Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. (1 Kings 19:11b-12; in the KJV, the last lines of this passage are rendered as “a still, small voice.”)
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.” [Elijah] 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 into two pieces.
God is always bigger and more powerful than we can imagine, and yet grief can be powerful. We have much to grieve over the events of the past year. We also have much to do. The best way to get our marching orders is to sit before God in silence and listen for what he has to say.
Today, I want to spend some time with the Old Testament lesson, which depicts a story that Christians have often harked back to as a precursor of the Transfiguration: Elijah’s ascension into heaven.
Elijah was one of the greatest prophets in ancient Israel, constantly challenging the corruption of the country’s government (headed by King Ahab and Queen Jezebel) and its religion (especially the many false prophets of Baal brought into the country by Jezebel, who was the daughter of the king of Tyre and a worshipper of Baal.)
Famous stories about Elijah include his proclamation that the Lord had sent a draught to the land because of its disobedience, a dramatic showdown at Mount Carmel where he triumphed over the prophets of Baal and God ended the drought, his challenge to Ahab when the king murdered a man named Naboth to obtain his land, and perhaps most notably his vision of God on Mount Horeb when in hiding from Ahab and Jezebel. There God appeared to him, not dramatically in wind and flame, but in stillness:
On Mount Horeb, God tells Elijah to anoint Jehu as the new king over Israel, to anoint a king for the country of Aram (in modern Syria), and to anoint Elisha, another of the Lord’s true prophets, as his successor. Elisha does in fact become the disciple and successor of Elijah, being anointed by Elijah in 1 Kings 19:19.
It is in this role that Elisha is accompanying Elijah when God takes Elijah bodily to heaven in today’s passage. Elijah is one of only two people in the Old Testament who are said to have ascended like this, the other one being Enoch (Genesis 5:24). Elisha prays for, and receives, a double portion of Elijah’s prophetic spirit even as he grieves over the loss of his teacher and friend.
Taken together, they tell us two things: that God is always bigger and more powerful than we can imagine, and that grief, too, can be powerful. We have much to grieve over the events of the past year. We also have much to do. The best way to get our marching orders is to sit before God in silence and listen for what he has to say.
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