Now when the Lord was about to take Elijah up to heaven by a whirlwind, Elijah and Elisha were on their way from Gilgal. Elijah said to Elisha, ‘Stay here; for the Lord has sent me as far as Bethel.’ But Elisha said, ‘As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.’ So they went down to Bethel. The company of prophets who were in Bethel came out to Elisha, and said to him, ‘Do you know that today the Lord will take your master away from you?’ And he said, ‘Yes, I know; keep silent.’
Elijah said to him, ‘Elisha, stay here; for the Lord has sent me to Jericho.’ But he said, ‘As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.’ So they came to Jericho. The company of prophets who were at Jericho drew near to Elisha, and said to him, ‘Do you know that today the Lord will take your master away from you?’ And he answered, ‘Yes, I know; be silent.’
Then Elijah said to him, ‘Stay here; for the Lord has sent me to the Jordan.’ But he said, ‘As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.’ So the two of them went on. Fifty men of the company of prophets also went, and stood at some distance from them, as they both were standing by the Jordan. Then Elijah took his mantle and rolled it up, and struck the water; the water was parted to the one side and to the other, until the two of them crossed on dry ground.
When they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, ‘Tell me what I may do for you, before I am taken from you.’ Elisha said, ‘Please let me inherit a double share of your spirit.’ He responded, ‘You have asked a hard thing; yet, if you see me as I am being taken from you, it will be granted you; if not, it will not.’ As they continued walking and talking, a chariot of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them, and Elijah ascended in a whirlwind into heaven. Elisha kept watching and crying out, ‘Father, father! The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!’ But when he could no longer see him, he grasped his own clothes and tore them in two pieces.
He picked up the mantle of Elijah that had fallen from him, and went back and stood on the bank of the Jordan. He took the mantle of Elijah that had fallen from him, and struck the water, saying, ‘Where is the Lord, the God of Elijah?’ When he had struck the water, the water was parted to the one side and to the other, and Elisha went over.
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How many of you have ever spent
much time studying the life of Elijah before we did this sermon series on him?
How many of you knew he had raised
someone from the dead?
Knew that he had miraculously fed a
widow and her household?
Knew that he had dueled with 450
prophets of Baal?
Knew about the chariots of fire?
Elijah’s life is pretty extraordinary,
and it ends in a spectacular way. This
is another one of these grand images of the Bible, one that is probably more
famous than most. Elijah is walking
along and chariots of fire, led by horses of fire, descend and scoop Elijah up,
taking him up to heaven. Elisha is left
behind to watch all of this unfold. In
the section just following this, some other prophets believe that Elijah has
been transported somewhere else and want to go look for them. Elisha can’t put into words what he has seen,
so he finally tells them to go and look, even though he knows it is a waste of
their time. He doesn’t act surprised
when they return without having found him.
So Elijah’s life has this
incredible capstone, a dramatic moment to conclude his life and ministry.
We’d all agree that Elijah lived an
incredible life, right?
We’d all agree that he was
completely and entirely faithful to God, right?
We’d agree that he’s one of the
best images of what a faithful disciple should look like, right?
So we’re all in agreement that
Elijah lived as near a perfect, faithful life as anyone on this earth can,
right? I don’t see a record of sin in
his life. I’m sure he had sin, but there
doesn’t seem to be much. We could all
trump Elijah in this category.
So notice, then, what happens at
the end of his life. First of all,
Elijah cannot write the end of his own story.
Only God can complete our lives.
Only God can bring us through the shadow of death and into the eternal
realm of heaven. Even Elijah could not
do that on his own. God does it with
chariots of fire for some, and he uses more ordinary means for many, but for
all who believe, God saves. But only God
can save—we cannot.
Secondly, pay attention to the
mantle. This is Elijah’s cloak, the same
cloak he threw over Elisha when he called him into ministry, the same mantle
with which he covered his face when he stood on the mountain before God. The mantle has no magical powers, and isn’t
the source of anything, but it’s symbolic.
When Elijah dies, the mantle passes from Elijah to Elisha, and the work
of God in the world continues.
It’s tempting to look at some of
the characters in the Bible and wonder, at the time, how the story ever would
have moved along without them. Once
Moses left, how would the Israelites get along?
Or Abraham, or David? Elijah, too—he
is such a giant at the time, but yet we see here that God’s work in the world
moves right along—Elisha picks up where Elijah left off, dividing the river and
going through on dry ground.
There is an old saying that the
graveyards are full of men who thought the world could not go on without
them. As Christians, it’s wise for us to
consider the same—this story we are living, the novel in which we play a role,
is not our story. It’s not about
us. The story is God’s story, and God is
the central character. None of us are indispensable
to the plot, but each of us is precious, valuable in God’s eyes. But it is God who invites us in, and it is
God who gives us the chance to participate.
I want to invite you to think about
puzzles. How many of you have ever done
a puzzle? How many of you have ever had
one of those puzzles that you could not complete?
I have one, and it’s my favorite
puzzle. It’s a 3,000 piece puzzle that
was a gift to me many years ago. It’s of
St. Mark’s Square in Venice, and I’ve attempted it a number of times. I can do the first 2,000 pieces alright, but
I get to the last thousand and realize that it’s all sky and that every single
piece looks the same. Every time, I
promise that I’ll take it slowly, going piece by piece, and that if I am
patient enough I will eventually finish it.
Every time, I make it about twenty minutes before giving up and taking
the puzzle apart, realizing that this is an impossible process.
I want us to think about our life
of Christian witness in the same vein.
You have a role to play. God
graciously invites us in, gives us a part to play. Think about it this way—God gives us a bunch
of pieces to the puzzle. What God is
trying to do is build his kingdom on earth, and he gives us some of the pieces
to put together.
Notice that I said some. He doesn’t give us all the pieces. You are not responsible for this whole
puzzle. The weight of the kingdom does
not rest on your shoulders. Just like
Elijah’s life, we cannot finish this work.
Only God can do this. We are
called to do our part, to live faithfully in the situation we have before us,
to use the pieces in our hands. We aren’t
called to look with jealousy at the pieces someone else has. We aren’t called to despise our own
pieces. We’re called to serve God with
what is right in front of us, with what we have, rather than worrying about
everything else.
Some of you may wonder how you can
put the pieces together. Well, I have
good news for you. How do you know what
a puzzle is supposed to look like? We
look at the picture on the box, right?
Well, the Christian life is the same—only Scripture serves as our
picture on the box. We read Scriptures
to know what the Christian life is supposed to look like. Christ shows us what that life is like. Other Biblical characters show us how to
live, and how not to live. By reading
the Bible, we get the picture of the Christian life. Then, and only then, can we turn to the
pieces before us and try to put together our own lives, piecing together our
own part of God’s story.
Now, it can be frustrating to know
that we’re not going to finish the whole thing.
We want to do that. In this country,
we make a bad habit of worshipping individual achievement. We elevate those particular individuals who
seem to have it all together, who pull themselves up to success by hard work. But this puzzle isn’t ours to complete. We need to recognize that it’s not about us—this
is about what God is doing, and God is using the church for this work. We have a part to play, and it’s a small
part, but that’s ok. It’s not our
story. We are called to be grateful that
God invites us to play a role—God doesn’t need us, but it is out of love that
he calls us to live life with him.
Now, we’re not going to put all our
pieces in perfectly. We’re not always
going to make the right decisions. The
puzzle isn’t going to look like a perfect representation of the picture on the
front of the box. Here is where we
remember the gracious love of Christ and his atoning death. In his death on the cross, he atoned for our
sins. In short, he corrected all of the
mistakes we have made and will make in our attempt to put together our part of
the puzzle. His love washes us clean,
covers us with his grace and his glory.
It is this love that completes the puzzle.
At some point we will die. We will be caught up by a chariot of fire and
taken into the halls of heaven, ferried through the shadow of death. And this is ok—it’s part of God’s plan. Someone else will pick up the mantle and
carryon the work. When it’s not about
us, we can realize that our death isn’t the end of God’s work in the
world. God has plans to use all of us,
and this is a work we do together. When
I do puzzles I don’t share well—I tend to get impatient with other people who
may not work as fast as I do. But in the
work of God’s kingdom, we work together, because it’s not just about getting
the puzzle finished. It’s not about how
much I can do compared to someone else.
It’s about what God is doing in and through all of us. It’s not about me. It’s about God.
I want to close with my dream for
the church. Now, I don’t do puzzles very
often because I have a bit of an obsessive personality when it comes to
puzzles. I’m a ‘just one more piece’
kind of guy. What that means is that I’ll
start saying ‘just one more piece’ around 9:30, and I’ll finally go to bed
sometime around 4:00 in the morning. I
can’t go to bed without putting that piece in, and now that piece should be
easy, and then I’ll try that one, and I’m almost done with that part… you get
the picture.
I want each and every one of us to
have that same kind of commitment to ministry.
It’s easy to give up on the puzzle when it gets tough, to go find
something more entertaining. I don’t
know if people still do puzzles—they’re probably too old-fashioned for a lot of
people now. There aren’t many
electronics and flashing lights on puzzles.
We do the same to Christianity we don’t read the Bible or pray because
there are more entertaining things to do.
We don’t serve others because it will involve giving up some of the
things we like to do. We place ourselves
at the center of our own story and, when we do, focusing on others isn’t very
appealing. But when we recognize that it’s
God’s story, to which he has called us to take part, we can set our ego
aside. We can serve others. We can involve ourselves in lives of ministry
with passion, constantly reaching out, not to earn God’s love, but because we’re
so grateful for his love that we can’t stop—‘just one more piece’ in the puzzle
of God’s kingdom, doing whatever we can with all the life we have to proclaim God’s
work of peace, love and justice through the life, death and resurrection of
Jesus Christ.
Let us pray
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