What Elijah ate under the broom tree must have been some
pretty amazing stuff. He ate and went in
the strength of that food forty days and nights. Elijah has his speech down pat, I am the only
one left who follows Yahweh and they want to kill me. He is sticking with that story no matter
what, he is done, there is no hope left for the prophet. The Lord calls him out
of the cave and yet in all the powerful manifestations of God’s presence Elijah
remains in the cave until the low whisper and then he wraps his face in his
cloak, it isn’t safe to “see” God, and goes out. The Lord asks the same question and Elijah
gives the same answer. He is tired and
alone. Ultimately the Lord gives the
prophet his final marching orders, anointing two men as king and another as his
replacement prophet but he also needs to know something, there are seven
thousand who have not bent the knee to Baal, he is not so alone as he has
said. Elisha means God is salvation, and
that will be his ministry, just as Elijah, the Lord is God, was the great
proclamation of the man. Elisha begins
his ministry as apprentice or assistant to Elijah, exactly what he needed, a
partner so he wasn’t alone.
This Gospel reading immediately follows the raising of
Lazarus from the dead, so we can assume Mary in that first sentence is the
sister of Lazarus. It makes her quite an
important figure in the story of Jesus but John does it in such a way that
makes it easy to overlook her. Do the
Pharisees want a Messiah? Their concern
is that if Jesus keeps on doing signs, so many people will believe in Him that
the Romans will “take away both our place and our nation.” The high priest is
the one who finally comes up with the logic of one man dying for the nation
being the best course of action but he failed to see that was exactly God’s
plan in a more ultimate sense. He is
only thinking of preserving the nation in a temporal sense. After this, John tells us they withdrew to a
region near the wilderness, out of plain sight of those whose desire it was to
arrest and crucify Him, the time was not yet right.
Another leader here among the Sanhedrin, Gamaliel, Paul’s
rabbinic teacher, the grandson of Hillel, the founder of one of the most famous
rabbinic schools, counsels against rash action against the apostles. He reminds them of others who have arisen
and, for a time, gained a constituency and then flamed out in one way or
another. He has seen movements come and
go and generally they simply go away.
If, however, this is of God, then opposition would be foolish, so they
just beat the apostles and warn them not to preach and teach in the name of
Jesus. Apparently, they didn’t
understand the effect of the resurrection and the outpouring of the Holy
Spirit. These men knew first hand that
death was not the final answer, they were fearless, so they preached in the
temple every day thereafter, almost daring the council to take action. What do we fear that keeps us from
boldness? Whatever it is, we apparently
value it more than the Gospel.
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