I sometimes wonder what goes through the minds of those who Sunday by Sunday have chosen our readings. Were they aware, for example, that today would be likely to be the day on which large numbers of newly ordained deacons would be joining their new parishes and participating in the worship for the first time and perhaps hearing their Vicars preach for the first time? After hearing these readings they might not unreasonably wonder what they had really let themselves in for. Elisha takes on the mantle of Elijah literally. Elijah doesn’t say anything to him he simply throws his great cloak over him. Not unreasonably Elisha having correctly interpreted Elijah’s meaning, asks if he can say good bye to those he loves. Elijah replies, Go back again; for what have I done to you?’ It seems that this could mean rather grudgingly that Elijah isn’t stopping him. But in English it seems to mean more. What have I done to you? What in making you my successor am I committing you to? What demands will this make upon you that will stretch you to the limits of your ability and endurance?
Paul tells the Galatians that the Spirit is making them free but it is a frightening kind of freedom. Preachers and commentators will tell us over and over again that when Paul talks about the flesh, he doesn’t mean it literally. He isn’t trying to make disembodied Christians. The flesh is the symbol of all human opposition to God. True spirituality is at home in the sanctified body. And yet for all these caveats, living by the spirit sounds a rather bleak affair. Is all desire wrong, and if not, how do I distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable desire? Why is the flesh an appropriate symbol for all that is wrong with us? Paul is part of a world that combines the Greek suspicion of passion with the Jewish suspicion of sexual desire. On the other side of Romanticism and psychology our world sees these things differently. How are we to understand without trembling Paul’s idea of crucifying the flesh with all its passions and desires? If Elijah and Paul sound harsh, Jesus sounds harsher. He seems to imply that there can be no going back to say goodbye. He seems to reject the sacred duty of burying ones father. He seems to want to test his potential followers to the limit and put off any who aren’t up to it. As he sets his face towards Jerusalem we are to be reminded of those prophets who set their faces like rock in order to prevail in the task God set before them. Jesus sets his face towards Jerusalem to die.
So having heard these readings might a newly ordained deacon not unreasonably wonder what he has really let himself in for? Is this the kind of life he is trying to lead for himself and encourage others to lead? Perhaps it would help if we try to explore in more detail why we might find these readings so daunting? There are of course many differences between the time these readings were committed to paper and the present day but perhaps the greatest is this; that God is no longer the background to everything we do and hear and think. We no longer lean on God’s existence as we might lean on the banisters to climb the stairs. Faith is now a matter of choice – a personal rather than a communal vision and has therefore become bound up with our precarious sense of self.
This process worked slowly over two millennia as our sense of the world changed too; at first the natural world around us was a close relation with whom we had to work in uneasy partnership, then it became a servant we could control and dominate, and so we saw ourselves less and less a part of the natural world. The universe grew in size and splendour and as we began to explore its mysteries so we had to think more clearly about what we could know and how we knew it. Man became the observer, certain of himself only as an individual thinker. And within this brave new world faith became a choice at first a choice between Catholic or Protestant and then as the religious wars of the 17th century grew ever more bitter a choice between faith and no faith. And so gradually faith became the articulation of a personal vision, something we have to choose and work out and hold onto for ourselves. Faith becomes an implicit factor in our personal vulnerabilities. We hold on to it, if it seems to strengthen our sense of who we are; we change or give up faith if it seems to threaten our hard won selfhood; or more dangerously we cling on to an illusory version of faith because it helps us avoid the parts of ourselves we would rather not know.
So when the Bible talks about freedom and vocation we hear its message in circumstances it authors could not have envisaged. Of course for them these words were also demanding but in a different way. We hear its message as a potential threat to our sense of self a source of judgement, a weapon against the more morally fragile parts of ourselves. But could it in fact be heard differently as the key to finding our authentic selves?
The modern concern for who and what I am, is a search for authenticity. Sometimes this search can seem self centred and trivial, the latest fad for those who have the time and money to pursue it. The genuine search for authenticity is set against the horizon of things that matter. The sense of self is strengthened by our response to something beyond us, something that connects us to a wider community of purpose with goals that challenge and exalt us. If Christianity is to be part of this horizon of things that matter in the modern search for authentic selfhood its spirituality must be demanding; it must present us with hard choices; it must confront what Iris Murdoch calls the fat, relentless, ego’.
Both Elijah and Jesus have to test their followers. If they are not the right people to carry on the work of God, it will do great harm to who they are. If they are the right people then they have to know that God’s demands are serious and that they will need to stand in the strength of God to fulfil them. Paul’s challenge to the Galatians concerns both the promise and the shock of true freedom. Unless we can honestly recognise what it is in us that holds us back, fearfully or selfishly, from God, we shall never know the grandeur of God’s grace to free us into the realm of the spirit. Elijah, Paul, and Jesus three challenges to vocation and the true freedom of the authentic self, but then finally the psalmist, and a text that was a favorite of my first training incumbent. The lot is fallen unto me in a fair ground; yea I have a goodly heritage.’ Curates of Hampstead parish church living in the school may well feel that they are in the middle of a fair ground. And Hampstead has its own brand of things that work against God’s grace and yet there are enough people here to welcome, to challenge, to stimulate, to need and to be open to a new curate that this can, we pray, be a fair ground for growing a new ministry and increasing the goodly heritage for us all.