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Scripture: The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 13), A.D. 2016 C

Homily:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

The greatest prophet of the Old Testament was Elijah. Stories abound about the astonishing miracles God wrought through this cantankerous fellow: controlling the weather, multiplying food, raising the dead. He is most famous, however, for calling down fire from heaven upon his opponents, leading certain peoples (notably the Russians) to identify the prophet Elijah as a sort of storm-god, like Zeus or Thor.

For Jews, Elijah was a second Moses; for Christians, a clear precursor to Jesus Christ. But in today’s story, the ministry of Elijah is coming to its end. God instructs him to get his affairs in order, and to appoint a successor to inherit his prophetic spirit. Elijah finds the young man Elisha guiding a dozen yoke of oxen—a bizarrely large number that brings to mind the 12 Tribes of Israel—and Elijah quite literally throws his mantle upon Elisha. Elisha, astounded, immediately recognizes the significance of this and asks only that he be allowed to kiss his parents goodbye.

Elijah quite naturally permits this—honoring thy father and mother is a commandment, after all—and Elisha says farewell to his former life in the most dramatic way possible. He slaughters all twelve of his oxen and breaks apart their equipment, using the wood to boil the meat in a massive feast for all the people of the surrounding area. It is an act both of vast generosity, the oxen being worth a great sum, and a defiant proclamation of new life, akin to quitting your job by burning down the office. Elisha then leaves to follow the elder prophet as both his servant and his heir.

Soon thereafter, Elijah is taken up into heaven, like Moses before him and Christ after him. Elisha goes on to become a great prophet in his own right; in later generations, the bones of Elisha were said to raise the dead. And as for the prophetic spirit he inherited, the spirit of Elijah, we hear of that again centuries later, when it comes to rest upon a man named John the Baptist.

Jumping ahead a few hundred years, our Gospel text intentionally mirrors the story of Elijah’s final days. “When the days drew near for Jesus to be taken up”—taken up like Moses, taken up like Elijah—“He set His face to go to Jerusalem.” On their way to Jerusalem, Jesus and His Apostles pass through Samaria, Elijah’s old stomping grounds, but the Samaritans do not receive Jesus because He has “set His face” toward Jerusalem. And the Samaritans have the sort of bone-deep hatred for Jerusalem that only old family grudges can produce.

Two of the Apostles, James and John, take umbrage at this lack of hospitality shown toward God’s Messiah. “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” they eagerly ask. James and John want to call in an airstrike. Jesus, however, rebukes them. They have zeal, clearly, but lack their Master’s mercy. Little wonder that He calls them “sons of thunder”, for they are so very much like Elijah.

Next they encounter a host of would-be disciples going along the road to Jerusalem. One says to Jesus, “I will follow you wherever you go!” But Jesus replies, “Even foxes and birds have homes, but I have no place to lay My head.” To another He invites, “Follow Me,” but this fellow says, “Lord, let me first wait until I bury my father.” To this Jesus retorts, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but as for you, go and proclaim the Kingdom of God.” Yet another traveler, quoting Elisha almost verbatim, says, “Lord, I will follow You, but first let me say farewell to those at my home.” To this Jesus replies, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the Kingdom of God.”

What to make of these cryptic statements? Why does Jesus keep finding reasons to send people away? Some say that by doing so, Jesus stresses the importance and primacy of God’s Kingdom, how we ought to drop everything else to follow Him, not even bidding mother and father goodbye as Elijah permitted Elisha to do. Others surmise that these interlocutors were never serious about following Jesus at all, that they were just making up excuses and Jesus would brook no deception.

But the parallels between the Old Testament and the Gospel story are important. Jesus knows that the days draw near for Him to be taken up. Like Elijah, He is coming to the end of His earthly ministry; like Elijah, He will soon be raised up to the heavens; and like Elijah, He too will leave His Spirit to His successors. Yet unlike Elijah, who rode to Heaven amidst chariots of fire, Jesus will be “taken up” upon the Cross, lifted high for all the world to see. And He knows that His Apostles will betray and abandon Him. And He knows that they will suffer for their obedience to Him. And so He pushes these neophytes away from Jerusalem, away from the Cross. The Apostles have been vetted, but these fellows on the road know not what they ask.

Yet even in doing so, even in dissuading them from following Him into Jerusalem, Jesus says, “As for you, go. Go and proclaim the Kingdom of God. Don’t come with Me to Jerusalem—I have My Apostles for that—but go home and serve Me there. Serve Me where you are. Proclaim the Kingdom to all those around you.” The reign of Jesus Christ is not limited to one city, one temple, one throne. Christ is King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the Savior and Redeemer and Ruler of all Creation.

Our Psalm this morning is sung by a Levite. Now, all the 12 Tribes of Israel were given tracts of land to call their own, but not the Levites. The Levites had no land, no portion; their portion was the Lord. They were wanderers, sojourners, still in the desert, so to speak. Yet “I have a goodly heritage,” sings the Levite. I have no land, but wherever You are, Lord, “in Your presence there is fullness of joy.” It’s not about one place, one people, one portion. It’s about proclaiming the Kingdom wherever you are, wherever God calls you to go.

This is admittedly a very Lutheran interpretation. The Lutheran Reformation is all about proclaiming God’s Kingdom where you are. Some think that Luther was a monk who did away with monasteries, but that’s not it at all; Luther was a monk who wanted every Christian home to be its own monastery. There are no second-class Christians; it’s not as though monks and friars, priests and bishops, answer a higher calling. A Christian teacher serves God by being a good and faithful teacher. A Christian soldier serves God by being a good and faithful soldier. A Christian father serves God by being a good and faithful father.

Luther wanted every husband and wife to understand themselves as the bishop and bishoppess of their household, whose primary calling in life is to be a good spouse, a good parent, a good neighbor. Because that’s where we find Christ—not in distant Jerusalem, but right here, at home, with the kids who drive us crazy and the in-laws whom we humor and the neighbors who confound us and the husbands and wives whom we love so much that they drive us to the very limits of endurance.

Here is Christ, in normal life, in everyday life. Not in grand gestures of slaughtering oxen and burning the yoke, but in small acts of kindness and love, in dealing honestly in the marketplace, offering food to the hungry, changing diapers in humble faith. The Kingdom of God is not “over there”, in Jerusalem, in the Holy Land. The Kingdom of God is not limited to certain people, to bishops and deacons and priests. You are called to serve God’s Kingdom in your own household, amongst your own family, because that’s where faith thrives—in the home, not just in the sanctuary; all week long, not only on Sundays.

You are the Church! You are the Kingdom! You are the inheritors of Jesus Christ and of His own Holy Spirit! So if you make shoes, make shoes faithfully and well. If you care for elderly parents, care for them faithfully and well. And if you raise children, for the love of God, raise them faithfully and well. Pray with them. Read the Bible with them. Wrestle God with them. Because 50 years from now, your kids will not remember what their pastor preached on any given Sunday. But they will remember the prayers their father taught them, the hymns their mother sang, and the faith their parents shared with them within a loving home.

So go. Go and proclaim the Kingdom of God. For the Kingdom lives in you.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.