Proper 12 Year B (BCP lectionary)

2 Kings 2:1-15
Ephesians 4:1-7,11-16
Mark 6:45-52
Psalm 114

PASSING --AND TAKING UP-- THE TORCH

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

We’ve all seen that ceremony at the beginning of the Olympics each year, where several runners race towards the stadium in shifts, carrying the Olympic torch. Each one runs for a certain span, then passes the torch to the next runner, who takes it from there. Eventually, this relay ends with the final bearer of the torch, who approaches the Olympic cauldron, then uses the torch to light the Olympic Flame. From this practice, we have the expression “Pass the torch,” meaning to surrender one’s duties or responsibilities to another who comes after.

In our Old Testament lesson today, the prophet Elijah “passes the torch” to his disciple, Elisha. Elisha had traveled with and learned from Elijah, rather like an apprentice, for years. Now, aware that his mentor would be taken from him this very day, Elisha doggedly refused to be dismissed, he refused to be spared the pain and confusion of witnessing Elijah’s ascension in the whirlwind. Elijah passes the blessing of a “double helping of his Spirit” onto Elisha for his faithfulness up to the very end. In doing this, Elijah also passes along the office of prophet, with all the responsibilities and authority that of that office. Elisha “picked up the mantle of Elijah” and in so doing assumed the same authority and role that Elijah had held before him.

In this story, we are witnessing something of a “relay race” of ministries. Elijah has faithfully run the course of his own ministry, and now passes the torch to Elisha, his student.

I’m sure many of us have run in relay races of one sort or another ourselves. I remember that, in grade school, we used to run relay races around the block in P.E. I recall pounding up the asphalt in my sneakers up to the next kid, fumbling the plastic relay staff into their hands as quickly as possible before they took off. I never really liked these races that much; I wasn’t a particularly good runner as a child-- I was somewhat overweight and bookish, not an athlete-- and I hated that my team suffered because I couldn’t run that well.


Running races is one of the Apostle Paul’s favorite metaphors to describe the Christian life. He exhorts the Corinthians, “Run in such a way that you may win the prize.” - that is, not a “perishable” prize, but an “imperishable” one. In the same letter, he describes his own evangelism as “running the race.“ In another place, Paul tells the Galatians that “You were running well.” until, that is, they were confused by false teaching.

But Paul is clear that this running isn’t just about the individual Christian. It is about the whole church community running toward the prize. In the letter to the Philippians Paul links the image of running a race with the idea that the Christian community should get along with each other. He writes, “Do all things without murmuring and arguing; It is by your holding fast to the word of life that I can boast on the day of Christ that I did not run in vain.” And the letter to the Hebrews links race with the rest of the Christian Church, both those we know, and those who came before us: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also… run with perseverance the race that is set before us.”

If this Christian life is like a race, it is more like a relay-race than a race between individual competitors. Paul seems to be telling us: We all run together. If one stumbles, we all stumble. Like Elisha, God calls us to pick up the torch-- or the mantle-- of those who ran before us. And like Elijah, God calls us to pass the torch-- or pass the mantle-- to those we have prepared to run on after us. By acknowledging the importance of those who “ran the race” before us, and by training those who will run on after us, we recognize that the ministries we are engaged in are larger than us. They are not “our” ministries, but the Church’s ministries-- or, more properly, God’s ministries.

Let us ask ourselves honestly: Have we picked up the mantle that has been laid in front of us? Have we taken the lead from those who ran before us? And have we mentored others, preparing them to run after us?

(Pause)

The lesson of Elijah and Elisha teaches us a little about passing the torch across our limits in time: Our lifetimes are finite, but the Church is larger-- in time as well as space-- than ourselves. By acknowledging our own finitude, we are kept safe from over identifying ourselves with our particular ministry in the Church, and we are kept safe from being territorial or possessive about our “speciality.” When others express an interest in a ministry that we think of as “ours,” we are able to remember that it does not “belong” to us, and be generous in yielding some of our control over it.

(Pause)

Just as mentoring and teaching passes the torch across time, we can also pass the torch another way: by seeing the different gifts we each possess. In Ephesians, we hear that “there is one body and one Spirit,” but that the body of Christ-- the Church-- is made up of very different people. These different members of the body have quite different gifts: “The gifts that he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.”

When we acknowledge the gifts that others have, and how they differ from ours, we pass the torch across our talents: The ministry of the Church is larger than any one of us, and encompass the many different gifts we have. Paul says that only when all of our gifts are working together can we, the Church, grow “to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.” In other words, It takes all of us to be the Church, It takes all of us to be the body of Christ.

(PAUSE)

Let us mentor and teach others to follow in our ministries, and thank God for each other, whose gifts are so different than our own.

Let us pray, as Paul prayed for us, that we may grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love. AMEN.