THE ELIJAH CONNECTION
A Sermon by Dean Scotty McLennan
University Public Worship
Stanford Memorial Church
February 22, 2009
Today's gospel lesson from Mark[i] describes the Transfiguration of Jesus. This event is also reported in the gospels of Matthew[ii] and Luke[iii] and referred to in the Second Letter of Peter.[iv] Jesus is accompanied up a mountain by three of his disciples -- Peter, James, and John -- where his clothes then become dazzling white and a voice comes from a cloud saying, "This is my Son the Beloved; listen to him." A Roman Catholic Bible commentary I use explains that "the narrative must rest on a specific mystical experience of the disciples,"[v] some kind of "vision"[vi] or perhaps a dream,[vii] but it is also draws heavily from Old Testament imagery of Mount Sinai and apocalyptic metaphors of the end-time to come.[viii] It has parallels as well with the story of Jesus's baptism, when a voice comes from heaven saying, "This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased."[ix]
The account in each of the three gospels then depicts Moses and Elijah appearing at Jesus' side and talking with him. Commentators note that they are probably meant to stand for the Law and the Prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures, and they serve to demonstrate the fulfillment of the Old Testament in Jesus of the New Testament.[x] Most of us know Moses as the great leader of the Jewish Exodus from Egypt to the Promised Land and as the lawgiver of the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament or Hebrew Scriptures. But who exactly is Elijah, what's his connection to Jesus, and what's his message for us today?
There are a number of passages in the New Testament where Jesus is himself equated with Elijah. The Elijah connection is strong. King Herod, when he hears of Jesus' teaching and healing in the Galilee region, is told by certain people that Jesus is Elijah.[xi] Jesus' own disciples report to their master that there are people who say he's Elijah.[xii] However, the disciples make it clear that they instead see Jesus to be the Messiah,[xiii] the one who the Israelites have long awaited to redeem their people by ending the present order of personal and societal oppression and inaugurating the final age of peace and justice on earth.[xiv]
There's a theological issue that develops, though. Jewish tradition, grounded in the Old Testament book of Malachi, claimed that the prophet Elijah must come back to earth again before the day of the Lord can come and all can be redeemed.[xv] Jesus's disciples knew this only too well, for they asked him, "Why do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?"[xvi] The Elijah who appears in Jesus's Transfiguration doesn't seem to count as Elijah's coming, because the disciples are troubled on their way down the mountain about how Jesus could ever be resurrected from the dead and save the world without Elijah having first fully come to earth. Jesus has a ready answer for them, though: "I tell you that Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him, but they did to him whatever they pleased. So also the Son of Man is about to suffer at their hands. Then the disciples understood that he was speaking to them about John the Baptist."[xvii] The Elijah connection is strong.
This may be sounding a little complex now, but the connection of John the Baptist to Elijah is actually noted in other places in the New Testament. For example, at the beginning of the gospel of Luke the angel Gabriel tells a priest named Zechariah that he and his wife will have a son destined to become John the Baptist, and "the spirit and power of Elijah ...will go before him, to turn the hearts of...the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous."[xviii] Well before his Transfiguration, according to the gospel of Matthew, Jesus teaches the crowds gathered around him in Galilee as follows: "If you are willing to accept it...[John] is Elijah who is to come. Let anyone with ears listen!"[xix] And what does John do besides baptize Jesus? He's a classic Jewish prophet who calls people to repentance for their sins and advises them on how to live with pithy phrases like "Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise."[xx] He goes up against King Herod, criticizing him for marrying his sister-in-law; John pays for this with his head.[xxi]
And what do we know of Elijah himself from the Old Testament? Like Jesus, he's reported to have brought the dead back to life.[xxii] He confronts King Ahab for importing foreign religion into Israel,[xxiii] and then has to flee for his life.[xxiv] Later he confronts Ahab's son, the next king, for worshipping Baal-zebub as god, and tells him he will die for his heresy, which in fact he does. Then, as we heard in this morning's reading,[xxv] Elijah never dies himself, but instead ascends directly to heaven. No wonder some of the bystanders at Jesus' execution, as reported by Matthew and Mark, think that Jesus himself is calling for Elijah to come and take him down from the cross and save him,[xxvi] presumably so that Jesus can ascend directly to heaven as well without dying. The Elijah connection remains strong to the end of Jesus' life.
What's the message of the Elijah connection for us here today? I think it's that although like Peter and the other disciples on the mountain, we may have dazzling, mystical glimpses of life transfigured every so often, our real work is back down at the bottom of the mountain trying promote a vision of future peace and justice by our actions now. That's what the prophets have always told us: "Do justice...love kindness, and...walk humbly with your God...[xxvii] Bring good news to the poor...proclaim release to the captives and...let the oppressed go free."[xxviii] Peter struggles along himself, once he's back in the valley. He tries to take action for the kingdom of God, but he fails as much as he succeeds, just like us. He was the rock upon which Jesus chose to build his church,[xxix] but he also sinks like a rock when he tries to walk on water like Jesus.[xxx] He's with Jesus on his last night in the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus asks him to stay on vigil, but instead he falls asleep.[xxxi] He boasts of his everlasting devotion to Jesus, but then denies him three times before the cock crows.[xxxii] Ultimately he gives his all for Christ, however, undertaking long missionary journeys and finally being crucified himself in Rome.[xxxiii]
It seems to me that the Elijah connection for us today has primarily to do with economic debacle that began on Wall Street last fall and since has spread around the world. We're called to the classic Christian virtues of faith, hope and love, while at the same time struggling against vices like fear-mongering, greed and anger. A severe economic downturn like this reminds us that we’re all equal in the sight of God. We must look beyond personal salvation to help build community here and now.
The San Jose Mercury News recently profiled an 82-year old retired nuclear engineer, Ed Sayre,[xxxiv] who explains that it’s not so far-fetched to compare the current economy to the beginnings of the Great Depression. What he’s most concerned about, though, is whether the role of the community will be as strong this time. Back then, as he relates it, neighbors pulled together to help each other out. Because the world is more disconnected now and many of us barely know our neighbors, Sayre doesn’t “think we would be able to work together in that way today.” This is, of course, what Christian churches should be all about: knowing each other, supporting each other, caring for each other, helping each other in very practical ways. This is how love gets realized in a concrete sense. That in turn generates hope. And ultimately it illuminates the faith that the universe is ordered and that the law of life includes compassion for others as surely as the instinct for self-preservation. This is Jesus reminding us to “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”[xxxv] And it’s also Jesus saying that in order to enter the kingdom of God one must feed the hungry and welcome the stranger, attending to the least of our brothers and sisters as if they were Jesus himself.[xxxvi]
Yet, this can’t be just a matter of charity. We read in the book of Acts that in the early Christian communities none were needy because “They would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.”[xxxvii] But, the societal answer, well beyond voluntary giving and mutual support in Christian communities, is legislation that covers all citizens equally as a matter of social justice. We have gotten a lot of that in the recent law-making in Congress, including protection for homeowners who received sub-prime loans in good faith, extension of unemployment benefits for those who have been laid off, and health insurance for the uninsured.
Ed Sayre remembers how frustrating it was that “during the Hoover administration, they just sat back and kind of watched it happen.” With Roosevelt, though, there was some financial relief, but also enormous pride when local residents joined the Civilian Conservation Corps to work on projects to develop state and national parks, and when the Works Progress Administration began distributing money for countless public projects, providing improvements to roads, bridges and other parts of the nation’s infrastructure. The recent stimulus package does include this kind of commitment. Sayre remembers how governmental investments like this during the Great Depression bolstered the country’s infrastructure for much of the rest of the twentieth century.
The Elijah connection must remind us that we’re all in this together. What the apostle Paul says of the body of Christ that is the church, we must say of the whole world: “The body does not consist of one member but of many…The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you’ … If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together in it.”[xxxviii] There's no doubt that this economic disaster affects each and every one of us.
It’s in times of crisis like this that we should be brought together in the consciousness of how deeply interlocked and interdependent we are. The Elijah connection is strong. We should be able to talk to each other – across all divisions of age and occupation and ethnicity and class – about our common plight and our vision of solutions for the common good. That must happen in grocery stores, on the streets, in our neighborhoods, on the playing fields, on the subway, in school – wherever people gather outside of our normal insularity. And it’s particularly important that we in the richest nation on earth be constantly aware of how our actions affect poorer nations and peoples. We cannot save ourselves at the expense of those who have been economically downtrodden for so long.
So, the Elijah connection winds its way through the Israelite prophets, through John the Baptist and Jesus, through Peter and the other disciples, to all of us today who strive to listen to God's voice on the mountaintop, and then come down to the valley, roll up our sleeves, and help build the kingdom on earth. May we keep the Elijah connection strong.
NOTES
1
[i] Mark 9: 2-9.
[ii] Matthew 17: 1-13.
[iii] Luke 9: 28-36.
[iv] 2 Peter 1: 16-18.
[v]Jerome Biblical Commentary (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1968), p. 93.
[vi] Ibid., p. 42. It is described as a "vision" in Matthew 17:9.
[vii] Luke 9:32; see also Jerome, p. 141, and The New Interpreter's Bible (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), Vol. VIII, p. 365.
[viii] Ibid.
[ix] Matthew 3:17.
[x]Jerome, p. 42; New Interpreter's Bible, Vol. IX,
p. 206.
[xi] Mark 6:15; Luke 9:8.
[xii] Matthew 16:14; Luke 9:19.
[xiii] Matthew 16:16; Luke 9:20.
[xiv] "Messiah," HarperCollins Dictionary of Religion (HarperSanFrancisco, 1995), p. 715.
[xv] Malachi 4:5.
[xvi] Mark 9: 9-11; see also Matthew 17: 9-10.
[xvii] Matthew 17: 12-13; see also Mark 9: 12-13.
[xviii] Luke 1:17.
[xix] Matthew 11:14-15.
[xx] Luke 3:11.
[xxi] Matthew 14: 3-11.
[xxii] 1 Kings 17: 17-24.
[xxiii] 1 Kings 18: 17-18.
[xxiv] 1 Kings 19: 1-3.
[xxv] 2 Kings 2: 1-12
[xxvi] Matthew 27: 47-49; Mark 15: 35-36.
[xxvii] Micah 6:8.
[xxviii] Isaiah 61:1-2; 58:6 (As cited by Jesus in Luke 4:18).
[xxix] Matthew 16:18
[xxx] Matthew 14: 28-31.
[xxxi] Matthew 26: 36-46; Mark 14: 32-42; Luke 22: 45-46;
[xxxii] Matthew 26:33-35, 69-75; Mark 14:26-31, 66-72; Luke 22:31-34, 54-62; John 13:36-38, 18:15-27.
[xxxiii]Peter Calvocoressi, Who's Who in the Bible (London: Penguin, 1999), pp. 147-148.
[xxxiv] "Fighting Depression," San Jose Mercury News, October 22, 2008.
[xxxv] Luke 6:31.
[xxxvi] Matthew 25:35.
[xxxvii] Acts 2:45.
[xxxviii] I Corinthians 12: 14, 21, 26.