Chariots
2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14
Psalm 77:1-2, 11-20
Galatians 5: 1, 13-25
Luke 9: 51-62
Chariots
Today’s story from 2 Kings is the story that inspired the hymn “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” Elijah is taken up to heaven in a fiery chariot; there is nothing left after of his body on earth. I learned this song in elementary school music class, and I didn’t realize it was a religious song at the time. We learned it as part of a unit on African-American music, but our teacher, as far as I can remember, didn’t explain the historical significance of the song. I distinctly remember daydreaming at one point while singing, thinking of the Greek sun god Helios with his chariot, dragging the sun across the sky, and the powerful but hard-to-control horses at the lead. I knew we didn’t pray to this god anymore, and yet sometimes on the walk down our long driveway to catch the school bus, I swear I could see him. I liked the idea that there was a being who struggled with this task day after day just for us: to give us light, to give our garden sunlight so the plants would grow, to keep us from getting either too hot or too cold.
This story now seems to me to be emblematic of how I understand the part of my faith tradition that focuses on the hereafter. Looking back, there’s no way I missed the words “coming for to carry me home,” but I chose to ignore them, focusing instead on the image of the chariot itself, and choosing the earth-bound story of the sun’s journey across the sky over the song’s story of being lifted up, out of this world, into heaven.
A friend of mine who is now a scientist remembers the awe she felt when she began, in elementary school, to learn the secrets of the natural world. She was particularly awed by the idea of our earth as a sphere, hurling through the universe, and of the perfect constellation of planets, stars, and moons that make our lives as they are possible. I never felt the same awe at scientific knowledge; I was awed instead by the myths, the archetypes, the stories ancient people had used to explain what they believed. They became for me a kind of imaginative escape when I was younger; when I was older, the myths held truths that would take a lifetime to unlock about human nature and societal problems. I spent much of my time in graduate school rewriting these ancient myths through contemporary lenses.
Understanding the power of story as I do, it makes sense to me, though I have not studied this topic in any depth, that slaves would be drawn to the Old Testament stories to map out a way for their own freedom; the Jews’ story, after all, is an epic story, multi-generational, and it must have given the slaves some hope to see the care God had for his people as a whole, even though at certain periods in their history they were subject to slavery. They chose to transform an oppressive faith handed to them by white folks into a redemptive faith. And when there was little hope on earth, there was the promise that they might be lifted up in chariots of fire like Elijah was at the end of his ministry.
From my early teens, I was suspicious of any talk that involved the promise of eternal life. Partly this was because I was sick and tired of the way people used this talk as a way to comfort me before and during my mother’s death. I couldn’t imagine her in the heaven that was so central to the funeral and memorial services in the Greek Orthodox Church; she was all body, all words, all presence in my world. She was not a spirit; she was not an angel; she did not belong in a place where all there as to do was to praise God and feel ecstasy.
It’s not that I don’t believe that there is life after death exactly; I do believe that the dead are still alive in some way in us and probably in another place as well; I just didn’t like the idea of heaven being used to comfort the dying or those who love the dying. It seemed to me to be a mask for grief.
I have a memory of being at my best friend’s home in middle school. My mother was dying at the time, and I spent a lot of time there, with her family. They were a strange family; she had a father who was born in Yugoslavia and barely talked to his wife or daughters; unlike me, my friend had no connection to her heritage. Her mother was a very large woman in every way—huge, loud, constantly in our faces. She drove her daughters crazy. I loved her and was disgusted by her at the same time. I liked that she had taken an interest in me, that she treated me like an extension of the family, but I was also a little afraid of her motives. She was an evangelical, and she liked to talk about God, especially to anyone who was polite enough not to interrupt her, which described me, at least in the beginning. (My friend’s father had left the Catholic Church years ago and refused to go near a church, and this always seemed an odd dichotomy).
On this particular evening, we were all sitting in the family’s tiny T.V. room. The father was asleep on the couch, snoring loudly. My friend, her sister, and I were on the floor, staring at the T.V., which seemed always to be on at their house. Her mother was sitting in a chair in the corner, mending a pair of slacks that belonged to one of her daughters. “Ow!” she exclaimed suddenly, and we all looked up, including the father, and watched while the mother inspected her thumb. “It’s OK,” she said. “I just poked myself, but I’m fine.” And then she went on, apparently realizing this was a perfect moment to witness about Jesus since she had our attention: “When Jesus gives me my special room in heaven that is all my own, which I believe he will give each and every one of us when we are saved, there will be lots of soft things there. And no needles, and no mending.” Then, she said, “Argie, what do you think will be in your room?”
“I don’t know,” I said absentmindedly. But then I decided for the first time, for some reason, to talk back to her, and I added, “Is there something in the bible that says we’re each going to get a special room with all our favorite things?” We locked eyes, but I turned away first. I immediately felt guilty; there was no reason to challenge a woman who was so nice to me; she was challenged enough by her own children. But I was both horrified by how ridiculous and simplistic this idea seemed to me—I can’t say why, even now—and intrigued. Even as I was challenging her, I was imagining what my mother’s room would look like. No hospital beds, or pills, or machines, that much I was sure about, but what else?
“MOM!” my friend said. “We’re trying to watch T.V.”
I was as annoyed as my friend, and not just because heaven seemed too simple an escape from the horrors of this life. I was beginning to understand, though I couldn’t have put it into words at the time, that some Christians used heaven as a way to get out of doing the real work that needed to get done on earth. Why focus on the afterlife—why even worry about it at all—when we are so clearly called to create changes here on earth?
Now I understand that my inability to accept this theology is a sign of my own privilege. I have been privileged enough to work for change; I have been privileged enough to, on occasion, see the change I’ve helped to implement make a difference in a community. The language I use, terms like transformative love and social justice, is language I have the privilege to claim. I don’t have to rely on the hope that someday, God is going to come down and carry me away; I have enough hope right here. Many people do not; the slaves certainly did not, and my friend’s mother, whose daughters were growing more and more annoyed at her every day, who was working a dead-end job and had an absent husband, did not, though the scale of her suffering certainly cannot be compared to the suffering the slaves faced.
There were times, in all honestly, when I did not, when I wanted to just curl up and hide from the world. I had such a time only a year ago. I had made the decision to leave a six year relationship, but I was moving through the decision too quickly, not feeling any of it. In a kind of daze, I decided I wasn’t going to leave my job, because two huge changes would be too much, even though this meant living in a town of 5,000 and facing the break up head on. I started the process of buying a house. Then suddenly there were problems with my contract; I would have a job, but it wasn’t clear if I would continue to work over the summer, which would have cut my income significantly. The process of getting out of the mortgage I shared with my partner was taking longer than I’d expected. Suddenly, while I was sitting at the university’s booth at the Twin Cities Pride celebration, I thought to myself, “What happened to my life?” And then, I thought, I need to get out of it, out of my life.
At that moment, I longed for a chariot. I longed for a God who would just swoop down, maybe not to take me away, but at least to fix my life. What I got instead was Helion, the chariot-god of the sun. At first, I let myself sleep and weep and shout into pillows. I was in a nondescript, low budget hotel room with one tiny window, and I didn’t open the door or the curtains for at least three days. But on what I think was the fourth day, I happened to wake just as the sun was rising, and I opened the curtain and watched. I would like to say I felt some kind of awe or hope in that moment, but instead, I thought only, “You see, Argie, the world is going on without you. You could stay here as long as you wanted, and it would be OK.” It was a comforting thought.
That night, I actually walked out into the parking lot of the hotel and watched the sun set. This time, I thought, “You see, Argie, the sun god is dragging that sun across the sky to give you the light you need to do your work. You might as well get back in it.”
And so, eventually, I did. I went back to Morris, I bought a house, I got the contract I wanted, I went on with my work, I started the adoption process that I had been dreaming about for years. I learned from those days in that hotel room two very different lessons that seem contradictory: I don’t matter much; the world was constantly inviting me to matter, though it would be OK if I never accepted the invitation. I have no say in the outcome of my own life; the world was challenging me to make decisions when I could, and when I could, I should aim to make them out of love and not fear.
I think the slaves must have lived in a much more dramatic and painful version of this reality. They didn’t matter much; the world was constantly inviting them to matter by finding meaning in their lives, by looking for ways to escape to one kind of freedom or another. They had no say in the outcome of their lives; so when they could, they should choose to act out of love instead of fear. And many did; many escaped or tried to escape only to be beaten or killed for the act; many found a spiritual way to understand redemptive love and suffering and death in imagery they could understand.
So in the end, maybe the belief in a heaven—even a silly version of heaven like the private rooms that my friend’s mother believed in—isn’t so incompatible with the kind of spirituality I believe in, rooted in love, rooted in action. We have to know when we need rest—temporary or final. When necessary, we have to know when we are called to risk our lives, or to take some other risk, large or small, that plays with our destiny or the world’s destiny. More likely, though, we will have to find a way to live in the in-between place where we can see God as a divine comforter and a divine invitation to do the hardest work there is to do, even though there is so little we can control. We are called to the work the brings greater freedom and dignity to ourselves and to all people, and we are called to do it in love, despite our fear.
Psalm 77:1-2, 11-20
Galatians 5: 1, 13-25
Luke 9: 51-62
Chariots
Today’s story from 2 Kings is the story that inspired the hymn “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” Elijah is taken up to heaven in a fiery chariot; there is nothing left after of his body on earth. I learned this song in elementary school music class, and I didn’t realize it was a religious song at the time. We learned it as part of a unit on African-American music, but our teacher, as far as I can remember, didn’t explain the historical significance of the song. I distinctly remember daydreaming at one point while singing, thinking of the Greek sun god Helios with his chariot, dragging the sun across the sky, and the powerful but hard-to-control horses at the lead. I knew we didn’t pray to this god anymore, and yet sometimes on the walk down our long driveway to catch the school bus, I swear I could see him. I liked the idea that there was a being who struggled with this task day after day just for us: to give us light, to give our garden sunlight so the plants would grow, to keep us from getting either too hot or too cold.
This story now seems to me to be emblematic of how I understand the part of my faith tradition that focuses on the hereafter. Looking back, there’s no way I missed the words “coming for to carry me home,” but I chose to ignore them, focusing instead on the image of the chariot itself, and choosing the earth-bound story of the sun’s journey across the sky over the song’s story of being lifted up, out of this world, into heaven.
A friend of mine who is now a scientist remembers the awe she felt when she began, in elementary school, to learn the secrets of the natural world. She was particularly awed by the idea of our earth as a sphere, hurling through the universe, and of the perfect constellation of planets, stars, and moons that make our lives as they are possible. I never felt the same awe at scientific knowledge; I was awed instead by the myths, the archetypes, the stories ancient people had used to explain what they believed. They became for me a kind of imaginative escape when I was younger; when I was older, the myths held truths that would take a lifetime to unlock about human nature and societal problems. I spent much of my time in graduate school rewriting these ancient myths through contemporary lenses.
Understanding the power of story as I do, it makes sense to me, though I have not studied this topic in any depth, that slaves would be drawn to the Old Testament stories to map out a way for their own freedom; the Jews’ story, after all, is an epic story, multi-generational, and it must have given the slaves some hope to see the care God had for his people as a whole, even though at certain periods in their history they were subject to slavery. They chose to transform an oppressive faith handed to them by white folks into a redemptive faith. And when there was little hope on earth, there was the promise that they might be lifted up in chariots of fire like Elijah was at the end of his ministry.
From my early teens, I was suspicious of any talk that involved the promise of eternal life. Partly this was because I was sick and tired of the way people used this talk as a way to comfort me before and during my mother’s death. I couldn’t imagine her in the heaven that was so central to the funeral and memorial services in the Greek Orthodox Church; she was all body, all words, all presence in my world. She was not a spirit; she was not an angel; she did not belong in a place where all there as to do was to praise God and feel ecstasy.
It’s not that I don’t believe that there is life after death exactly; I do believe that the dead are still alive in some way in us and probably in another place as well; I just didn’t like the idea of heaven being used to comfort the dying or those who love the dying. It seemed to me to be a mask for grief.
I have a memory of being at my best friend’s home in middle school. My mother was dying at the time, and I spent a lot of time there, with her family. They were a strange family; she had a father who was born in Yugoslavia and barely talked to his wife or daughters; unlike me, my friend had no connection to her heritage. Her mother was a very large woman in every way—huge, loud, constantly in our faces. She drove her daughters crazy. I loved her and was disgusted by her at the same time. I liked that she had taken an interest in me, that she treated me like an extension of the family, but I was also a little afraid of her motives. She was an evangelical, and she liked to talk about God, especially to anyone who was polite enough not to interrupt her, which described me, at least in the beginning. (My friend’s father had left the Catholic Church years ago and refused to go near a church, and this always seemed an odd dichotomy).
On this particular evening, we were all sitting in the family’s tiny T.V. room. The father was asleep on the couch, snoring loudly. My friend, her sister, and I were on the floor, staring at the T.V., which seemed always to be on at their house. Her mother was sitting in a chair in the corner, mending a pair of slacks that belonged to one of her daughters. “Ow!” she exclaimed suddenly, and we all looked up, including the father, and watched while the mother inspected her thumb. “It’s OK,” she said. “I just poked myself, but I’m fine.” And then she went on, apparently realizing this was a perfect moment to witness about Jesus since she had our attention: “When Jesus gives me my special room in heaven that is all my own, which I believe he will give each and every one of us when we are saved, there will be lots of soft things there. And no needles, and no mending.” Then, she said, “Argie, what do you think will be in your room?”
“I don’t know,” I said absentmindedly. But then I decided for the first time, for some reason, to talk back to her, and I added, “Is there something in the bible that says we’re each going to get a special room with all our favorite things?” We locked eyes, but I turned away first. I immediately felt guilty; there was no reason to challenge a woman who was so nice to me; she was challenged enough by her own children. But I was both horrified by how ridiculous and simplistic this idea seemed to me—I can’t say why, even now—and intrigued. Even as I was challenging her, I was imagining what my mother’s room would look like. No hospital beds, or pills, or machines, that much I was sure about, but what else?
“MOM!” my friend said. “We’re trying to watch T.V.”
I was as annoyed as my friend, and not just because heaven seemed too simple an escape from the horrors of this life. I was beginning to understand, though I couldn’t have put it into words at the time, that some Christians used heaven as a way to get out of doing the real work that needed to get done on earth. Why focus on the afterlife—why even worry about it at all—when we are so clearly called to create changes here on earth?
Now I understand that my inability to accept this theology is a sign of my own privilege. I have been privileged enough to work for change; I have been privileged enough to, on occasion, see the change I’ve helped to implement make a difference in a community. The language I use, terms like transformative love and social justice, is language I have the privilege to claim. I don’t have to rely on the hope that someday, God is going to come down and carry me away; I have enough hope right here. Many people do not; the slaves certainly did not, and my friend’s mother, whose daughters were growing more and more annoyed at her every day, who was working a dead-end job and had an absent husband, did not, though the scale of her suffering certainly cannot be compared to the suffering the slaves faced.
There were times, in all honestly, when I did not, when I wanted to just curl up and hide from the world. I had such a time only a year ago. I had made the decision to leave a six year relationship, but I was moving through the decision too quickly, not feeling any of it. In a kind of daze, I decided I wasn’t going to leave my job, because two huge changes would be too much, even though this meant living in a town of 5,000 and facing the break up head on. I started the process of buying a house. Then suddenly there were problems with my contract; I would have a job, but it wasn’t clear if I would continue to work over the summer, which would have cut my income significantly. The process of getting out of the mortgage I shared with my partner was taking longer than I’d expected. Suddenly, while I was sitting at the university’s booth at the Twin Cities Pride celebration, I thought to myself, “What happened to my life?” And then, I thought, I need to get out of it, out of my life.
At that moment, I longed for a chariot. I longed for a God who would just swoop down, maybe not to take me away, but at least to fix my life. What I got instead was Helion, the chariot-god of the sun. At first, I let myself sleep and weep and shout into pillows. I was in a nondescript, low budget hotel room with one tiny window, and I didn’t open the door or the curtains for at least three days. But on what I think was the fourth day, I happened to wake just as the sun was rising, and I opened the curtain and watched. I would like to say I felt some kind of awe or hope in that moment, but instead, I thought only, “You see, Argie, the world is going on without you. You could stay here as long as you wanted, and it would be OK.” It was a comforting thought.
That night, I actually walked out into the parking lot of the hotel and watched the sun set. This time, I thought, “You see, Argie, the sun god is dragging that sun across the sky to give you the light you need to do your work. You might as well get back in it.”
And so, eventually, I did. I went back to Morris, I bought a house, I got the contract I wanted, I went on with my work, I started the adoption process that I had been dreaming about for years. I learned from those days in that hotel room two very different lessons that seem contradictory: I don’t matter much; the world was constantly inviting me to matter, though it would be OK if I never accepted the invitation. I have no say in the outcome of my own life; the world was challenging me to make decisions when I could, and when I could, I should aim to make them out of love and not fear.
I think the slaves must have lived in a much more dramatic and painful version of this reality. They didn’t matter much; the world was constantly inviting them to matter by finding meaning in their lives, by looking for ways to escape to one kind of freedom or another. They had no say in the outcome of their lives; so when they could, they should choose to act out of love instead of fear. And many did; many escaped or tried to escape only to be beaten or killed for the act; many found a spiritual way to understand redemptive love and suffering and death in imagery they could understand.
So in the end, maybe the belief in a heaven—even a silly version of heaven like the private rooms that my friend’s mother believed in—isn’t so incompatible with the kind of spirituality I believe in, rooted in love, rooted in action. We have to know when we need rest—temporary or final. When necessary, we have to know when we are called to risk our lives, or to take some other risk, large or small, that plays with our destiny or the world’s destiny. More likely, though, we will have to find a way to live in the in-between place where we can see God as a divine comforter and a divine invitation to do the hardest work there is to do, even though there is so little we can control. We are called to the work the brings greater freedom and dignity to ourselves and to all people, and we are called to do it in love, despite our fear.
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