Passing the mantle of ministry. Our reading from 2 Kings tells the story of how
the prophet Elijah passed his prophetic ministry on to his understudy Elisha symbolized
by his mantle or cloak. It is a touching
story of Elisha’s loyalty to Elijah.
Elijah knows he’s going to be taken away and apparently doesn’t want to
go through a painful goodbye. So, he
tries to slip away but Elisha won’t let him.
“As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you,”
Elisha repeats.
Then, when it’s time for Elijah to be taken up he
asks if there is anything he can do for Elisha and Elisha says, “I want a
double portion of your spirit.” The
Hebrew word for spirit is also the word for breath. So, I am inclined here to say that Elisha is
asking for a double portion of Elijah’s breath, meaning the Spirit of the LORD
breath of the prophet by which he (or she) speaks the Word of the LORD. Elisha is realizing his own inadequacy to take
over for the great Elijah. He’s probably
thinking, “I’m not half the man of God Elijah is so I need a double portion of
the breath that the Lord has filled him with so I can speak his words.”
Well, after Elisha watches Elijah taken up in a
whirlwind to the fiery chariot he finds Elijah’s mantle on the ground. He takes it up and starts to walk. He comes to the Jordon and yells out, “Where
is the LORD, the God of Elijah,” and then strikes the water with the mantle. The river parts just as it had with Elijah
and the school of prophets declare, “The breathe of Elijah rests on Elisha.”
Well, if you go back into 1 Kings and read the
miracles that Elijah did, you see that Elisha goes forth and does a lot of the
same. Elijah’s breath of the LORD
ministry symbolized by the mantle was indeed passed on to Elisha. The LORD, the God of Elijah continued to
speak through and minister through Elisha just as he had spoken and ministered
through Elijah.
This story is where we get the phrases “passing the
mantle” and “taking up the mantle”.
Sometimes, we hear in the news how a sports team gets a new coach. If that new coach was an assistant of a well
loved and successful, the sport casters will say, “Coach Smith has passed the
mantle on to Coach Taylor” in the hopes that the same track record and all will
continue. Or, if the new coach had
nothing to do with the old coach, but continues on the success of the team they
say “Coach Taylor has taken up the mantle of Coach Smith.”
To pull this over to the church, I think we like to look
at changes of ministers this way as well.
If an associate minister steps into the place of a lead minister and
continues on doing the same stuff the former lead did and the church continues
on just like it always has, then its Rev. Bob has passed the mantle on to Rev.
Earl. Or, if Rev. Earl is new to the
scene yet comes and continues all the stuff that Rev. Bob was doing, we say
that Rev. Earl has taken up the mantle of Rev. Bob. The mantle symbolizes the relationship
that Rev. Bob had with the congregation and the ministries they did together.
Unfortunately, what is so often the case after a
well-loved, long-term minister has moved on is that Rev. Earl comes on to the
scene with a new mantle, the mantle of what Jesus has called him to be and do
in that congregation. Yet, when Rev.
Earl tries to part the Jordon to move forward into a new day of the new
ministry of what Jesus is calling them to be and do, the people don’t follow
because Rev. Earl isn’t wearing the mantle of Rev. Bob’s ministry and never
could wear it because it belongs to Rev. Bob.
Then, Rev. Earl, wearing the mantle of the ministry of the call of Jesus
Christ, like his Lord gets scapegoated and attacked until he leaves town. Then, the congregation continues to search
for someone who will wear the beloved mantle of Rev. Bob but it’s not really the
mantle of the Rev. Bob that they are waving around. It is really the idol known as “the good ole
days.”
Let me tell you about the mantle of the ministry of
Jesus Christ because that’s the mantle that every church is called to take up
and wear. In Luke’s Gospel, the way he
tells the story of Jesus, there are two chapters of Jesus getting born stories:
Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist in the Jordan, and Jesus being led by the
Holy Spirit into the wilderness were Satan tempts him. After these events, there is a very brief
note that goes, “Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to
Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding
country. He began to teach in their
synagogues and was praised by everyone.”
Well Jesus comes to his hometown of Nazareth and it
looks like he is going to do all those wonderful things there that got him such
a good report in the rest of Galilee.
But what does Jesus do? He divests
himself of the “mantle of Jesus, the teacher praised by everyone” – the Rev.
Bob mantle – and instead proclaims that he is going to do works akin to Elijah
and Elisha and it would be things that the people of Israel aren’t going to
like too much because they don’t fit the bill of the Rev. Bob mantle that they
are expecting.
Like Elijah and Elisha Jesus wears the Breath-of-the-Lord
Mantle. Just as in Hebrew the word for
Spirit can mean breath so it is Greek too.
Jesus quotes Isaiah and says, “The Breath of the LORD is upon me, and
here’s my evidence and purpose. He has
anointed me to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release of the captives and recovery of sight
to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s
favour.” If Jesus does these things and
they happen, well then, he’s the One – the Suffering Servant that Isaiah foretold
who would come to deliver his people only to be rejected and killed by them,
stricken for their sins and bruised for their iniquities.
What it looks like here is that the mantle of Jesus’
ministry isn’t just good words that make everybody feel good that awakens a
feeling of nostalgia in them for the good ole days. It is real mission that is good news to the
poor and not necessarily good for those fairly well off folks there in Nazareth. Political prisoners are going to be set
free. How many Jews, such as John the
Baptist had been imprisoned by powerful Jews who were trying to guard their
influence in Israel. Nazareth had its
share of religious and political authorities trying to keep their power. Miracles were going to happen by which even
the blind will see. Those who had become
disillusioned in Israel will get their faith back. The oppressed will go free. There were many Jews in Israel put into
slavery by other Jews who unscrupulously took their lands and homes because
they had the power to do so either by Roman grant or that’s just the way they
rolled. The year of the Lord’s favour
that Jesus’ references here is something known as the year of Jubilee. Every fiftieth year all lands in Israel were
to be returned to the ancestral holdings, Israelite slaves set free, and wealth
and the means to wealth redistributed equally and justly among the people. If you were well off in Nazareth, then this
was likely bad news to you. Donald Trump
would not have liked what Jesus came to do.
For us, Jesus has passed the mantle of his mission
and ministry on to us. It is the
outpouring of the Holy Spirit at the Day of Pentecost that continues to
today. His breath is in us. The Spirit of the LORD is upon us. The Breath of God is upon us. He has anointed us to be and bring good news
to the poor, the captive, the blind the oppressed. The Holy Spirit creates small communities all
over the world that are locally in mission going about the work of helping
people understand they are loved and reconciled to God, communities in which
there is real Breath of God healing power that transforms people from the
brokenness of sin to wellness in Christ.
Mission is the key word here. The theologian Emil Brunner once wrote, “The
Church exists by mission, just as fire exists by burning. Where there is no mission there is no
Church…”. The Church exists by
mission…where there is no mission, there is no church. That is a very scary thing to have to say to congregations
that are struggling for their very existence and nearly all their efforts are
going into just surviving. We need to
put aside the mantle of the good ole days and our idea that church is only
church if it is like the good ole days, and get down to real mission and ministry. What are the real needs of the people around
us? There are economic problems, there
are substance abuse problems, there are broken family problems. There are loneliness problems, health
problems. And you know what, all of us
have been there or somewhere similar and…the LORD has been with us and faithful
to us. We have some news that is really
good news. We’ve a story to tell the
nations and it’s the story of how Jesus has loved, been faithful to and changed
even me. The message that we have is not
clean yourself up so Jesus will accept you and make things go better for
you. Our message is “Jesus has come to
our town, come just as you are and meet him.
He will change you and never leave you.”
Amen.
