Startling Grace: The Dead Man at Elisha’s Grave

This sermon is part of a Lenten midweek series on resurrections in Scripture.

Text: 2 Kings 13:20-21, Rom. 6:1-11, 1 Cor. 15:50-58

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

            There are some accounts in Scripture that can only be described as strange. And this evening we have before us what is certainly the strangest resurrection contained in God’s Word. It’s perhaps even one of the strangest accounts in all of Scripture. There’s a resurrection, yes. But everything else that we’re used to seeing—prayer, prophets, some sort of intimate confrontation with the Word of life against death, a declaration of faith—none of these are here. And yet, what is here is still the very core of God’s work, grace in its purest form. It’s entirely unexpected, to the point of being startling. It’s unearned by any who are involved. And it still is life overcoming death.

            The great prophet Elisha has died. Even the greatest of the Lord’s servants must meet the end of their earthly lives, and Elisha has met his. He had one final prophecy before his death, though. When he was sick with the illness that would eventually be his death, King Joash of Israel went down to see him and grieve. Elisha told the king to take a bow and arrows and shoot an arrow out the eastward window while the prophet’s hands were laid over the king’s. Then the king was to take the rest of the arrows and strike the ground with them. The king only half-heartedly did this, striking the ground three times. Elisha told him that because he stopped at three, that Israel would only defeat Syria three times, but they would not deal any final blow against their antagonists. And so Israel’s long spiritual decline would accelerate, and this time they would be hard pressed militarily and politically as well.

            And then Elisha died. The man of God who worked wonders and spoke the counsels of God was now dead and silenced, and Israel had no one like him to take his place. Death seemed to have the final word, in spite of the signs Elisha worked, which had included performing a resurrection of a young boy, which we heard about last week. So the children of Israel did what they were supposed to do with their dead. They buried Elisha in a grave.

            Some time later, the Israelites were gathered again for another burial. But we don’t know who this man was that was being buried later. We don’t know his story, his faith, or even his name. He’s anonymous, like all of us are when we’re confronted with something as immense and all-consuming as death. But this time something bad was on the horizon and racing toward the funeral. The Moabites sent a raiding party into Israel, as they did every spring, like clockwork, because Israel was too weak to defend itself even from their predictable attacks. The enemy marauders were closing in on the mourners who were gathered there. Grief turned into terror. The burial party had to make a split-second decision: stay and fight, or run. They chose to flee.

            Panic took the reins and overruled reverence. Rather than completing the funerary rites, they dump the man’s body unceremoniously into Elisha’s tomb. This is the opposite of order and faith—this is chaos and terror. They’re just trying to keep from dying themselves. They can’t even bury their dead properly. Fear drives out dignity.

            Is this not our experience as well? In moments of crisis, it seems that we so easily drop and forget those things like prayer. We neglect things like coming to the places where order and peace reign in the appointed ceremonies and services of God’s people. We do what we think we must just to survive. The Israelites that had gathered for this burial had death surrounding them: they had Elisha’s bones staring them the face, they had the corpse in their hands, they had their murderous enemies at their backs. And so the first and only thing they could think to do was run, just like the disciples did when Jesus was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, just like Peter did after he denied Jesus, just like we do.

            But just when things reach a fever pitch, when everything seems utterly lost and death is closing in, there’s a sudden, even shocking and startling, explosion of life. “The man was thrown into the grave of Elisha, and as soon as the man touched the bones of Elisha, he revived and stood on his feet.” There was no prologue or prayer beforehand, as there had been in the previous two resurrections we’ve heard of these last two weeks. There was no gradual return to life, as when Elisha resurrected the Shunammite’s son. There was no proclamation of life over death. It was immediate, given only through contact with the prophet’s bones. God’s grace, His life, was interrupting the chaos and breaking the monopoly of death.

            It was contact with the body of the prophet that brought life. This was not magic or sorcery or any such forbidden art. It was God still using His prophet as an instrument of resurrection, just as He had during Elisha’s life; reaching through the tomb of His anointed messenger to grant life and wholeness yet again.

            In this we see a preview of our Lord Jesus. Jesus will say of the Sacrament, “This is my body, given for you.” And when we touch that body in the Holy Supper, we touch the life-giving body of Jesus. We receive His life when we receive Him there. In Baptism, we are buried with Christ, as St. Paul tells us in Romans 6—we’re put into Jesus’ grave. And there, we’re united to Him so that we too are raised to newness of life. That intimacy He prefigures in His prophets from the previous weeks—stretching themselves out over the dead, eye to eye, mouth to mouth, hand to hand, is again matched here, even in the grave.

            This teaches us that God’s power does not require our preparation or worthiness. There’s no confession of faith from the dead man thrown into Elisha’s grave. There’s no powerful prayer offered by the burial party. There’s not even the proper ceremony or reverence by the time they heave his corpse into the ground. It’s just contact with God’s anointed one. So we learn that God’s grace works even when we’re too panicked, too terrorized, too at a loss to even have the words to speak, too dead to do anything to contribute to our salvation.

            God’s Word outlasts death, even in the bones of His prophet. How much more in the resurrected body of His Son! So it is in Him, Jesus, that grace interrupts our chaos. It shocks us out of our terrorized running around and worry. It overcomes our lack of understanding, our lack of reverence, our lack of trust that God is going to preserve us. So we are plunged again into Christ’s death in Baptism, as surely as this anonymous man was thrown into the prophet’s tomb. And just as Jesus Himself was also hastily buried after His death on a Friday before the Sabbath began, and He was laid quickly in a borrowed tomb by panicked disciples, so too He also sprang to life, interrupting not just a Moabite raid, not just a fear-driven panic run, but interrupting the entire cycle of death that had gripped the universe. And you have been given a share in that life that breaks in and halts death. In Jesus’ death and resurrection, you have been granted that startling new life in Baptism that lets you walk in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness before your God. It’s not through your elaborate preparations, or perfect accomplishments, or even telling God that you’re ready. It’s just contact with your crucified and risen Lord that causes the grace to barge in and disrupt your death with His life.

            So when you feel panicked, worried, faithless, or unprepared; when you’re just trying to survive, when you’re dead in your sin, when you’re unnamed and forgotten, throw yourself onto the grace of your Lord, who was buried for you. Receive the body of God’s Anointed Son. Remember your baptism, when you were named and raised to eternal life. Receive the Gospel, as strange and unexpected, unearned, startling and shocking as it may be, and it will disrupt the death and chaos that surrounds you. The result will be just as certain: life will spring forth and you will stand on your feet. In the name of Jesus, who interrupts death. Amen.