Signs, Signs, Everywhere a Sign

2 Kings 2:1-2,6-14
July 1, 2001


Note: While lying fallow for a time, I'm selecting and posting some personal favorites among sermons past. This sermon is from the first Sunday of my service as Senior Minister of First Baptist Greenville. Many thanks to Elijah, Elisha, and Five Man Electrical Band.


God whom we worship and serve is truly astounding. And the most astounding thing about God is God's imagination and creativity. Only the mind of God could imagine some things and make them happen.

The late Loren Eiseley, a distinguished biologist, anthropologist, naturalist, and occasional mystic once suggested that "out beyond the rustling of the galaxies" and deep within beyond "the great coil of DNA in which is coded the very alphabet of life," there lies the One whom Eiseley called "the ultimate Dreamer, who dreamed the light and the galaxies." Eiseley wrote, "Before act was, or substance existed, imagination grew in the dark." Only the mind of God could imagine some things and make them happen.

We are experiencing one of those thing this morning. More than thirty years ago, L. D. Johnson left the pastorate of this congregation to make Furman University his place of ministry. Earlier this year it began to dawn on me that somehow in the imagination and creativity of God the time might be right for Furman to return the favor to First Baptist. On Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings, everywhere I went in the building I saw signs.

Now you have to understand that I am not one of those persons who goes through life looking for a "sign." Jesus was quite clear about his perspective on signs when he said, "An evil and adulterous generation asks for a sign" (Mark 16:4). Paul called searching for signs a symptom of a misplaced spiritual emphasis when he said, "For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified" (1 Corinthians 1:22). I take Jesus and Paul too seriously to look for a sign.

But I kept seeing signs everywhere in the building. If felt as though I was living the chorus from an old song by the Canadian group Five Man Electrical Band: "Sign, sign, everywhere a sign, blockin' out the scenery, breakin' my mind. Do this. Don't do that. Can't you read the sign?" You've seen them, too. They have a white background with a yellow design and purple letters that spell, "What Really Matters."

"What Really Matters." Most of us recognize that phrase as our stewardship theme for 2001. Many of us who have been around for a while will also recognize it as the theme of a lecture series at Furman University established and continuing in L. D. Johnson's memory. There have been any number of times in the last six months that I have wished our stewardship committee had chosen a different theme. I would have slept more easily at night, and I would have worked more contentedly by day if I had not kept seeing those signs calling me to commit my life to "what really matters" most to me.

Only the mind of God could imagine some things and then make them happen. "Sign, sign, everywhere a sign. . . . Can't you read the sign?"

Our Old Testament lectionary passage for this morning provides us with three signs that point us in the direction of "what really matters." The first sign is the largest of the three. It is the company of prophets. In ancient Israel, the company of the prophets kept prophetic proclamation alive. Some Old Testament scholars sometimes refer to this group as the "prophetic order" or the "prophetic guild." I call the the prophetic community. In the last two decades, the study of prophets and prophecy has taught us that prophets do not exist in a vacuum. Centuries of preaching and teaching in the church and the academy alike have overemphasized individual prophetic figures such as Elijah and Elisha and Deborah and Miriam and undervalued the role of the prophetic community.

But it turns out that there is no such thing as a lone-ranger prophet. The truth is, there never was such a thing as a "lone ranger." The only reason we heard those words each week, "The lone ranger rides again," was because last week Tonto had bailed his pale-faced buddy in the mask out of trouble.

Prophets--like rangers--exist only in community. When we read 2 Kings 2, we tend to read it as though Elijah and Elisha were the only actors in the play. It might look that way if we only read the portion the church has traditionally marked out for reading in worship, verses 1-2 and 6-14. But read with me between those lines. Verse 3 that goes unread speaks of the company of the prophets who were in Bethel. And verse 5 refers to the company of the prophets who were in Jericho. Verse 7 says that 50 members of the company of the prophets accompanied Elijah and Elisha from Jericho to the Jordan River, and verse 15 reports that they were waiting when Elisha returned alone. This nearly constant stage presence of the company of the prophets is an important sign for us, because the company of the prophets was the predecessor to our treasured idea of the priesthood of all believers. Long before First Baptist Greenville embraced the vision of "Each Member a Minister," Moses cried out in the wilderness, "Would that all God's people were prophets!" (Numbers 11:29).

The apostle Paul felt the same way. In 1 Corinthians 14:1, Paul exhorts us all, "Pursue love and strive for the spiritual gifts, and especially that you may prophesy." Listen to how Paul defines prophecy: "Those who prophesy," he says, "Speak to other people for their upbuilding and their encouragement and their consolation." According to Paul, then, when we are called to the priesthood of all believers, we are called to be a prophetic community, a community pursuing love and speaking to people for their upbuilding and encouragement ad their consolation. That's what "Each Member a Minister" means in the prophetic community, and that really matters.

Let me give you an example. In June of 1977 in the small Baptist church where I was minister of music at the time, the pastor delivered a series of sermons on marriage and the family. Perhaps the best thing that could be said of his view of marriage is that he was more than twenty years ahead of his time--SBC style. Ordinarily, what he said would have been water off a duck's back as far as I was concerned. But this time, there was birdshot in the air because Bev was there to hear him. We were counting down the weeks before our wedding in August, and Bev wasn't taking to those sermons very well. Let's just say that the sermon I got over lunch every Sunday was even more animated than the one I had heard at church.

And then one Sunday it happened. To this day, it is one of the most memorable and moving experiences of my entire life. Never before or since have I felt that God has spoken any more clearly, directly, and personally to me. After worship was over that day, a small, silver-haired lady named Ethel Clarke came up to Bev and me and asked ever so quietly, "May I speak with the two of you for a moment?" "Sure," one of us said as we looked at each other with a mix of surprise and uncertainty. "Come with me," she said, and we followed her to the back of the sanctuary, up under the balcony. She stopped, turned, faced us, and this is what she said, word-for-word after twenty-four years: "I know what the Bible says, and I know what the preacher says. But me and Brodie were married for forty-seven wonderful years, and we always did things 50-50. I just wanted the two of you to hear that." And with that she smiled, turned, and headed for the door, leaving Bev and me utterly speechless.

Ethel Clarke taught me that morning that God whom we worship and serve is as likely to speak through a silver-haired widow as through a voice crying in the wilderness or a preacher standing in a pulpit. Ethel Clarke taught me that morning that if one essential ingredient in the life of a Baptist congregation is the freedom of the pulpit, then a second like unto the first is the freedom of the pew. And Ethel Clarke taught me that morning that the priesthood of all believers means cultivating a prophetic community. We are all in the company of prophets.

"Each Member a Minister" means every one of us pursuing love and speaking to people for their upbuilding and their encouragement and their consolation. That's the direction in which the sign of the company of prophets points us, and that really matters.

The second sign in this morning's passage is the sign of the spirit. In verse 9, the younger prophet Elisha requests of his mentor and friend Elisha something that the older prophet cannot give him. Elisha says, "Before you go, leave me with a double portion of your spirit." It's a fascinating moment, psychologically. Elisha is sufficiently unsure of himself and his own ability that he figures he needs twice as much as Elijah has to get the job done. I'm familiar with that feeling.

But as Elijah's answer makes clear, the spirit is not Elijah's to give, because the spirit that sufficiently enlivens and empowers him is God's spirit, not Elijah's. Though Elijah and Elisha are the only actors on the stage when this takes place, remember the community of prophets standing in the wings. Because in the prophetic community, what is true for one is true for all The spirit of God is not something to which only a few have access or recourse. The creative presence of God's spirit infuses the universe of God's creation from the rustling of the galaxies to the coiling of DNA. The book of Genesis tells us that the spirit of God swept across the face of the water while the earth was void and without form and darkness covered the face of the the deep (Genesis 1:2). There, imagination grew in the dark, and the spirit of God enlivened and empowered creation.

The gospel of Luke tells us that this same spirit enlivened and empowered the ministry and mission of Jesus, as our Lord announced in his inaugural sermon in the synagogue at Nazareth: "The spirit of the Lord God is upon me . . . because the Lord has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners" (Luke 4:18; Isaiah 61:1).

And the book of Acts tells us that at Pentecost God's promise in the book of Joel to make prophets of all the Lord's people was fulfilled: "I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy" (Acts 2:17; Joel 2:28). From creation to Christ to the prophetic community, it is one and the same spirit. Through the continuing work of the Holy Spirit, the one who dreamed the light and the galaxies enlivens and empowers each one of us to pursue love and to speak to people for their upbuilding and their encouragement and their consolation.

The third sign for our reading is the mantle. The mantle. When Elijah disappears into the whirlwind and whatever it was that happened is described in 2 Kings as chariots and horses of fire occurs, Elisha spots the mantle of Elijah lying on the ground. It is the OT prophet's equivalent of the quieter, more reflective vision of the American poet Emily Dickinson, who wrote, "Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves And Immortality."

I have sometimes mused over whether Elijah, upon seeing his conveyance arriving from a distance, removed his cloak from his shoulders, folded it neatly, and laid it down for his successor to pick up. And there Elisha found it where his mentor left it for him. Or perhaps, as the fiery steeds approached, the awe and the terror of the moment overcame him, and he simply lost his grip on it where he stood. And there Elisha found it where his mentor dropped it. Or maybe Elijah held on to that mantle with all his might as though it were his prophetic lovey, his professional security blanket, that was only wrested from his white-knuckled hands by the force of the whirlwind. And it fell away behind him where Elisha picked it up. Elijah's mantle is an apt metaphor, a sign, if you will, for how we all make transitions and negotiate profound passages in our lives.

Each of us handles the mantle of our life differently as we arrive at death's door, or as Dickinson put it, as death arrives at our door. Some of us wrap it up neatly and put it down carefully, the way we did everything else in life. Others of us drop our lives where we leave them, for someone else to clear up after us. After all, we did everything else that way, too. And some of us fight to hang on with all we are worth, never letting go until life is wrested from our grip. In this morning's passage, though, the sign of the mantle also applies to our acting as Elisha did by taking up the work that God has set before us to be done in the prophetic community.

There is work to be done in every nook and cranny of our congregational life both within the walls of this wonderful facility and reaching out into our world to places with which we are familiar, such as Greenville, in partnership with Open Heart church; such as Canada, in partnership with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship; and such as Cuba, in partnership with the Alliance of Baptists.

The mantles in our congregational life also take some of us much farther afield, to places we might be hard pressed to find on a map. On the grounds of this church's campus (old ways of speaking die hard, you know), in its Sunday School rooms, conference rooms, Media Center, nursery, kitchen, reception area, gymnasium, ball fields, to name only a few, to a far-flung wherever that we have not even imagined yet--but God already has--there is a mantle. There is a mantle for every task, for every role, in every place, in every time, for everyone.

The most important question, then, is not who left a mantle behind or what condition they left it; the most important question is, "Who will pick it up?" Or, more pointedly yet, "Will you pick it up when you come across it?" Not so very long ago, the senior pastor search committee and came to the conclusion that it is the time and the place for me to pick up the mantle of the senior pastorate of this remarkable congregation.

Last week I listened on the radio as Baxter Wynn read the roll call of my twenty-four predecessors, and I was humbled and terrified. And I was moved, as Elisha was, to cry out, "Make it a double, Lord!" And I'll never forgive Bax for the fact that I had to put away the sermon I had pulled out of my file to preach today," "Synchronism and Structure in 1-2 Kings and Neo-Babylonian Chronicles."

But as impressive as the roll call was that we heard last week, what makes this congregation truly remarkable is not my predecessors but your predecessors. Because this congregation is a prophetic community in which each member is a minister. There is a mantle, a task, a role, for each on of us, from the oldest to the youngest. No one mantle is more important or impressive than any other because every one of them is indispensable to our efforts to be the prophetic community that God has called u to be. The mantle that you come across really matters. Pick it up and put it on. No matter how larger or small it is, it really matters. Enlivened and empowered by one and the same spirit that impels the rustling of the galaxies, the coiling of DNA, we are called together to pursue love and to speak to people for their upbuilding and their encouragement and their consolation.

The signs are up all over the building, calling you to commit your life to "what really matters" most to you. Sign, sign, everywhere a sign. Can you read the sign?

Let us pray: O God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of Sarah, Rebekkah, Rachel, and Leah, of Moses, Miriam, Deborah, Elijah, and Elisha, give us eyes to read the signs, ears to hear the needs, and hearts and hands willing to be moved by your Holy Spirit and the example of Christ in whose name we pray. Amen.

The invitation of Christ and this church is open to all who would come professing faith in Jesus Christ and committing their lives to Christ's service. And that invitation is open as well to all who would commit their lives to Christ's service as a member of this prophetic community.


Copyrighted © 2001 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.