No matter what we do or how long we do it there inevitably comes a time when we need to be planning an exit strategy.
Those who live in houses for a very long time find that the back yard appears to have grown larger over time. Those steps become steeper and those corners seem to become increasingly inaccessible. An exit strategy becomes necessary towards downsizing according to our needs and the limit of our capabilities.
Sometimes it is the work we do and the looming need to hand over to some one fitter. I have experienced this over the last few months when the time approached for me to retire from Aged Care honorary chaplaincy ministry. I retired last August from Thomas Bowden Retirement Village after 15 years and during May from the LCM Calvary Homes in Ryde after 20 years. Naturally, I was anxious about handing over so that the ministry there could be maintained after mine ceased.
During this time my mind was drawn to the story of Elijah handing over to Elisha as described in 2 Kings chapter 2. Much of this story is written within an ancient context but the familiar pattern is there. Elijah was given an inevitable exit strategy and I’m sure his feelings were mixed as were Elisha’s. Elisha had big shoes to fill so he asked, “Let me inherit a double share of your spirit.” (v9) This was an ambitious request but we see in the following chapters that Elisha carried on this important prophetic ministry in his own style.
We are now once more into the season of Pentecost where we live out our own inheritance of the Spirit breathed upon us by Jesus Christ. The inwardly warming tongues of flame and the invigorating rush of mighty wind at the first Pentecost has come down through the spiritual generations to us. We are called to ensure this same spirit flows down to those coming on after us. The Spirit is contagious!
We all have a spirit (Rom 8:16). Even now we remember those who have been influential in our becoming disciples of Jesus Christ. We may or may not have received a double portion of their spirit but we acknowledge that something of their spirit has come across to us. Some of our mentors may have passed on like Elijah but they have left for us their inspiration for us to experience and to pass on. As the burning coals in the grate come and go each in their own time, the fire is kept going.
This is the story of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, warts and all. This is your story and mine, our story. We have a heritage to leave so the gift of mentoring becomes all the more Christ’s call to us. We will not in time be able to keep doing what we are called to do but what is being done still needs to be done even though it will be done in new and different ways. We cannot guarantee clones of ourselves and just as well because we are not the last word in what we do and there are always better ways to come according to the evolving times.
This is the time to pass on what we have received so that a sick and brutal world may glow not with the fires of self-destruction but with a burning hope for a more collaborative future within today’s context of the ongoing Spirit.
