God Has Left the Building: 2 Kings 6:8-23 Chariots of Fire

We continue our series about stories where God meets people outside of their religious buildings.

 

Last week we listened to a story well-known to Christians the world over: the angel announces to Mary the birth of Jesus. This week's story found in 2 Kings 6:8-23 is almost unknown. I remember a vague reference to it from my high school years, when the movie Chariots of Fire came out taking its title from this story. However, I didn’t really discover this story until I had been a pastor for several years. I consider it a lovely hidden treasure of the Bible.

 

Four main characters drive this story:

1) The King of the Arameans (an area near contemporary Syria)

2) the King of Israel (whose garrison is then located in Samaria)

3) the prophet Elisha who is physically distant from both the kings for most of the story

4) God who is working through Elisha, communicating things the prophet would not otherwise know

 

Elisha is the disciple of the prophet Elijah. He has seen the wages of war and is not pleased. Too much death and destruction has engulfed his life. Perhaps the killing so sickens him that in this story he longs for a better way to respond to enemies.

 

Elisha has tormented the king of the Arameans by miraculously knowing what he has said privately to those who are physically distant from the prophet. When that same king comes against him, he has a revelation that the forces of God surround and protect him. Chariots and horses of fire stand between him and the enemy’s chariots and horses. He sees them and makes sure his young servant sees them.

 

But he does not send the flaming weaponry after the enemy’s army, rather he prays that God temporarily blind them, and pranks them into following him right into the military stronghold of the king of Israel. When God answers his prayer to open those enemies’ eyes, they realize they are surrounded by Israel’s military and are at their mercy.

 

When the king seeks divine sanction to slaughter them, Elisha proposes that instead he feed them a simple meal, give them some water, and then send them on their way! I’d like to think that Elisha has seen enough deadliness in his life, and wants to see if hospitality could accomplish what horses and chariots could not. He longs for a different kind of world. Prophets do that!

 

What is truly unique in this story is that the king follows the prophet’s lead and even upgrades his advice. He sets a banquet table in the presence of his enemies, giving them more than bread and water. He offers them a feast. With their full stomachs and happy hearts, he sends them on their merry way.

 

The story concludes by saying the Arameans stopped attacking Israel from that day forward. A feast accomplished–for a time–what all the apparatus of war could not.

 

In this story Elisha is a prophet whose imagination moves beyond the framework everyone else follows. He longs for a world that is different than the one in which he spends his days. He takes a step to transform the relationship with those who had historically been his enemies. He wins them over with kindness and changes not only everyone’s expectations, but their practices.

 

What are the ways we believe are the only ways to solve problems? How have those ways disappointed us? What would it be like to move ourselves and those with authority over us away from hostility and toward hospitality?

 

May God open our eyes to see a new way of relating to others in our lives. May the chariots of fire around us still our hearts and give us the courage to risk engagement with our would-be enemies.

 

Where might God be calling you out of one reality in order to imagine another that is radically different? Where might you engage in transformative acts of hospitality?

 

Pastor Phil