We’re coming to the end of our summer of miracles at church (although we always hope for more!) and we’ve come to the end of our walk with Elisha in the first half of 2 Kings.
2 Kings 13.14-21 describes the final incidents we’re told about Elisha, one shortly before his death and one afterwards, which are another curious pair of happenings at the end of a curious life.
When Elisha was ill with his final illness the king of Israel went to see him. Elisha had the king shoot some arrows out of the window in a prophetic act – the shooting of the arrows represented the victory the king would have over Israel’s enemies, the Arameans. The king’s faith only stretched as far as shooting three arrows, representing partial victory over the Arameans. This frustrated the aging Elisha, who said that, if the king had shot five or six arrows, that would have represented complete victory.
After Elisha died and his body was put into a tomb, another dead body was hastily thrown into the tomb (when the people burying it saw some enemies coming to attack). Remarkably, when the dead body touched Elisha’s bones (so it may have been some time after Elisha’s death), the dead body came back to life!
This final incident raises the question again that we’ve been facing all through our look at Elisha: What on earth do we make of these peculiar incidents that seem so far from our everyday experience of life?
Perhaps even asking that question says more about me than it does about the biblical text; maybe it should be encouraging me to believe for more of the miraculous that God wants to do, and not limit the Spirit’s activity as the king of Israel did with his arrows. Please God, I pray I don’t do that!
Or perhaps the final incident says something about Elisha – several places I’ve looked it up simply say that it shows that Elisha’s powers to resurrect live on, even in his death. Maybe, but this is not something that’s easy to translate into our contemporary experience, unless we want to follow the tradition of venerating saints’ bones and looking for miracles when we visit them. And why did Elisha’s powers live on, but not other Old Testament prophets’ powers?
Or perhaps we can look back at Elisha through New Testament eyes and ask what Elisha and his life tell us about Jesus. As we’ve seen, Elisha’s life foreshadowed Jesus’ in quite a lot of ways. He healed the sick, he provided for those in need, he fed many with a little bread, he challenged those who questioned his power from God. And now, at the end of his life, even in his death he brings life.
The life of Elisha, whatever it meant for those who collected the stories into the books we now have in the Bible, also points us to Jesus. Jesus’ death brought the ultimate life, available to us all; Jesus gives all that we need for life in all its fulness.
And, as the final incident of Elisha’s life shows, we are invited into a partnership with Jesus, by the Holy Spirit. Jesus calls us to play our part – represented by the king shooting his arrows – as fully as we can, to bring as much of God’s kingdom as possible to the people around us. Like Elisha, we are called to be both empowered by the Holy Spirit to live in God’s way and to be an image of Jesus for those around us to see.
Photo by Cristina Gottardi on Unsplash