By J. Michael Parker
For Today’s Catholic
Protestant Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann said the story of Elisha in II Kings illustrates how a prophet, rather than directly confronting government power, acted as though it didn’t exist.
Brueggemann highlighted Elisha June 22 in the second of three keynote addresses he delivered at Oblate School of Theology’s 2010 Summer Institute, whose theme was “Ancient Biblical Voices Speak Today.”
He pointed out that the book lists numerous kings and their reigns, but added that after such a mind-numbing litany, the author of I and II Kings devotes 12 chapters to two prophets, four to Elijah and eight to his successor, Elisha.
“That’s one-fourth of the whole history of Israel. Imagine, two guys without office and without pedigree constitute 25 percent of the history of Israel. It’s as if he said Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Tutu constituted 50 percent of the history of South Africa; or Norman Thomas, Martin Luther King and Daniel Berrigan constituted 50 percent of U.S. history; or if you said that Pope John XXIII constituted 40 percent of the history of the Catholic Church.” Laughter ensued as Brueggemann added: “…which wouldn’t be a bad idea.”
He said he believes that the reason such a long narrative about the two prophets was designed to “deconstruct and delegitimize” the kings. Then he quipped, “The books of I and II Kings should be titled, ‘Kings?’”
Brueggemann noted that Luke’s infancy narrative also includes a long, tedious passage situating the birth of Jesus in the 15th year of Tiberius Caesar and telling who the Roman officials in the region were. “They are all listed, and we are not interested in any of them,” he said, provoking more laughter.
“Luke uses the power people to locate the story, then dismisses them and proposes a different story. How odd it is that the author of I and II Kings writes two books called Kings and it turns out that the kings are not very interesting or important. Elijah doesn’t say this frontally — he’d be like General McChrystal if he did that,” he said, drawing more laughter. His reference was to the Army general whom President Obama fired as head of the U.S. forces in Afghanistan after strongly criticizing administration policy.
“He does so by showing that the action is somewhere else. I have this imagination of a church in liturgy meetings dismissing the power managers and showing the action is somewhere else being carried out by the carriers of truth.” For example, he said, Lech Walesa and the Polish Solidarity movement didn’t oppose the communist government of Poland but simply organized as if the government weren’t there.
“The action was not with the power managers; it was with truth carriers, uncredentialed and without office or pedigree. Truth carriers, infused with a dangerous spirit of transformation, are alive in the world and turning the world to well being.”
“The truth is the power of transformation to bring the world into synch with the mystery of God,” Brueggemann said. “Elisha divides the Jordan River, and we’re supposed to think of Moses and the Red Sea. Elisha is another Moses; this is another Exodus and God’s saving truth is loose in the land again.”
The scholar recounted a series of miracles Elisha has performed, and a widow’s telling of these miracles to her king, whom she is nagging to return her land that was confiscated by someone else during her absence.
Finally, the king gives back her land, but even his act of royal restitution is overshadowed by the prophet’s wonders. In these texts, Brueggemann said, the reader sees that poverty is turned into abundance, death is turned into life, war into peace and famine into plentitude.
“It bears witness to the fact that when carriers of truth operate, public life is transformed. Brueggemann said. “Not only is there a great celebration of Elisha, but there’s an incredible dismissal of royal authority. If you want anything, don’t ask a king; they don’t have any power to do anything.”
“The narrator wants to tell us Elisha is the guy, without office or pedigree, over whom the transformative power of God has settled to make all things new. The power of God doesn’t come to the kings; it rises from below. That’s what happens to kings in these narratives. They are irrelevant bit players who have been dismissed by the narrator.”
Then Brueggemann asked a rhetorical question: “What does it mean for us to have this testimony entrusted to us that God’s Easter force for life is on the loose and is not carried by people of power and pedigree?” His answer was that the Elisha stories suggest that “if you linger too long with the kings and the status quo management, you’ll be demoralized and paralyzed about new possibilities.”
Brueggemann said that Jesus’ promise of a jubilee — a year of favor to the Lord — in Luke 4 is an appeal back to Old Testament “truth carriers” — prophets such as Elisha. Clearly, he said, “if you consider the Magnificat in Luke 1 and the witness to John in Luke 7, the Gospel of Luke is about social possibilities enacted by a spirit-filled church that cannot be stopped by the authorities.”
It becomes clear, he added, that the work of the spirit is not a mere religious flight into another world but the restoration of the world so that it again becomes God’s life-giving creation. The scholar described a pediatrician who dispenses medicines to the needy and a college chaplain in Nashville who spontaneously launched a personal ministry giving respect, dignity and freedom back to prostitutes.
“She discovered that they were frightened, distressed people who could hardly get through the day, let alone the night. Her ministry of dignity and respect has been replicated in six other cities,” he said. “These are ordinary people without pedigree or credentials, who get moved beyond the conventional to do transformative things to make the world new.”
However, Brueggemann noted that the narrative in Luke 19 in which civil and religious authorities consulted on how to destroy Jesus underscores the point that authorities do not want people on the loose transforming the world, since it means the redistribution of the sources of power. He said there is a disconnect between what powerful authorities know and what needy people know.
“The power people know by memo, which is very one-dimensional — unambiguous truths in which there is no slippage — rules, regulations, maybe creeds and laws; but the needy know by talk and stories and what confronts them each day.
The scholar brought down the house when he asked, “They know by gossip. Did you ever grow up with a party telephone line? My father was a pastor, so my mother spent many hours listening. She said, “I had to do that, or Dad wouldn’t know where he needed to make calls.”
When the authorities came for Jesus in anger, Brueggemann said, Jesus alluded to the narrative in II Kings 5 in which a Syrian general is healed of leprosy but nobody else in the land was healed. “His point was that God does not channel healing according to anyone’s entitlement.
He characterized many church meetings as “a process of negotiating this disconnect between accepting the empty, narrow range of possibilities of the power people and inhaling the newness that comes from below where God’s carriers of truth are at work.”
Taking the whole Elisha narrative, the professor concluded that its message is that “God’s truth is marching on and the kings are powerless to stop it. The Book of Acts is filled with imperial authorities who tried to stop the Easter truth that was on the loose.”