The Mantle Handed On

Mark 9:2-9; II Kings 2:1-18

The Transfiguration of the Lord/Baptism

II Kings 2:1‑18

{1} Now when the LORD was about to take Elijah up to heaven by a whirlwind, Elijah and Elisha were on their way from Gilgal. {2} Elijah said to Elisha, “Stay here; for the LORD has sent me as far as Bethel.” But Elisha said, “As the LORD lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.” So they went down to Bethel.

{3} The company of prophets who were in Bethel came out to Elisha, and said to him, “Do you know that today the LORD will take your master away from you?” And he said, “Yes, I know; keep silent.” {4} Elijah said to him, “Elisha, stay here; for the LORD has sent me to Jericho.” But he said, “As the LORD lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.”

So they came to Jericho. {5} The company of prophets who were at Jericho drew near to Elisha, and said to him, “Do you know that today the LORD will take your master away from you?” And he answered, “Yes, I know; be silent.” {6} Then Elijah said to him, “Stay here; for the LORD has sent me to the Jordan.” But he said, “As the LORD lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.”

So the two of them went on. {7} Fifty men of the company of prophets also went, and stood at some distance from them, as they both were standing by the Jordan. {8} Then Elijah took his mantle and rolled it up, and struck the water; the water was parted to the one side and to the other, until the two of them crossed on dry ground.

{9} When they had crossed, 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.”

{10} He 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.”

{11} 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.

{12} 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 in two pieces.

{13} He picked up the mantle of Elijah that had fallen from him, and went back and stood on the bank of the Jordan. {14} He took the mantle of Elijah that had fallen from him, and struck the water, saying, “Where is the Lord, the God of Elijah?”

When he had struck the water, the water was parted to the one side and to the other, and Elisha went over.

{15} When the company of prophets who were at Jericho saw him at a distance, they declared, “The spirit of Elijah rests on Elisha.”

They came to meet him and bowed to the ground before him. {16} They said to him, “See now, we have fifty strong men among your servants; please let them go and seek your master; it may be that the spirit of the Lord has caught him up and thrown him down on some mountain or into some valley.” He responded, “No, do not send them.” {17} But when they urged him until he was ashamed, he said, “Send them.”

So they sent fifty men who searched for three days but did not find him. {18}When they came back to him (he had remained at Jericho), he said to them, “Did I not say to you, Do not go?”

Mark 9:2‑9

{2} …Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, {3} and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them.

{4} And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus.

{5} Then Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” {6} He did not know what to say, for they were terrified.

{7} Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” {8} Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.

{9} As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.

The Sermon

When Elisha could no longer see Elijah, in the pain of his emotional anguish at losing his teacher, his friend, his beloved elder, he did what they did in those days to express their misery and outrage: he grasped his own clothes and tore them in two pieces.

And then after that presumably cathartic moment, he picked up the mantle of Elijah that had fallen from him, and went back and stood where the two of them had just been standing, on the bank of the Jordan. He took the mantle of Elijah, and struck the water, saying, “Where is the Lord, the God of Elijah?” In other words, show me if the power of God that was within Elijah still lingers in his mantle.

The mantle was like a robe, woven without a seam, that you would slip on over your head.

He took it and struck the water, just like Elijah had.

And an amazing thing happened, the kind of thing that used to happen for Elijah all the time: the water was parted to the one side and to the other, and Elisha walked right down the middle.

That told him, and the far-off witnesses, and us, that Elisha’s one request had been granted: he had inherited the most important thing to him: a share of Elijah’s spirit.

Elijah, now departed after serving his own life of faithfulness, had literally and figuratively passed the mantle on to Elisha.

The mantle of Elijah was not just about an article of clothing, not just an heirloom to be worn, not just a tool of the trade to perform wonders like parting small bodies of water.

The mantle of Elijah was to know God as well as a human being can know God: to be able to locate yourself somewhere in God’s infinite vastness; to find keys and clues and truth and beauty in God’s unsearchable ways; to find life and love in this universe that, though made by God, is filled with horrifying distances of emptiness—physical distances, and distances between who we are and who we mean to be; between any sense of sanity and certainty, and the reality of the everyday tragedies that are part of human life.

And well into his ministry, according to Mark, when Jesus had been moving in his inexorable march to Jerusalem and the cross, along the way healing and feeding and restoring and nurturing everyone who asked him (and many who did not)—invariably telling them afterward, “Don’t say anything to anybody,” and then they would go find as many people as they could find to blab about it—

Now Jesus took with him Peter and James and John—the inner circle of the inner circle of his disciples—and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves.

And of course Mark is the one among all the gospels who doesn’t put any extra words in there; he just says directly what he wants to tell us: Jesus was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them.

And there appeared to them Elijah, with Moses, and they were talking with Jesus.

Then Peter—of course, Peter—said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” The other gospel writers, Matthew, Luke and John, all try to give Peter some justification—Mark doesn’t even bother; he just says, “Peter didn’t really know what to say; they were terrified, after all.”

Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” And suddenly, when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.

And I wonder if there was a sense, even among those who stood there struggling to make any sense at all of what they had just seen, that the mantle had been definitively handed on, from the most important figure of their history, Moses; to the greatest of all prophets, Elijah;

and now to the one whom the Voice within the Cloud—an Old Testament means of God speaking to God’s people—called, “My son, the Beloved.”

As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.

At which time, perhaps they didn’t realize at the moment, the mantle would be handed on to them.

When those of us who are Presbyterian joined our Church, whether by transferring in, or being baptized and later confirmed, or as adults making our first public profession of faith, we joined a denomination of the Church of Jesus Christ which, from its founding in this country in 1789, has articulated its purpose and mission in six “Great Ends of the Church.”

The great ends of the church are:

• the proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind
• the shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God
• the maintenance of divine worship
• the preservation of the truth
• the promotion of social righteousness, and
• and the exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the world.

We may not get them right all the time.

But just as this morning Alex has been sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever, the mantle is passed on again, from one generation to another.

I was cleaning out the trunk of my car one time, and I came across a little black box with a cross on top of it—my home communion box. At some point I had decided to keep one in the car so I’d have it if I needed it.

The one I use regularly I keep in my church office. They’re kind of neat: there’s a little vial for holding communion wine, and four glass cups, a little bigger than a thimble. There’s a tiny brass bowl, about an inch in circumference, maybe an inch deep, and a little plate that fits on top of it so you can seal some bread bits or wafers in there, and then serve them at the right time.

I thought it looked a little more weathered than it had looked the last time I had seen it, and then I realized: this wasn’t the one I keep in my office. This is the one that belonged to my father-in-law, a Presbyterian minister who served for many years in North Carolina and Virginia.

And I thought about all the people who were brought communion during his lifetime of ministry. What were their lives like? They’re not particularly noteworthy names; they’re not immortalized in literature; they just live their faithfulness like us, one day at a time.

What did they do when the mantle was passed to them, and to whom did they hand on the traditions of being the body of Christ?

I think about Elisha picking up Elijah’s mantle whenever a new Sunday School teacher sits down with a class, just like some grown-up may have done with that teacher, however many years ago.

The mantle is the commitment that someone gives when they become a member of the church, become a follower of Christ, and find the places where they can shelter the children of God; where they can promote social righteousness, where they can exhibit the Kingdom of Heaven to the world.

People who came before us did that, and now we do the best we can; and when we fail, we ask God for forgiveness and restoration so we can get up and try again.

We take up the mantle that was left for us when Jesus said, “Love one another, just as I have loved you,” so that one day, we may give it to the next generation of faithful disciples.