Proper 12b.06                                                       July 30, 2006

Elijah was Israel’s all-time greatest prophet,
        the wild man nemesis of kings.
Today, we read about the end of his long and colorful career,
        and his moving on to what came next.
He was giving up being a legend in his time,
        a folk hero, a magical mystery man.

He does not die in this lesson.
He is carried into the sky to live on another plane,
        to do another mission – we don’t know what.
At that time, Israel had no idea of a life in heaven after death.

So this lesson is not about death.
It may tell us something about life changes
        like retirement or a new career
        or a shift in our family situation
                 like when we become parents
        or cease to be parents because the nest is empty.

For Elijah, the older prophet,
        this is a story about giving up
                a familiar role,
                an accustomed identity,
                to try something new, to become someone new.

Sometimes, when we come up to a major life change,
                what comes next is a mystery.
Just so, Elijah didn’t know what would come next,
        where that chariot of fire was going to take him.
He had to trust God.

This is also a story of change
        for Elisha, the younger prophet,

        – giving up his role as disciple
                 and becoming a prophet himself.
Life was just one traumatic change after another
        for this young man.

He had been a farm boy innocently plowing a field,
        when the older prophet came by,
        and swept his mantle over the yong man’s head
                  calling him to be a his disciple.

“Wait, no, stop,” the young man said,

        “I have to talk with my parents first.”
“Then just go home and stay there,” the old prophet told him.
So the younger man followed on the spot,
        and from that day on – he was the sidekick
                  of mighty Elijah, the man of God.

Decades later, the younger man was set in his ways
        as the older prophet’s disciple.
As our lesson begins, the older prophet says to him,

        “Stay here. The Lord is sending me somewhere
                 you cannot go.”

But the younger man won’t have it.
Change is too scary. So he insists on tagging along.
Repeatedly, the older prophet says “stay here.”
But the younger man clings to him.
In one village, the other prophets taunt him
         with the fact his master is leaving,
                  but he doesn’t want to hear it.
“Keep silent,” he tells them.

As they go, the older prophet shows his power
         by striking the river to part its waters.
Then when he is about leave,
         he invites to younger man to ask him
                  for a goodbye gift.
And the younger man says,

         “Give me a double share of your spirit.”

“Oh, now that will be tough,” the old man says.

         “You can receive my spirit.
         You can become a prophet like me

                 – but only if you can bear to watch me leave.
         You have to face up to the fact
                 that things change.
         A prophet is an agent of change.
         You have to be able to face change
                 before you can cause change.”

And the younger man did it.
He watched his master carried way in a fiery chariot.
Then he tore his own clothes in two,
         and put on Elijah’s mantle,
                  the uniform of the mighty prophet.
Then he headed back home.

When he came to the River,
        he struck the water with the mantle that was now his mantle,
        and challenged God, demanded that God act for him
                  as God had acted for his master.
The waters parted,
        and the other prophets saw it.
They turned to each other saying,

        “The spirit of Elijah is on this younger prophet.”
And they didn’t taunt him this time.
They bowed to the ground before him.

The first point in our lesson
        is that God calls us from one mission to another.
The spiritual life isn’t stagnant.
It’s a journey – a journey from mission to mission,
        from role to role, from job to job,
        and (here’s the hard part) from identity to identity.
This is how growth happens.

It’s what we mean when we talk about transformation.
And it’s what the world “repent” actually means

        – it doesn’t mean feel guilty

        – it means change direction.

The 2nd point is that change comes hard.
Changing jobs, changing homes, or changing social connections
        unsettles us.

The Church tries to keep us flexible.
As yoga makes the body adaptable,
        the spirituality of the Church helps us
                 to bend and shift so we can grow.
The Church teaches us to find ourselves in Christ
        instead of any lesser identity

        – and that helps us cross the rivers
                 moving from one role to another in life.
In our collect when we pray that we may “pass through things temporal”
        without “losing the things eternal”

        – “things temporal” means our little identities as doctor, lawyer,
                Indian chief

        – “things eternal” means our identity in Christ.

Some years ago, a now deceased member of St. Francis,
        had served on the vestry for three years.
Then the next year, when she was no longer on the vestry,
        she called me up deeply upset because someone
                had been spending money out of her budget.
It was the current vestry – the one she was no longer on.

She said something I remember to this day.
She said, “I am Christian Education at St. Francis.”
She had so identified with her role,
        she didn’t know who she would be without it.

Now most of us don’t get that caught up
        in what we do at church.
But we are likely to identify with our careers.
Or if we are parents, we identify with that.

One day when our younger daughter was around 14
        and no longer what you might call a parentable child,
        I was at the Food Court at the Mall,
        and I saw young parents with diaper bags and strollers.

It suddenly occurred to me
        I hadn’t seen the last three Disney movies
        or read the most recent Lois Lowry book.
I panicked and the insane thought of our having another baby
        actually entered my deranged mind.

16 years earlier becoming a parent
        had been just as unnerving.
And when the nest really emptied a few years later,
        I went into another spin.

All of us clinging to our established identities
       creates a collective choke hold on society,
                 on each other.
The Downtown Ministerial Association was formed
       to address issues of racial division and injustice
                 in Macon.
I was one of the founders.

But when we recently considered
       a challenging new community organizing project

       – when we considered actually doing something –
                 I noticed my body go tight and jumpy.

I was, in short, afraid

       – I was afraid things might actually change
       and I did not know what Macon might become.
Talking about racial division and injustice
       is comfortably familiar.
Actually doing something about it is unsettling.

Like the young prophet in today’s lesson,
       if we are to be God’s agents of change in this world,
       we must first find the courage
                to face change in our own lives

       – our work lives, our family lives, our personal lives

                – whatever constitutes our identity

       – the stuff we talk about to tell strangers who we are.

We dare to face change in our identity.
We don’t have to like it.
We don’t have to embrace it.
But we have to be bold enough to face it.

My old teacher, Chogyam Trungpa used to say
       at every opportunity,

       “Identify with nothing.”
That would be pretty hard to do.
We need some kind of identity.

But as Christians, we remember our true identity is in Jesus.
St. Paul said,

        “I have been crucified with Christ, and yet I live.
        No – not I – it is Christ who lives in me.”

Our lives are no longer our own.
We live for him who died for us and rose again.
And living for him and not ourselves,
        we can hold our identities lightly.
We can let them go when they begin to slip away.

The natural course of identities is to slip away,
        and we cannot hold onto them
        without squeezing so tightly
                 we choke the life out of them.

But living for Christ,
        we can hold our identities lightly,
        and let them go,
                 trusting that wherever we go,
                 Christ will be with us,
        and whoever we are,
                 we will be beloved children of God.

                                                              Amen.