someone who does not belong to your group.

At one extreme, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, particularly in the most recent film version, or its modern interpretation as a musical, West Side Story, are good examples.

Problems often arise when people look beyond their immediate circle of family and friends towards those who do not seem to fit in. By contrast, in the idyllic setting of Wind in the Willows, Mr. Toad is the one who does not really fit in at all, with his pompous, worldly manners and instant obsessions, even if his first sighting of a motor car does prompt something akin to a religious conversion. ‘All those wasted years that lie behind me, I never knew, never even dreamt! But now – but now that I know, now that I fully realise!’

BEST INTENTIONS

Our best intentions, yours and mine, of trying, in good faith, to reach out beyond the confines of our little circle may be based on ideas of tolerance and a broad experience of life. But to reach out effectively, to scale the barriers we ourselves have erected to protect our group, our family, demands a certain boldness and some courage if we are to step outside the accepted norms of society. It can, of course, take a grand passion, like that of Romeo and Juliet, or the sheer idiocy of a Toad, or, indeed, a great faith, like that of an Elijah, to impel us into such risky behaviour. But this, of course, can provoke such fear and anxiety in those around us that the likely outcome ranges from exclusion from the group, to violence and even death.

Conventional wisdom tells us to stick to our own, tells us not to rock the boat – which is precisely what Rat and Mole tell Toad.

By contrast, Jesus did rock the boat. He and his disciples, and all the saints since, were deemed foolhardy; they trusted in God, were outgoing and anything but conventional. The fact that others healed in the same way and cast out devils as Jesus and the disciples did was neither here nor there. If they acted in good faith and in the power of God, all to the good; for Jesus, only the rule of love mattered, the love of God the Father. Jesus was not concerned with conventional wisdom, or the niceties of accepted norms of behaviour. What did matter to him, and still does, is that the will of God is done and seen to be done.

NO MONOPOLY ON GODLY GIFTS

In line with today’s Gospel, there is no question of individuals or groups within the church of God exercising a monopoly on certain gifts. Here, Jesus rebukes the disciples for their exclusive attitude. As the passage from Numbers illustrates, not only those who were formally commissioned as prophets were found to be prophesying. Jesus’ response mirrors that of Moses and it relates to an issue of basic discipleship:

‘Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets and that the Lord would put his Spirit upon them!’

To our conventional and narrow way of thinking, the prospect of us all being prophets is rather surreal but in many ways we are, or at least can be. In some countries, merely to be in church, worshipping, on a Sunday would be prophetic, prophetic of the coming of God’s kingdom on earth. It would be making a statement, a potentially subversive statement.

And for us? It begs the question, how do we view our discipleship? Do we think we are disciples at all? Are we tempted to believe that we belong to some privileged ‘in-group’? What should we be doing; how should we be living? – remembering that we bear the name of Christ.

Puzzling though it must have been for the disciples, and perhaps puzzling for us now, what informs Jesus’ teaching in Mark’s Gospel is the assertion that he must go up to Jerusalem, where ‘the Son of Man will be delivered into the hands of men.’

CALLED TO BE PROPHETS

Jesus, it would seem, will not be in total control – the Jesus who stilled the storm and raised the dead - and that is what the disciples find hard to accept. For them, the structures of their world, the world of Herod and Caesar, are the pattern of what the rule of God should be. Our mindset is not far from that of the disciples; we are schooled and confined by the standards of our world – a culture that is self-centred and rights orientated, a culture that still believes might is right – politics and advertising say it all. The lesson is that true disciples are called to be prophets – the Church must stand up and be counted, and articulate an alternative vision of the use of power. And that vision is centred on the person of the Lord himself, Jesus Christ, the Chosen One of God, who offered himself into the hands of those who opposed him.

His way may seem at first sight foolhardy; it certainly flew in the face of the conventional wisdom of both that time and this. Jesus offers a vision of servant-hood, service and suffering. It is a vision of the power of serving one another, the power to break the pattern of dominating one another, the power to give precedence to children and the poor, those who have no status and no control over their lives. But it is a vision, too, that begins and ends with the Cross. Is our vision founded on such a basis? Dare we be as prophetic as we are called to be? Can this be how we reckon ourselves disciples – we who bear the name of Christ?

COMPLACENT?

No doubt there were some in Mark’s congregation, his readership, who were complacent about their faith, about the guts of the Gospel message – and it is not an easy message. Jesus’ vivid and extravagant language, drawing on images of millstones round the neck, hands and feet being cut off and eyes being plucked out, was necessary, perhaps, to shake those who first heard him out of their comfortable and rather static faith.

The kingdom of God is meant for all those who, in the eyes of the world, do not fit in, do not belong. Are we, instead, something of a stumbling-block because of our faith, because of the way we express it? Should we not re-examine our attitudes to those who are clearly and unashamedly different from us? Do we, in fact, proclaim by our lives and words, the love, grace and hope of the Kingdom? Do we have salt in ourselves, as the Gospel says?

We are only likely to do so if we have a right relationship with God in Jesus Christ. We are only like to do so if we know we have been forgiven and cleansed from all that is wrong in our lives, past and present. We are only likely to do so if we know the love of God that surpasses knowledge – the love of God that is better than anything we have ever experienced. But we are all too human. James says in his Letter, ‘Elijah was a human being like us’. Elijah knew the ups and downs of life; he even tried to run away from God, hoping he would be left to die.

PRAYER - THE MAGIC BULLET

But Elijah was a man who prayed, not just when in a tight spot competing with the prophets of Baal, but when he was right up against it in his personal life. James was passionate about prayer, about the power of prayer. His directions to his readers are clear – whatever is wrong must be a matter of prayer - sickness, circumstances, as well as faith for ourselves and others. No wonder he says that the prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective. More that that, it is prayer in the name of Jesus, as Lord, that counts. I personally have found that to be true and have seen the mere naming of Jesus to have a powerful effect on others.
 

If we are to be an effective, worshipful, praising community of faith, then our praying is the key. Paul, in Thessalonians, says,

‘Rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.’

The will of God in Christ Jesus, in his name. The little- known 19th C. Russian mystic, Theophan the Recluse, said,

‘Prayer is the test of everything; if prayer is right, everything is right.’

Our prayer life, our awareness that the Cross of Christ is our focus, is largely the measure of our faith. But we are also challenged to rejoice, to praise the God who has called us, to live prophetic lives and, in prayerful communion with him, desire simply to do his will. We can all be Elijahs.

The Venerable Philip Jones,

Archdeacon of Lewes & Hastings

Picture Credits on this page:
Andrew Chandler