• II Kings 2: 1-2, 6-14

A spectacular departure befits the great prophet Elijah.  The Lord’s prophet rose up in response to the crisis created by the apostasy of King Ahab and his consort, Queen Jezebel.  In this final scene, Elijah is walking with his successor, Elisha, “when the Lord was about to take Elijah up to heaven by a whirlwind.”  Twice Elijah tells Elisha that now is the time to end their journey and twice Elisha declares “I will not leave you.”  When they reach the river Jordan, fifty  prophets await them.  Elijah rolls up his mantle and strikes the water with it.  The water parts and the two walk to the other side on dry soil.  Elijah asks his successor what he can do for him “before I am taken away from you.”  Elisha makes his request: “A double share of your spirit.”  Elijah responds that this is a very difficult request and the text  is not clear if it will or will not be fulfilled.  “As they continued walking and talking, a chariot of fire and horses of fire separated the two men, and Elijah ascended in a whirlwind into heaven.”  Elisha watched until Elijah was out of sight and then tore his  own clothing in two.  He took up the mantle given him by Elijah, slapped the water of the Jordan and asked, “Where is the Lord, the God of Elijah?”  The water parted and Elisha walked through to the other side; his journey him kept moving.

• Psalm 77: 1-2, 11-20

The psalmist recalls the Lord’s “wonders of old” and the asks if any god can compare to God!  He then alludes to “Your strength” that saved the children of Jacob and Joseph.  He cites several theophanies in creation, as well.  He cites the defining journey of faith God’s people took when “You led your people like a flock/by the hand of Moses and Aaron.”

OR 

• I Kings 19: 15-16, 19-21

After Elijah’s experience of “sheer silence,”  (see the first alternative reading for last Sunday), the prophet journeys on to Damascus as instructed by the Lord to anoint “Hazael as King over Aran” and “Jehu son of Nimshi over Israel” and Elisha as his successor.  Elijah finds Elisha in the fields, plowing.  Elijah throws his mantle over Elisha, who seems to understand immediately the significance. He asks for time to say farewell to his family, telling Elijah “then I will follow you.”  But Elijah seems to test Elisha when he asks why he should follow the prophet “for what I have done to you?”  Elisha is not deterred.  He slaughtered twelve oxen, fed the people and then “followed Elijah, and became his servant.”

• Psalm 16

According to Robert Alter, psalm 16 requires interpolations of many translators over the centuries to make sense of many unclear phrases in the original Hebrew, (The Book of Psalms, p. 45 ff).  But the general thrust seems to treasure “an inheritance [that] fell to me with delight….”  The Lord, unlike other gods, is “always before me.”  “So my heart rejoices and my pulse beats with joy….”

• Galatians 5: 1, 13-25

Paul recites a conventional list of vices and virtues, but shifts to a discussion of motivations.  Emphasis on rules leads to a “yoke of slavery,” but “for freedom Christ has set us free.”  By focusing on one ‘rule’, which Jesus placed above all others– “You shall love your neighbor as yourself”– one abides in the love of Christ and will be “guided by the Spirit.”

• Luke 9: 51-62

In this story, which is unique to Luke’s narrative, Jesus makes more clear the destination of his journey, Jerusalem, and deals with new opponents, Samaritans.  He also characterizes some of the costs of journeying with him.  Hostilities between Northerners and Southerners had only grown more fierce over the centuries; (Luke ascribes the hostility toward Jesus by  the northern Samaritans to his destination, Jerusalem in the south).  Two of “the twelve,” James and John, suggest a course of action reminiscent of Elijah to “command fire to come down and consume them….”  But Jesus rejects their idea.  As they enter another village, a man asks if he can follow Jesus, but Jesus tells the man “the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”  To another person, Jesus issues an invitation, which is accepted with the proviso, “first let me go and bury my father.”  To which Jesus responds, “Let the dead bury the dead,”  but you go immediately and “proclaim the gospel.”  Another person expresses the desire to follow Jesus, but only after returning home to say farewell.  Again there is an austere response from Jesus: “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

A religion that offers a way that is well-mapped is very seductive.  But biblical narratives offer something that is just the opposite.  Elisha insists that he will not leave Elijah, although he has no clear understanding of where this journey will take him or what risks it might entail, in the first reading from the Hebrew scriptures.  In the second alternative, Elisha begins his journey with Elijah after being  tested.  In today’s gospel,  Luke shows in three different encounters that those who wanted to follow Jesus did not fully appreciate at the time they made their decision the tough choices that might be required or even the significance of their ultimate destination with him, Jerusalem.  

The journey of faith in biblical narratives sometimes requires tests, provides little information about travel conditions, no guarantees for one’s comfort and not even the certainty of some final, safe destination.  The opportunity/invitation can come at the least opportune times for us and with an insistence that disrupts obligations we assumed were more important.  Yet, there is still something irresistible.

John Caputo’s passionate, intellectually intense interpretation The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion Without Religion, (written when Caputo was on the faculty of the Philadelphia university in the Augustinian tradition, Villanova, concluded that Derrida’s life’s work leads finally to a “Jewish Augustinianism,” which means “trembling and uncertainty are our constant companions.”  Caputo continues:

“The passion [for God] is the only permanence, and the only peace we have is the assurance that things will never settle peacefully into place.”  “The restless passion for God, Derrida’s love of ‘my God,’ is meant to set things loose, to set them free, open-ended, Vogelfrie and ‘distinerrant,’… sent without destiny, who knows where.”  “For to center everything on a passion for God, to my passion for God, to dream the dream of my God, to say yes, yes to my God, to my passion for God, is to be drawn back into a still deeper decentering and questionability.”  Such passion provokes more questions than answers for Caputo: “What do I love when I love the impossible?”  By what am I inflamed in this passion for God?  By what madness  am I driven when I am given without return?  For what do I call when I call for justice?  By what am I called when I am called by justice?  What do I desire when I desire my God?  What do I love when I love my God?”  (pp 332-333)

Biblical faith is peripatetic, nomadic, restless, ‘homeless’, seeking, and always discontent with the status quo, but it offers nothing less than participation in “the dream of my God.”  When Elisha declared to Elijah, “I will not leave you” he made a promise to undertake a journey about which he had no clear idea of its route or destination.  Hr also made a commitment to a relationship without reservation.  Yet, he inherited the great prophet’s mantle and found himself participating in his generation in the same mighty acts of God of the past.  Luke’s story makes it unmistakably clear that following Jesus does not entail the comforts we prefer, does not dwell on the past, can disrupt fixed priorities,  and offers only a vague notion of any destination, except some enigmatic language about God’s “kingdom.”  It is a journey that is always on the lookout not for a place to rest, but the next place where God will act.  It undertakes this journey and discovers– this is life itself!  It is ultimately a relationship.