The
Friday after Thanksgiving, I was one of the hoards of people who wandered out
the door to a store. It wasn’t planned. I hate shopping. Although an
advertisement in the morning paper was too good to resist. So, off to the
Apple computer store, I went. I was searching for a particular, hard to find,
piece of software. Just for the record, our closest Apple Store in
Oregon
is
Eugene
. Since I was in
California
, I was a whole 5 minutes from a store. I felt the need to take advantage. The
store was small, but it was wall-to-wall shoppers, and the salespeople seemed
almost non-existent. I
knew precisely what I wanted, found precisely where the item was located in
the store, and knew precisely that even on a good day it would take me an hour
to get out of the store! I picked the software off the shelf, and incredibly
as I turned around, I literally bumped into a salesperson. He asked me if I
had found what I needed. I said that I had. He asked for my email address and
how I wanted to pay; I gave him a credit card, he swiped it in a little
doohickey attached to his belt, handed my purchase to me, and said,
"Okay, you're good to go."
I paused. "You mean I
don't need to stop at the front cashier?" He smiled. "No, you're
good to go. You’re all paid up and the receipt has been emailed to your
email address.” I was free to bypass the multitude of people, avoid the
mess, and make a quick and clean getaway. I was indeed “good to go.”
The young salesman’s
comment, “you’re good to go,” rang in my ears as I reflected on today's
text. The reading is about two good-to-go guys: Elijah and Elisha. One was
getting ready to check-out, t he other preparing to check-in. One was taking
off, the other taking on; the one giving up the mantle, the other putting it
on; the one crossing the Jordan for the last time, the other for the first
time; two good-to-go prophets, voices for God at a critical moment in Israel's
history.”
Elisha was eager to go with Elijah on Elijah’s final journey, but Elijah
gave his disciple three opportunities to stay behind. He was giving Elisha an
out. For Elijah’s journey as a prophet was a difficult and lonely one.
Prophet was probably the worst job of the day, it was a huge responsibility,
and most people didn’t like you. Stay, Elijah said to Elisha at Gilgal, and
again at
Bethel
and yet again at
Jericho
. The offers seemed to test Elisha's resolve. Is this young man ready to take
on this mantle? Does this young man understand what he will be taking on as a
prophetic witness for God? Elisha did, and vowed to follow his mentor to the
end.
On the far side of the
Jordan River
, Elisha’s moment came. Elijah offered him a fantastic deal just before his
own sendoff, "Tell me what I may do for you, before I am taken from
you." Without hesitation, Elisha asked for a double dose of Elijah's
spirit. Let me have your wisdom, your resolve, your understanding, your
patience and desire, your integrity and spirit, your spirit, times two. That
is a huge request, and even Elijah says, “wow, that is a difficult request,
but if you see me taken away, then it is yours.” Elijah is talking not about
a literal “seeing,” but a full, spiritual understanding, type of
“seeing”.
Elisha indeed
“saw” and received a double portion of spirit to equip him for the task of
prophet. He took the task with confidence.
The church today, like
Elisha, also hears the offer to stay put when the real action is moving on.
The church's resolve is tested too. We can stay where we are, or we can cross
the
Jordan
with boldness, and ask for a double dose. But when we have a vast network of
tradition telling us to stay, telling us this is what the church looks like,
this is what witnessing and mission looks like, this is what ministry looks
like, this is where God has blessed us in the past -- our first instinct is to
stay in one or more of three possible places:
Nostalgia…I’m
talking about the small-town of yesteryear. There is a population shift back
toward small-town
America
. People, looking for a "simpler" life and a slower-paced existence
believe they will find it in the little communities that dot the American
landscape. They are seeking smallness, but not remoteness. The advances in
telecommunications, telecommuting and the lower cost of living in small towns
are making it possible for more people to migrate to the rural communities.
Many newcomers discover that long-time residents aren't always delighted to
see their town grow. Breaking into a small-town society ranges from awkward to
impossible. And, ironically, sometimes the transplants try to change the town
and turn it into what they left behind. The same phenomenon happens in
churches. This phenomenon happens regardless of town population. Churches can
be a difficult society to penetrate. A church carries its own culture and
sometimes even freezes out the surrounding culture.
The
good-to-go church, however, moves on, even as the culture moves on. Better
yet, the good-to-go church transforms rather than adapts. “The culture in
which the church is planted has moved from an agrarian economy to a product
economy to a service economy to an experience economy. Kevin Graham Ford,
church observer and author of Jesus for
a New Generation, makes the point about the changing culture using coffee
as an example. In an agrarian economy, farmers grew coffee and traded the
beans for other products. In a product economy, farmers learned to grind the
beans, package the grounds and sell them at the local general store. In a
service economy, customers could sit down at the five-and-dime and be served a
cup of coffee for a quarter. In today's experience economy, however, a $3 cup
of cappuccino is served in pleasant surroundings with soft music, fireplaces,
books, magazines and newspapers.” People yearn for something, anything that offers authentic
experiences not rooted in the past, but stretching to the future. The church
that's aware knows that people crave experience and then thinks about how to
help people experience the presence of God on the deepest levels. If we are
going to be a good-to-go church, we will need to address the fact that up to
five generations, are sitting in these pews at any given time. We are situated
in a unique moment in history; we are able to offer authentic experiences of
the holy and the divine! Those experiences are felt in and through community.
We tend to stay in the
mentality and operate from the place that bigger is better. True, the bigger
the city, the more it has to offer. Also true, however, is that in a big city
we can get easily lost, literally and figuratively. In terms of church, is the
church that pushes “more” and functions “busier” better equipped to
nurture personal journeys of faith? Sometimes I think we are seduced by the
“what if’s” of numbers and don’t spend the necessary energy on “what
is” with the people. The
good-to-go church holds up a distinctly Christian ethos that serves the
present age -- and helps the individual find faith in the God of every age.
That ethos must reassert and renew its essential character as a faith of
salvation and healing…of body, soul and spirit.
Sometimes we want to stay in
the Ghost Town. The
United States
, especially in the West, is littered with the remains of once-upon-a-time
towns that rose with economic booms and sank with busts. Even parts of some
functioning towns have ghostly boroughs, where the economy hinged on only one
product or service for which the demand has dried up. Ghost-town churches are
like this, too. They are not necessarily ghostly because of sparse attendance
but because they linger at the scene of early victories, still peering through
the glory of what once worked, and wondering how to make it work again. ”O
God Our Help in Ages Past.” What’s the rest of the line? “Our hope for
years to come.”
The good-to-go church
moves beyond the irrelevance of the past and reinvents itself. Crossing the
Jordan
means leaving old ways of thinking and embracing new constructs for ministry.
The alive church sees itself, not as already invented at Pentecost, but rather
born there, and is now an unfinished, evolutionary work in progress.
The challenges of being a
prophetic witness are not for the church alone, but for all who struggle to be
faithful along the journey. God comes to us like Elijah came to Elisha, and
God asks, "What would you like me to do for you?" Do you realize
what an incredible offer that really is?
Like Elisha we too, can ask God for a double dose of his Spirit. A lot of
times we feel stuck at the small towns, large towns and ghost towns of our
life. But when we feel bad-to-go, or good-to-stay, God's double dose will
empower us to go beyond the nostalgia of yesterday into the opportunities of
tomorrow, beyond the myth and into the reality, beyond the old ways of doing
business to new, inventive ways of faithful discipleship. God’s story
continues, and so do God’s questions. God asks, “why not stay where you
are?” How will we answer such a question? Remember Elisha’s response? “I
will never leave you.” So when God says, why not park here in Nostalgia?
What will your answer be? (I will never leave you.) Why not stay here at small
town? What will your answer be? Why not stay here at the bigger-is-better
mentality? What will your answer be? When God asks, what do you want me to do
for you? May we have the courage and the desire to respond, “Give me a
double dose of your spirit”! Wearing the mantle of the Holy Spirit, we can
all be good-to- go Christians!”
Thanks be to God Amen.
Blessings,
Melissa
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