Scripture: 2 Kings 2:1-14
The
art of passing the baton is essential to the power of creating and maintaining
an intergenerational church..
Even -- especially -- when one or more age groups seems lacking in numbers, the intergenerational church becomes more and more
important, and needed.
1. The truly intergenerational church is less definitive about what to believe as it is
how to experience belief – together.
2. The truly intergenerational church is less about creating rules for how to behave than it is showing others how to do it (the art of
intention) and why we do it (the art of imitating Christ).
3. The truly intergenerational church is less about who
I am – the religious question of rebellious Protest-ants –
as it is in whose we are: who we belong to, in a world of profound
alienation: economic, environmental, and tools of violence ranging from the
purely manipulative to weapons of mass destruction.1
The
power of the intergenerational church: the place where our ways of belief,
behavior, and belonging take on a special form. A mentoring body of experienced belief, of learning
behavior by intention and imitative discipleship, and – in the end – a belonging
body, bound as a covenant “whose” in a world full not just of alienation, but also of affinity groups and
voluntary associations ironically loose and exclusive both.
Such is the power of the intergenerational church -- countercultural as it is. And such are the believing, behaving, and belonging ways the prophet Elijah passed the baton to the prophet Elisha.
1. Elisha did not receive the baton – or
more specifically the prophet’s mantle – because he believed like Elijah. He received it because he insisted on experiencing
the passing of Elijah as he approached his time of earthly closure.
“Stay here,” Elijah kept telling him.
“The Lord has sent me as far as Bethel” … and then, “as far as Jericho” … and
then, “to the Jordan.” But Elisha would not stay there. He would leave Elijah
alone …
Elisha would not leave Elijah … alone.
Elijah’s experience, he knew, must be endemic to his experience. Even if, at the end, it
was only to see what transpired – to see the vision. The vision Elisha received
of Elijah being spirited away, when he could not participate in the act. The
vision that ensured Elisha he would receive a double share of Elijah’s spirit –
which is what the first-born Hebrew son typically receives. First, not because he believed like
Elijah, but because he believed with him.
Even to the point of accompanying him to mortality’s edge – and to a new vision
out of it all, and after all.
Elisha received Elijah’s baton … because
he insisted on experiencing belief with him. The way an intergenerational
church, likewise, passes the baton of belief.
2. And Elisha honored the intentional
actions Elijah took by imitating his behavior
after he was gone. At the time of Elijah’s passing, tearing his clothes
dramatically away from his body – not simply because of grief, but also to fit
himself, we hear, with Elijah’s mantle fallen from his predecessor’s shoulder. Wearing
now his mantle, Elisha then struck the water of the Jordan as Elijah had done …
and it parted for him, as well!
Remember the very first biblical parting
of the waters? Moses parting the sea so the Hebrew people could be liberated
from Pharaoh? The Pharaoh who killed all the firstborn sons of the Hebrew
people? Pharaoh did not want an intergenerational church on his hands. The
parting of the sea for Moses … for Elijah … for Elisha meant the baton could be
passed, and the mantle of liberation worn, by an intergenerational church. The
liberating mantle of intentional and imitative behavior, worn as a testimony to
a world of less-flexible and often capricious rules of behavior found in a more
personality-driven or program-regimented body.
Intention and imitation: the hallmarks
of one generation passing the baton of behavior to the next. Not through some
stodgy, stiff “how-to-be-a-prophet” rulebook – the next generations need and
will want to find their own path.
Passing the baton. As the disciples did
with Jesus – well, almost to the end – Elisha experienced the belief, the faith,
of Elijah to his mentor’s final breath: sticking close by him, catching his
resurrection vision in the process. And as the disciples did with Jesus, Elisha
absorbed his mentor’s intentional behavior, then imitated it for his own liberating
parting of the waters.
3. And finally, the Elijah-into-Elisha
story teaches us the belonging power
of the intergenerational church – the passing along of the baton – through the
company of prophets that follow the two throughout the story. Prophets from
whom each of them – as prophets – could not be separated. To whom each of them ultimately belonged.
All of which begs the question: What about us, at Bethesda Presbyterian Church?
Will those who have been a member or friend
here since before 1990, please raise your hand. And keep your hand raised as I
ask you three simple questions …
1. First,
let me ask you this belief question:
How have you transmitted your belief – your faith – as an experienced faith to
the next generations here, including those who have passed through here – as so
many transient DCers have done? Your experienced faith, after all, is what they
are desperately looking for. Not belief as creeds … but belief as
companionship. Not faith as certainty … but faith as wisdom.
2. Second,
let me ask you this behavior question:
How have you intentionally practiced your faith that it might be imitated by
others? Not by purity of worship – tempting as that is in a sanctuary of this
stature! And not to strut your stuff – I don’t think many of us have that
issue. How have you let your God-given light shine as just that – God-given –
for the gospel to be seen and heard by others?
How have you practiced
your faith intentionally, that the next generations might imitate spiritual disciplines
you practice – not matter how “well” you do them? Spiritual disciplines borne
of twenty centuries of Christian discipleship? Outward ones, such as simplicity
and service? Inward ones, such as meditation and prayer? Communal ones,
beginning with worship, and continuing with study, with celebration … and dare
I say with confession to one another?2
3. And
finally, let me ask you this belonging
question: When was the last time you reached your hand out, during the Passing
of the Peace, to a person of a different church generation … first? Especially
reaching out first to a person who is a guest, and brings only their own church
generations with them … or none at all?
You pre-1990 church veterans may put
your hands down now. And so that you know that this is not all on you, though
you know now how you are charged: Would those who have been a member or a
friend since 1990 please raise their hand? Keep those hands raised throughout
as I ask you …
1. How
have you put yourself in the position of experiencing the belief of those who were just standing or raising their hands? Have
you stayed close to them in hard and anxious times – like Elisha with Elijah? Will
you be around to witness their chariots of fire to come?
2. And
the behavior question: How have you
imitated the best of their actions? Have witnessed them strike the waters that
divide peril from promise with their mantle, which will soon be yours to do the
same?
3. And
how have you made the effort to belong
to their company-of-prophets story – by listening to them, learning from them,
passing the baton of this church’s rich legacy of ministry that surges through
them – that courses through their veins?
Passing
the baton. And being passed the baton. By experiencing belief together …
intentionally and imitatively practicing Christian disciplines, or behaviors,
together … belonging, by bringing in the longing, and knowing that we all
belong here, together …
… we then experience the power of being
an intergenerational church. For without that power: What could it be that we are
left with?
More importantly: Without that power,
what do we leave with the generation next?
Whoever has ears
to hear, let them hear.
1I am deeply indebted to Diana
Butler Bass for the rephrasing of our believing-behaving-belonging questions in
these ways for a new, “spiritual-but-not-religious” way of being church. See
her Christianity After Religion: The End
of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening (HarperOne: 2012).
2For these and other classical
spiritual traditions, see Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth
(HarperCollins, 1978).
