Suggested Readings: Psalm 125; 2 Kings 2:9-22; Acts 3:17-4:4
Suggested Readings: Psalm 125; 2 Kings 2:9-22; Acts 3:17-4:4
Advent is supposed to be about waiting for an arrival, but 2 Kings 9-22 tells a famous story of departure. Tradition understands Elijah to be one of two individuals who did not die, along with Enoch. Elisha struggles to understand the meaning of this departure and what it might do for him. He tears his own clothes before he finds the mantle of Elijah. Some English Bibles make a paragraph break between 2:12 and 2:13, making us wonder if some time passes and Elisha wanders about unclothed for a while, caught between his old self and his new self.
In these latter years of my career as a member of a university faculty, I am sometimes asked by younger colleagues about how to proceed at important points of transition. I tell them things that I sometimes did well and sometimes failed to do. One of my most frequent admonitions is that when they decide to start doing a big new thing to be sure to stop doing something else and trust that somebody else will find it and pick it up. Letting go might need to happen first, and it may leave us feeling vulnerable for some time, wandering without a fully formed identity.
The singers in Psalm 125 and the apostles in Acts 3 have difficulty letting go of the zero-sum assumption that if I am doing good along with those in my group, then those outside our group are evildoers who require condemnation. Maybe this year the time of waiting and expectation demands a more generous appraisal. The trappings of this season that dominate our culture, and which some loud voices demand we hold onto, make some who live on the margins of our society feel they may not belong. Allowing some instability in my own identity might open paths to a broader way of connecting, and it might be just what the world has been waiting for.
Mark McEntire
