Thoughts that drag me to Jesus, and to the cross

15The 50 prophets from Jericho saw him and said, “The power of Elijah is on Elisha!” They went to meet him, bowed down before him, 16and said, “There are fifty of us here, all strong men. Let us go and look for your master. Maybe the spirit of the LORD has carried him away and left him on some mountain or in some valley.”
“No, you must not go,” Elisha answered.
17 But they insisted until he gave in and let them go. The 50 of them went and looked high and low for Elijah for three days, but didn’t find him. 18Then they returned to Elisha, who had waited at Jericho, and he said to them, “Didn’t I tell you not to go?”  2 Kings 2:15-18 GNT

In other words, the church is not just any assembly that happens to call itself by the name of Jesus for whatever reason or purpose, or where there may be orders calling themselves holy and so on. To counter a current heresy, the church is not just “people.” That assertion may rightly controvert the idea that the church is a building or even an institution, but it too easily forgets that the church is a gathering called and shaped by the gospel of its Lord, Jesus Christ. The Christian church occurs where the quite specific activity known as speaking the gospel occurs and the sacraments are administered according to that gospel. Where that does not occur there is no such thing as the church of Jesus Christ.

I look at the 50 prophets that Elisha encountered, and I see me.

And I see the church today.

We can recognize the Spirit of God on someone; we see the call God has laid on their life, But when they speak for Him, it is as if we didn’t know them, or we doubted they speak for God, and we go and waste a couple of days, doing our own thing.

We do this with each other, and we do this even with the scriptures. Liberal and conservative alike, we look for what resonates with our emotions and our thoughts, blissfully forgetting those emotions and thoughts have been twisted by sin.

We see that to an extent in the claim that “people are the church,” when people are talking about the buildings, but even more about the structure and those in responsibility. No longer is the church where God’s word is preached, and He blesses people with the sacraments. Forde rails against this–for where is there hope given, where is life cleansed, where else is there a chance to be still, and be revived by the power of the Holy Spirit.

While church should serve man, it should not serve his desires. Elisha was grieving, but he was also aware the time had come for others to step up, for Elijah to rest. The 50 should have done the same, for they saw God at work. When we hear the gospel, when we see the miraculous sacraments, I pray that we can be like Elijah, and work from that place of communion, humbling ourselves, and repenting of our trying to replace God.

Lord, help us to recognize the Elisha’s in our lives, help us to hear Your word, and receive your sacraments, and then help us to die to self, and see Christ live with us. AMEN!

i
Gerhard O. Forde, “Proclaiming,” in Theology Is for Proclamation (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1990), 186–187.