2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14
Learning To See
James Sledge June
26, 2016
A
distinctive feature of Presbyterians is that we ordain not only pastors or
teaching elders, but also ruling elders and deacons. All three take the very
same ordination vows, plus a vow specific to each ministry area. Because they are
ordained or “set apart,” deacons and ruling elders are also required to have
training and to be examined “as to their personal faith; knowledge of the
doctrine, government, and discipline contained in the Constitution of the
church; and the duties of the ministry.”[1]
As
part of this training, elders and deacons here at FCPC utilize an online video
series that includes a helpful study guide. We also ask them to write a
personal faith statement, and one of those study guides provides helps for this.
It lists a number of faith topics and then asks people to complete “I believe…” statements about each
one. People jot down thoughts on what they believe about God, sin, Church,
humanity, scripture, and so on, the sort of things you might expect someone to
include in a personal faith statement or creed. But one of the belief topics initially
struck me as a bit odd: “End times.”
End
times. This in the study guide of a very Presbyterian, academically oriented,
video. At first I planned to skim the topic in training. I was never asked about
end times when I was going through the ordination process for pastor. Surely
this was something of a fringe topic.
But the more I thought about it, the
more I realized how important the topic actually is. If Church leaders do not
have a picture of what God is up to in the world, of the future that God will
bring, how can we show the world the hope of God’s new day? When Martin Luther
King said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward
justice,” he could do so because he had a clear sense of God’s purposes, of where
history is ultimately headed.
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I
wonder if being able to see God’s purposes and ends isn’t a part of today’s
story about Elijah, Elisha, fiery horses, and chariot. I’m thinking of the part
where Elisha asks Elijah to inherit a “double share” of his spirit. That
request may not be what you think. A “double share” was the inheritance
typically given the eldest son who would carry on the family lineage. Elisha is
asking that he be successor, the one to continue Elijah’s ministry.
Elijah
gives a strange answer to this request. It depends. It depends on whether or
not Elisha has learned how to see things that are not earthly but heavenly. It
depends on Elisha knowing how to see beyond the sphere of human activity and glimpse
the work of the divine.
Elijah
looms large in Israel’s story. In our passage, we see allusions to Moses in the
parting of the waters so that they ford the river “on dry ground.” Previously
Elijah had been to Mt. Sinai and had a Moses-like encounter with God. Elijah
has served God at a critical time in Israel, but who will continue his
important work? Who will speak for God in a time when Israel’s kings had turned
away from God?
God
previously commanded Elijah to call Elisha as his successor, and presumably
Elijah has been mentoring Elisha, teaching him to see, ever since. But he never
tells Elisha he is the successor, and in our reading, he still sounds uncertain
about Elisha’s ability to see. “If you see…” he says to Elisha. If
you see...
Jesus
says something similar to those who will succeed him, but he says “When,” not “If.”
After the resurrection, just before he ascends to heaven, Jesus says to his
followers, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you;
and you will be my witnesses…” The disciples will continue Jesus’
ministry when divine presence dwells in them.
I think both Elijah and Jesus speak to
the necessity of an indwelling spiritual presence for those engaged in
ministry, whether prophetic ministry or our shared ministry as the Church,
Christ’s body in the world. And Jesus makes clear that this spiritual presence,
this capacity to glimpse the divine, is not about special abilities or
credentials. It is a gift given to us so that we can be witnesses, so that we
can be Christ’s body, so that we can see what God is up to.
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Speaking
of being Christ’s body, when the Session first received the results of the
Congregational Assessment Tool or CAT that many of you took, the report
included a list of so-called “Performance” items such as hospitality, morale,
conflict management, worship and music, and governance. Our hospitality score
was a bit low, but the rest of the scores were reasonably good, with one
exception. Our score on “spiritual vitality” was remarkably low.
When
I looked at the raw data behind the score, it was clear that there are many
deeply spiritual people in our congregation. The score is not an absolute one.
Rather it indicates that our percentage of those for whom spirituality and
faith are a central part of their lives is lower than in most churches.
Some
of this may come from our church’s personality type, another item from the CAT
report. We’re described as a culture “ultimately concerned with the rational
integrity of their faith, the just application of faith to life, and the
journey of understanding.” At our best, says the report, we “exhibit deep
knowledge, open discourse, and intellectual curiosity,” and can be “a powerful
ally for those in need of advocacy.” All
wonderful things, gifts that can be a great strength of congregations such as
ours.
But
all gifts have a shadow side, and ours is a tendency to overvalue rational
thinking and reason, which means we often undervalue the non-rational such as
emotion and mystery, a description that fits me personally as well.
If
you’re at all like me, you may have discovered that along with the gifts of
such personality traits come blind spots. We may not read emotions well, may
misread what others feel or think and misread how they see us. At times we may struggle
with relationships. We may even have trouble with the whole faith thing. Faith,
after all, is not entirely rational.
Faith
is about saying “Yes” to something we haven’t yet figured out, trusting
something we don’t really “know” in a logical sense, believing something we
can’t quite see. In some sense both faith and true conversion are about
discovering a different way of knowing, a new way of seeing. Rational thinking
can be a great ally of such things once they are seen and known, but it will
never see them or know them by itself.
I
think that is why Jesus says we have to deny our self and the Apostle Paul says
the old self must die. We cannot discover our new self in Christ, our true
self, without letting go of certainties, ego, and identity. We cannot trust the
way of Jesus, the way of the cross, otherwise. We cannot glimpse heavenly
things simply with our minds. Fortunately, God gifts us with the Spirit, if we
will let her guide us.
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Recently
I’ve been rereading one of my favorite little books, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer, by Richard
Rohr. In a chapter entitled “Vision of Enchantment” he says, “All religious
teachers have recognized that we human beings do not naturally see; we have to
be taught how to see.”[2] The
chapter concludes with this.
Finally,
Jesus says we have to love and recognize the divine image even in our enemies.
He teaches what many thought a leader could never demand of his followers: love
of the enemy. Logically that makes no sense. But soulfully it makes absolute
sense, because in terms of the soul, it really is all or nothing. Either we see the divine image in all
created things, or we don’t see it at all. Once we see it, we’re trapped.
We see it once and the circle keeps moving out. If we still try to exclude some
(sick people, blacks, people on welfare, gays, or whomever we’ve decided to
hate), we’re not there. We don’t yet understand. If the world is a temple, then
our enemies are sacred, too. The ability to respect the outsider is probably
the litmus test of true seeing. It doesn’t even stop with human beings and
enemies and the least of the brothers and sisters. It moves to frogs and
pansies and weeds. Everything becomes
enchanting with true sight. One God, one world, one truth, one suffering, and
one love. All we can do is participate. [3]
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