So he set out from there, and found Elisha son of Shaphat, who was ploughing. There were twelve yoke of oxen ahead of him, and he was with the twelfth. Elijah passed by him and threw his mantle over him. He left the oxen, ran after Elijah, and said, ‘Let me kiss my father and my mother, and then I will follow you.’ Then Elijah said to him, ‘Go back again; for what have I done to you?’ He returned from following him, took the yoke of oxen, and slaughtered them; using the equipment from the oxen, he boiled their flesh, and gave it to the people, and they ate. Then he set out and followed Elijah, and became his servant.
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I was going to
begin this sermon with an illustration from one of my favorite
movies, The Hunt for Red October.
But no one has seen it. I tried to make Rachel watch it, and she
fell asleep halfway through. So we're going to reach a little
farther back in history...
When
the Spaniards
were invading Mexico, they had a leader named Hernan Cortes. He was
a leader who made some enemies, and some of the men in his expedition
decided to overthrow him, probably to claim riches for themselves.
When Cortes learned about their plans to take over the expedition and
sail back to Cuba, he had all of his ships taken out to sea and sunk.
This demonstrative action destroyed any path backward—the only way
the expedition could go was forwards. It was decisive and complete,
and there would be no looking back.
It's
tempting to look back. It's an easy thing to do—we can spend our
entire lives looking over our shoulders, wondering what might have
been or what could have happened. We can invest all of our energy
into reliving previous experiences. Of course, if we do so, we miss
out on most of what life offers today. Looking back has a real cost
to it.
Now,
there is some benefit in looking back. Obviously, we're preaching
out of a book written almost 2,000 years ago, telling a story of an
event that happened well before that. We value our history—but we
don't live in history. We let our history inform and guide us in the
present, but as the faithful people of God, we're called to discern
what God is doing in the world and in our lives today. God is on the
move, and he wants us to be a part of it.
So
we can't spend all of our energy looking back. We'll miss the doors
God is calling us to walk through today.
Cortes
was aware of the danger of looking back. He knew that if he
destroyed his ships, the decisive action would force his troops to
look forward. There would be no going back.
In
today's story, the prophet Elijah is told by God to call Elisha as
his servant, that Elisha may one day assume Elijah's ministry. So
Elijah goes and calls Elisha, but Elisha has a life. He has a job
and responsibilities. There is a lot for him to leave behind.
Elisha might have spent his entire life looking back at what might
have been without a decisive action, so he takes an action to sever
his ties with his old life—before leaving the fields, he slaughters
his oxen and feeds them to his fellow workers. Once his oxen are
gone, there is no going back for Elisha. He has said goodbye to the
old, and he is looking ahead to the new. A serious action pushed him
out into the world to follow Elijah into ministry, and all he has now
is the way forward.
Now,
we could go one of two ways with this, and I think there's value in
both. One of the possibilities is to talk about what the oxen are in
your life that you need to leave behind in order to go forward into
the life God is calling you to live. Maybe you have something that
you're in the midst of that is preventing you from entering fully
into the ministry you feel called into. That's an oxen that needs to
be slaughtered. When Christ calls us, he calls us into the new, and
he often calls us to give up something. It's not going to be easy,
but each of us can examine our lives to see if there is something we
need to give up. Might be a habit or a particular sin of which we
are fond—whatever it may be, I pray that you have the courage to
set it down and move forward.
The
other path we could go, though, and the one that I think is the most
helpful, is to remember the actions of God, for God has acted
decisvely when it comes to dealing with the past. Let's talk about
Jesus Christ.
See,
we all have sin in our past. We all have sins in our lives. It's
part of being human—we're imperfect. We can't live the perfect
Christian life like we want to—sin gets in the way. For many of
us, there are very different sins, but each of us has our own sins.
And it would be easy to spend our entire lives beating ourselves up,
berating ourselves for our faults. We could be so incredibly
negative that all of our energy would be invested in looking back in
regret.
But
God has acted, and done so with great drama. In Jesus Christ, God
sent his own Son to sever the power sin has over us. In this one
dramatic act, God destroys sins power and breaks the bonds our sinful
pasts have over us. In doing so, he promises each of us that our
sins will not have power over us—we don't have to look back upon
them. In Christ's atoning death, he releases us from a life of
regret and pain and releases us into freedom—freedom to be used for
God, a responsibility to others to proclaim the truth that sin no
longer has power over us. Our past will not determine our destiny.
So
Christ has acted to sever our ties with our sinful pasts. We are
released from the need to atone for our sins.
What
are we released into?
This
is where we can marvel at this story. I believe that we are freed
from sin and death for a purpose—to be at work in the world,
helping others to come to know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. And
the way that happens is personal relationships.
Notice
the call of Elisha. Elisha's out working in the field, guiding his
oxen along with 11 other workers. Then Elijah shows up and invites
him into a wild life of ministry. What does Elisha do? He agrees!
He gives up his steady, stable job and chooses to follow God.
Elijah's personal relationship is the tool God uses to bring Elisha
into ministry.
Let's
recognize something here—God was at work in Elisha long before
Elijah showed up. This was part of God's plan—and he was just
using Elijah to call Elisha to claim Elisha's role in God's story.
God was at work in Elisha's heart and his life long before Elijah
appears on the scene.
In
the same way, you and I are each called, as disciples, to form
personal relationships with other people. Some of these people will
not be Christians. And so we are called to be a witness to them—to
show them selfless love. God is at work in these people. We're
called to help them see God at work. It's not about us—it's about
us getting out of the way and letting God do a work in them through
us. We are the channels God uses to reach out to others. Evangelism
is about building up personal relationships and letting God use those
for his glory, for his purposes. Elisha was called through a
personal relationship—not by anything Elijah did, but by what God
did through Elijah.
So
let God use you in the same way. Build relationships and see what
God does. Look for openings to talk about your faith—and let God
do the heavy-lifting. Amazing things will happen.
Let
us pray
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