All the king's men

 All the king's men  

The story of Yah’s prophet Elijah and King Ahaziah, son of Jezebel – in the TRV recording below - is important if you want to follow Jesus – because he declares it’s wrong. Whether it happened the way First and Second Kings say it did or not, it’s wrong about God.

      That’s in Luke 9: He is on the way to Jerusalem with his disciples. He’s going through Samaria, why not? – there’s no obligation to hate the Samaritans. And his messengers go ahead of him into a Samaritan village seeking a bed for the night and breakfast for the next morning. When they hear the travelers are going to Jerusalem, the villagers turn them away. John and James say to Jesus: “Shouldn’t we burn them up, the way Elijah did?” – referring to the messengers the sick king sent to the always-savage prophet so he can incinerate them, because – how can they help it? – they make him angrier. And Jesus answers, “Well . . . no.” Wouldn’t it be easier to go on to the next place? 

Here’s the gospel story – from the King James Version (Luke 9:51-56):

   And it came to pass, when the time was come that he should be received up, he steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem, and sent messengers before his face: and they went, and entered into a village of the Samaritans, to make ready for him. And they did not receive him, because his face was as though he would go to Jerusalem. And when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elias [Elijah] did? But he turned, and rebuked them, and said, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them. And they went to another village.

And here’s my take on it – don’t tell me I’m wrong!

1. Is there a story about Elijah in which he is not pissed off at something?
        And isn’t it precisely this simultaneously pissy and constant anger that Jesus wants to see sluffed off what-God-really-means like a layer of obsolescent skin? When the Samaritan villagers decide to refuse him and his disciples bed and breakfast, and John and James, who love anger as much as the prophet does, above anything (or, perhaps they think they should, because if they do won’t they be borne up in chariots of fire and sit at the Lord’s right hand?), when John and James want to incinerate the entire town, he asks – Jesus does – eyebrows slightly raised, “Wouldn’t it be easier to go on to the next place? Why are you so damn mad? It’s not on my account. Look at me. Am I mad? Am I Elijah, or anything like him?”
2. At one (human) level, the power in the gospel story is this: Jesus somehow allays the (self-)righteous anger of John and James. How does he do it? How does he say to self-righteous that thinks it’s just-righteous anger, “Let’s go on” in such a way that it does? (If you figure this out, let me know. It’s something I’d love to learn.)
3. On another (divine) level: This is Jesus’ chutzpah that he will keep redefining God. Elijah is wrong about “him”; the prophet is at least as wrong as the Pharisees, as the Sadducees, as the water-wasters at Qumran, as the rabbis in the synagogues, the priests in the temple in Jerusalem, and the lawyers everywhere. But they have all (every self-righteous one of them) got it wrong.
        Their god, though, can just shake his head: “That damn Jesus,” he may say under his breath. But he can let “that damn Jesus” go, because he knows that at the end of the day it’s not his sense of let’s let it go and go on but their self-righteous anger that will win out.
        Doesn’t John’s Apocalypse have the last word?

Well, there's enough context for "Elijah and Ahaziah," and more than enough. Here's the story from 1 Kings 22 and 2 Kings 1 - 

06.28.16

Want to hear more stories from the TRV? See here.