Where Is The Lord?

June 20, 2012

Wednesday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

By Colleen O'Sullivan

 When the Lord was about to take Elijah up to heaven in a whirlwind, he and Elisha were on their way from Gilgal.  Elijah said to Elisha, “Please stay here; the Lord has sent me on to the Jordan.”  “As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you,” Elisha replied.  And so the two went on together.  Fifty of the guild prophets followed and when the two stopped at the Jordan, they stood facing them at a distance.  Elijah took his mantle, rolled it up and struck the water, which divided, and both crossed over on dry ground.

When they had crossed over, Elijah said to Elisha, “Ask for whatever I may do for you, before I am taken from you.”  Elisha answered, “May I receive a double portion of your spirit.”  “You have asked something that is not easy,” Elijah replied.  “Still, if you see me taken up from you, your wish will be granted; otherwise not.”  As they walked on conversing, a flaming chariot and flaming horses came between them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind.  When Elisha saw it happen he cried out, “My father!  my father!  Israel’s chariots and drivers!”  But when he could no longer see him, Elisha gripped his own garment and tore it in two.  Then he picked up Elijah’s mantle that had fallen from him, and went back and stood at the bank of the Jordan.  Wielding the mantle that had fallen from Elijah, Elisha struck the water in his turn and said, “Where is the Lord, the God of Elijah?”  When Elisha struck the water it divided and he crossed over.  (2 Kings 2:1, 6-14)

Piety

On the day of my distress I call to you, for you will answer me. (Psalm 86:7)

Study

About 4 years ago I got a phone call at work from my parents.  My mother had been to the lung specialist and had been diagnosed with a lung disease I had never heard of before.  We didn’t talk long because I was at the office, but later that afternoon I googled what she had mentioned.  “Disease progression cannot be halted.”  “No known cure.”  “Fatal.”  Tears blurred my vision.  Was this to be my mother’s end? (Little did I know that she would actually die from lung cancer, not this disease.)  As the words sank in and the specter of death hung in the air, I thought to myself, “Who will I be when my mom is gone?”  My response to my own question, “Well, I’ll still be a child of God and I’ll still be the person she brought me up to be,” steadied me a little, but just thinking about the end cast a shadow over the day.

Elisha is probably feeling somewhat the same way in our reading from 2 Kings.  Elijah has been his mentor for many years.  The two must have been quite close, because at one point in the narrative, he calls Elijah “my father.”   He has no desire to see Elijah depart this life.  But the older man’s work on earth is finished.  He asks Elisha if there is anything he can do for him before he is taken.  Elisha requests the inheritance of the oldest son, the double portion.  He asks for Elijah’s spirit.   As Elijah is taken up into heaven, Elisha receives his older friend’s spirit.  He has also been given the prophet’s mantle or cloak.   He knows he is to follow in Elijah’s footsteps and carry on the prophetic tradition, but even so he is overcome with grief.  He tears his own cloak as a sign of his sadness.  His reaction to this ending isn’t, “Who will I be?” but a cry from the depths of his being, “Where is the Lord, the God of Elijah?” 

Action

Death, other endings and carrying on after them are not easy, but life is made up of a series of endings and new beginnings.  When you are in Elisha’s place, when one phase of your life has ended, how do you go on?  Where do you find God?