Home  ›  Audio  ›  “I Will Not Leave You,” Rev. Melissa St. Clair, 2/15/15

“I Will Not Leave You,” Rev. Melissa St. Clair, 2/15/15

I Will Not Leave You”

A sermon preached at

Heart of the Rockies Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

Fort Collins, CO

Rev. Melissa St. Clair

February 15, 2015

High school graduation.

Your first full-time job.

Getting married.

Having a baby.

Your baby going off to college.

Retirement.

What’s your first reaction when you hear these milestones?

Joy? Celebration? Sadness? Grief?

All of the above?

We know, like the wisdom-writer Qoheleth in Ecclesiastes that, “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven” (Ecc. 3:1). And yet that doesn’t mean that the changing of the seasons isn’t difficult or that we don’t enjoy some seasons more than others.

Jesus was setting his disciples up for a new season in their lives the day he took them up that mountain. He knew his relationship with them was going to change. He knew he wouldn’t be with them in the way they’d come to know him that much longer. Not surprisingly, his disciples weren’t very thrilled about this. They wanted him to stay. And what better way to express that sentiment than to offer to build a physical place – a dwelling, a tent –for him to stay? But Jesus knew that wasn’t what was next for him.

The same could be said about Elijah. Elisha, Elijah’s protégé, wants his mentor to stick around. God has something a little different in mind.

READ 2 KINGS 1:1-12

Something happened in Season 15 that I wasn’t ready for – Olivia Benson was promoted from detective to sergeant and becomes commander of the New York Police Department’s Special Victims Unit. It wasn’t that I thought she shouldn’t be promoted. She’s a natural for the job – smart, competent, savvy – and she had more years of experience with the squad than any one else. It was a no-brainer. But I wasn’t ready for her to quit being so hands on in all the action, as her predecessor often spent more time behind a desk than in the city streets working hand-in-hand with victims to bring their perpetrators to justice.

My upset with this transition was minor, however, compared to the outrage of Law & Order SVU fans when Elliot Stabler suddenly quit the force. In real life, the actor Christopher Meloni decided not to return to the show. The abruptness of the real-life transition translated to one just as hasty on the show. Fans were irate, as the Internet can attest, and the characters on the show, especially Elliot’s partner, Olivia, took it pretty hard too.

So when it came time for Sergeant Munch and Captain Cragen to say farewell to SVU, the writers and producers were far more intentional with their departures. They felt like they each deserved a good curtain call, and so they spaced out their exits and made them earlier in the season, so the good-byes didn’t get all mixed up with the usual cliff-hangers and other distractions that invariably pop up at toward the end of a season. In doing so, they acknowledged that they didn’t do a great job with Christopher Meloni/Elliot Stabler’s exit.[1]

Transition is hard. And this is TV transition we’re talking about here. As much as I want Olivia Benson to be my friend in real life, it’s a show. Like the opening screen of the show always states: The following story is fictional and does not depict any actual person or event.

Elisha is (or was) an actual person, or at the least an actual part of our faith story. And he’s feeling the weight of transition. We can’t really trace the succession plan of Elijah to Elisha. Even thought the prophetic community seems to understand that Elijah is about to leave them, there’s not a whole lot in the narrative of scripture to suggest why the sudden change.

Although Elisha has been serving as a “prophet-in-training” alongside Elijah, there’s not as clear a path forward as he might like. Will all the other prophets recognize his leadership? Will he be seen as the prophet among prophets? When Elisha asks for a double-portion of Elijah’s powerful spirit, he surely has the challenge in front of him in mind. In doing so, Elisha is essentially asking for an established position in Elijah’s prophetic legacy.[2] He knows it will serve him well to be have the blessing of his predecessor.

What we’re experiencing is real-life, real-time transition. It’s not unexpected – we’ve known since at least 2012 that our founding pastor, Jeff, planned to retire the year he turned 65. It’s not unintentional – in fact, this is by far the most intentional pastoral transition I have ever seen or heard about.

And yet, it’s still hard.

It ushers in a new season in the life of our congregation, this particular expression of Christ’s body and God’s mission in our time.

William Bridges has written a book called Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes. In it, he lists three stages of transition: fall, winter, and spring. In fall, he writes, we see grass turn brown and leaves fall, which means another year is coming to a close. The second stage, winter, comes when the soil lies fallow and uncultivated. This is a time for quiet and waiting. The world around us appears lifeless, dead, or in hibernation. When spring — the third stage — arrives, green leaves re-emerge from the dry brown twigs of winter. The earth bursts forth again with life.

Of course, these seasons can unfold like any given day in Northern Colorado – they see-saw back and forth between fall, winter, and spring – old and new.

We’re on the cusp of that part of our pastoral transition. The last time we’ll be together all in one place within the bounds of the pastor-congregation relationship with Jeff is on March 1. We’ll worship in the morning at two services, and we’ll gather in this very space as one body in the afternoon from 2-5 p.m. to celebrate the ministry of our beloved Jeff

After that point, there may be one-on-one conversations with Jeff and Janet, perhaps over dinner or a cup of coffee, for the sake of saying “until we meet again.” I’d encourage you to fill Jeff’s calendar full of those sorts of meetings up through April 15. That’s Jeff’s official retirement date and when the covenant of separation that will guide our relationship with Jeff over the next year will go into effect. The covenant, which includes things like Jeff’s future role in the congregation and how situations of conflict or concern are to be handled, isn’t meant to restrict our relationship with one another. It’s intended to more clearly define it, and in turn free us from some the ambiguity that can easily cloud and complicate human relationships.

Elisha doesn’t understand why he can’t just stay with Elijah. Elijah keeps telling Elisha to stay put. The prophets chime in, reminding Elisha that the Elijah is going to be separated from him. Elisha ignores it, and tells them to shut up.

It seems like a futile exercise to compare grief, but it seems safe to say that the prophetic community will miss Elijah just as much as Elisha will, if in a different way.

The lectionary text ends at the point in the story where grief is running high. Elisha tears his own clothes in two. That’s the ancient world’s way of showing sadness and grief. They didn’t wear it on their sleeve, they tore their sleeves off.

That’s where we stopped reading, but that’s not actually the end of the story.

Elisha goes back across the Jordan River, water that he discovers he has been empowered to part himself. He goes back to Jericho and Bethel and Samaria, places that he had been with Elijah, and he does good ministry, performing some miracles that were very similar to Elijah’s and doing others that were different, but ultimately still pointed toward the God they both served.

Elisha doesn’t always get it right. A few youngsters mock his receding hairline, and he curses them to death. Death by mauling – by two she-bears. You can’t make this stuff up, folks. (See 2 Kings 2:24.) But neither did Elijah, who was prone to violence, much more so than Elisha – the she-bear incident aside – neither did he always get it right either.

If we take a step back and look through our wide-angle lens, we’ll see that any given prophet (or pastor) stands in a much longer lineage, one that includes each of us, by virtue of our saying yes to following in the way of Jesus Christ.[3]

Wherever we go: up the mountain, across the Jordan, into the community, out of the state, we do not go alone. No matter where the journey takes us, if we listen carefully, we might even hear the prophet whom we call Savior echoing the words of a prophet before him: I will not leave you.

[1] Kate Stanhope, SVU Says Goodbye to Capt. Cragen: Will Olivia Be Put in Charge?, January 14, 2014. Retrieved from tvguide.com.

[2] Karla Suomala, Commentary on 2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14, www.workingpreacher.com.

[3] Jan Richardson, Blessing of Elijah, http://paintedprayerbook.com/2013/06/25/blessing-of-elijah.