In the second book of Kings, in what we call chapters 4 and 5, the prophet Elisha performs a series of amazing signs.
Elisha was the protégé, or apprentice, of Elijah. When Elijah rides up to heaven in a whirlwind, he leaves his coat with Elisha who goes to the edge of the Jordan river and dips it in. The river parts in front of him, so he can walk across the water.
At Jericho, there’s a dodgy spring with yucky water. Elisha chucks some salt in and it starts to flow with fresh water.
The wife of a dead prophet is broke, and all she has left is a little jar of oil. She owes money, and the creditor is coming to take her sons as slaves. Elisha tells her to borrow from her neighbours as many containers as she can. From her one little jar, she fills all the containers with oil, sells the oil, pays off the debt, and saves her sons.
At Shunem, there’s a house where he stays regularly. The mother has a son, but the son dies. Elisha eventually makes it to the house, where the kid wakes up and sneezes seven times.
At Gilgal, there’s a famine, and someone puts some poisonous vegetables in the communal stew. It makes people sick. Elisha flings some flour in there and it’s safe to eat again.
The famine rages, and a visitor arrives with twenty loaves of barley bread and some grain. Elisha says to share the bread with the one hundred people who are there. His servant is incredulous – how will there be enough to go around. But there is enough. The twenty loaves feed one hundred starving people, and there’s leftovers too.
Naaman, the commander of the army of the King of Aram has leprosy. He visits Elisha and he is healed.
One of the other prophets drops an axehead into the river. It belongs to someone else. Elisha flings a stick into the water, and it makes the axehead float to the surface.
I’ve left one out, though. Anyone know what it is? That’s right, the Murder Bears! Elisha is going to Bethel, the shrine for the worship of Ba’al, set up in opposition to the worship of the true Israelite god. The servants of the shrine call him Baldy, and tell him to die, just like Elijah did before him. So Elisha summons two female bears who maul them to death.
As you know, I’m just a simple bible-believing Christian, so we have to mention the Murder Bears alongside the other signs.
Now, maybe you’re thinking what I’ve been thinking. Gee, there’s a lot of similarities between Elisha’s story and the stories of Jesus in the gospels. Walking on water, raising dead children to life, turning a small amount of food into a large amount of food, healing lepers – the stories aren’t identical, but they are very similar. Even the Murder Bears have a parallel, when Jesus overturns the tables in the Temple because the wrong kind of worship is happening there.
In the story of the feeding of the five thousand that we read in John today, it’s pretty significant that the little boy has barley loaves. It’s like there’s a big wink in the text – ey, ey!? Just like Elisha, ey!?
The people in John’s story get it. ‘This is indeed the prophet who has come into the world’. They recognise that Jesus is a new Elisha, a new Elijah, a new Isaiah, a new Moses.
But then the story takes a turn.
Jesus realises that they are about to come and take him by force to make him king. He gets out of there quick smart. That’s the last thing he wants.
Maybe it’s because there’s already a king, and it’s Herod, and Herod is a monster. Maybe it’s because there’s an Emperor too, and it’s Tiberius, and he’s a monster as well. Maybe its because Israel had very, very few good kings. Like, hardly any. Mostly, the kings were bad and had to be pulled into line by the prophets.
You see, for a pious Jew like Jesus, the only true king of Israel is God. And, in fact, God is not only the true king of Israel, but the true king of the whole universe. In the story, the perspective of the people is too small. Jesus’ work, according to John, is not to be some military chieftain for one tribe, but to redeem and transform the whole cosmos. John shows us what that looks like as the chapter unfolds. Jesus is the bread from heaven, and has the words of eternal life.
How often do we meet Jesus the prophet, offering signs of a ‘world made whole’, then try to take him by force and make him king of our little patch? How often do we see Jesus, the liberator of the whole world, and want to grab him by the hair and drag him into our own desires and squabbles. How often, if we’re honest, do we want Jesus to help me now, instead of everyone always, and get resentful when he doesn’t deliver?
Jesus isn’t Bob The Builder, showing up to fix it – whatever ‘it’ is. Yes, Jesus wipes away sin - but he doesn’t wipe away our credit card bill. Yes, Jesus transforms us - but he doesn’t transform our wobbly, wonky bodies into Olympic athletes. Yes, with Jesus we are more compassionate, more generous and more courageous - but we aren’t always more content.
So we have to resist the urge to put Jesus in a headlock and force him onto some throne of our own creation. There is only one throne, from which Christ rules over over every time and place, every star and molecule and over everything with the spark of life. And unlike every king who has ever ruled in the history we know, the Lord of History does not sit on the throne to amass power and control, but dispenses from that throne the bread of life that feeds everyone, with plenty to spare.