A Wedding Banquet Not Just Any Old Party

Thirteenth Sunday in Course 2025 (Year C)

There are a couple of strange sentences in today’s OT reading that need to be clarified, so you don’t leave church today with question marks on your face. Now we should all leave our Sunday assembly with questions, but they should be queries like “how can I change my attitudes and behavior to make them more like Christ’s.” But when we read “Elijah went over to him and threw his cloak over him,” we probably want to know what that means. The best commentators tell us that his cloak was actually his mantle, which symbolized Elijah’s prophetic office. So casting his mantle on Elisha meant naming him as Elijah’s protégé and successor, just as the Lord directed.

Then there are the words, “Go back! Have I done anything to you?” Well, duh, Elijah has thrown his mantle over Elisha. But Elisha has not accepted this new mission yet. He’s still a farmer. That changed rapidly. Elisha stopped being a farmer by breaking up his yokes and plows and turning his work oxen into a lavish barbeque for his workers and parents and everyone else. He had no more tools of his former trade, so he was no longer a farmer. He thus accepted the vocation to speak for God, and after some training by Elijah, he was a prophet, even stronger than Elijah.

The words of our psalm today help us understand what it means to say you are a prophet of the Lord. The Lord thus becomes everything to you—your allotted portion and your cup means your entire sustenance. Prophets wandered the land living off the food donated by the inhabitants. The prophet focuses on listening to the word of God both in the day and in the night. This gladdens his or her heart, soul and body and gives confidence, because if there is anything lacking, it’s “on God.” As Christians we can especially pray “you will not abandon my soul to the netherworld, nor will you suffer your faithful one to undergo corruption” because we know that death in Christ is really what Paul calls “falling asleep,” because it’s just the next stage in our life with Jesus and the Church. This is truly the fullness of joy, isn’t it?

Before going on we should remind ourselves that all Christians, by their baptism and faith, put on Jesus Christ. That means that like Jesus, we are prophets, priests and kings or leaders. That imposes a moral code, doesn’t it? St. Paul tells us that the freedom given by our incorporation into the Church is not license to do anything we feel like. We know true freedom as freedom from the slavery of sin. We don’t have to live according to the promptings of our passions. We are free to do good, to serve our brothers and sisters. That is living by the Spirit, not the flesh. We can prove that empirically if we know someone who is addicted to drink, or drugs, or sexual promiscuity. That becomes the most important thing in life, and it keeps such folks from doing good. And it hurts them, both soul and body.

On His journey to Jerusalem, where He would be arrested, convicted by a kangaroo court (I ask pardon of all kangaroos for using the term) and murdered by the Romans, Jesus encounters a trio of people who illustrate what it means to follow Jesus. One professes his willingness to follow Jesus anywhere. Jesus reminds him that “Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head.” That means Christ’s followers must put mission ahead of possessions and comfort and even knowing where they’ll sleep.

Jesus sees another guy and asks him to follow. The guy objects that he needs to stay with his father until the man dies. Jesus tells him that it is more important to dedicate himself to spreading God’s kingdom. The third fellow asks permission to go and do what Elisha did when Elijah called him. Jesus, using the same Elisha analogy, responds ““No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Wow! We see that following Jesus is no birthday party. There’s a party, but it’s a wedding banquet for Christ and the Church in the kingdom of God. Any “fun” we want to have must take second or third place behind our vocation to spread the kingdom of God. That’s exactly the opposite of what most Christians do with their calling, is it not? There is something coming up in all of our lives over the next week that is going to demand we make a choice between following Jesus and following our own passions. Right now, let’s take a moment to pray for the grace to choose Christ and His call to discipleship.