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| Bloemaert's Elijah and Elisha |
1 Kings 19:16, 19-21
Psalm 16:1-2, 5
Galatians 5:1, 13-18
Luke 9:51-62
Paragraph 30 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church tells
us that “[God] never ceases to call
every man to seek Him, so as to find happiness and life.” He never ceases
to call us to seek Him. The Scriptures we just heard proclaimed remind us of
that ceaseless calling of the Lord and invite us to reflect on a question of
great importance: How are we responding to the God who constantly reaches out
to us?
Our Gospel scene today opens us
with one of the pivotal points of Luke’s Gospel, Jesus beginning His solemn
journey to Jerusalem. He is said to be ‘resolutely determined’ to get to
Jerusalem. He had a purpose. He had made a firm choice and was moving forward
to attain His goal, knowing full well what it entailed .If you recall last
weekend, in the passage a few verses before this one, Jesus spoke to His
disciples of the reality of His impending passion, death, and resurrection. He
knew well what He was getting into and He knew there would be countless reasons
and temptations not to move forward. Still He went, but not because He wanted
to - remember how in His agony He begs “Let this cup pass from me, but not My
will but Thine be done.” He endured everything because He wanted to do the will
of the Father perfectly. And He did, winning for us the possibility of eternal
life. A great example to reflect on in following God’s will.
To the example of Christ we can
easily add those of Elijah and Elisha, two of the great Old Testament prophets.
Though we cannot get the full context of Elijah’s life and ministry in a single
reading – talk about a long Mass! – it is notable that every time Elijah did
something it was at the Lord’s command, and every time the Lord commanded
something it was done. This is a literary tool to show that Elijah was a man
who followed the Lord perfectly, always seeking to carry out God’s will rather
than his own.
As we heard a few minutes ago,
Elijah was called by the Lord to go to his successor, Elisha. Elisha is found
plowing the fields with twelve yoke of oxen. We miss this because most of us
aren’t plowing fields with oxen these days, but to say that he had twelve yoke
of oxen was to imply he was quite wealthy; he had everything he needed and
more. You could say he was driving the Ferrari of plows out in the field. And
yet when Elijah places the mantle on him, a sign of authority and
responsibility, he immediately recognizes what is taking place. And as Elijah
quietly walks away Elisha runs to him. He runs! Running is a sign of
intentionality and in the Scriptures it implies an awareness of a mission and
the willingness to carry it out. To prove it, he slaughters the oxen and cooks
them on the burnt plow. Symbolically Elisha said, “I will give up anything if
the Lord wants it of me” as the flames consumed the animals. What powerful
witness of fidelity to God’s will and a holy boldness in carrying it out!
In stark contrast, as often
happens in the readings, we have the three would-be disciples who struggle to
respond to the invitation of the Lord. I don’t know about you, but as much as
the witness of Jesus, Elijah, and Elisha inspire me, it’s easier for me to
relate with the three men in the Gospel. They each have their own reasons for
not doing as the Lord desires, and I think we in our own lives can often relate
to them on certain levels.
The first man comes and proudly
says, “I will follow you wherever you go.” To this Jesus responds that birds
have nests and foxes have dens but He has nowhere. With this Jesus is saying to
the man that if he wants to be a follower of Jesus, he needs to give up his
control. All of us like control. Our nature, from the very first parents, Adam
and Eve, tries to grasp and take for itself. We want to set up our own plans,
map our own way, and do everything to rely upon ourselves to remain happy and
comfortable. We want to follow the Lord, but there is something within us that
still wants backup plans just in case things don’t work out like I want with
the Lord. If we keep a little nest for our self, when things get rough we can
always go back to it. And that’s the problem – the only person trusted in that
scenario is one’s self. Instead the Lord is inviting the man, and each of us,
to a sort of trust-fall of epic proportions. Rather than just falling back into
someone’s arms we know and see, He invites us to fall back and trust that
though we can’t see anyone there at all we’ll still be caught. For the man in
the gospel, he can’t make that commitment and he walks away.
The other two would-be disciples
each have their own reasons for not following the Lord immediately. The first
makes what seems a reasonable request to bury his father. But as scholars point
out, if the man’s father were already dead he wouldn’t be meeting with Jesus,
he’d be doing funeral preparations. It seems instead that the man is implicitly
saying, ‘Jesus I will follow you, but let me first go take care of my dad for a
bit and enjoy my life for a while longer, and then when he’s gone and the
inheritance is used up and everything, THEN I’ll come follow you.’ In other
words, when I’M ready, I’ll follow the Lord. We always like our plans better.
The third man’s request also
seems reasonable. ‘Jesus, I’ll follow
you, just let me take care of one little thing.’ Isn’t that so often the
case? We always have just one little thing to take care of. When we commit to
doing some act of kindness, or spending time in prayer – just one little thing.
And when that one little thing is completed – OH, just one more little thing.
And then another and another… There are always reasons to put off responding to
the Lord for a few more minutes. We aren’t so bad as to completely shrug Jesus
off like the Samaritans do, but at the same time we still like to keep Him at
arms length. Jesus, I want you in my
life, but don’t come too close. Don’t mess up my plans. Don’t ask me to change
anything too drastically. We don’t say it so bluntly, but we imply it in so
many ways. We’re hesitant, and for no good reason.
“[God] never ceases to call every man to seek him, so as to find
happiness and life.” Happiness and life. My brothers and sisters, if I put
my will and God’s will side by side I cannot think of one single time in my
whole life that my will would have been the better choice. Not one. Even with
the crosses that may come. St. Paul reminds us that ‘for freedom we were set
free’. God could have made us robots that follow His will without question. But
He didn’t. He gave us free will so that we could choose to follow out of love.
He created us out of love, created to be loved. But we have to open ourselves
to that. We have to be willing to risk everything and do what God wants instead
of what we want. It is there and only there that we can find true happiness and
life.
To each one of us today He comes
once more and speaks to our heart: Follow
me. Follow me. How will we respond?
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