Marked by the chariots of fire
Yesterday I concluded a series on the life of Elisha. On this particular occasion, I chose a narrative approach. As I wrote it I had two stories in mind. One was the Biblical story in 2 kings 6, the other is the story of an astronaut. In the biblical story, Elisha has a new servant after the previous incumbent, Gehazi, was dismissed in disgrace. The other story is that of Alan Bean, lunar module pilot on Apollo XII,who became the fourth member of humankind to walk on the surface of the moon. On his return, he began to paint, and paint and paint scenes of his lunar experiences. Each incorporates a physical link to his time on the moon – either a sprinkling of moon-dust or an impression on the painted surface made by his moon boot or his sample bore. He was there for just 31 hours , but it has left a mark on which him has lasted a lifetime. I wondered whether the same might be said of our powerful encounters with God…
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The old man had been urging me to do it for a long time. In the end it was only fear of time ticking by that made me go. By that stage the leprosy was spreading like an evil fungus from head to toe. It was if it was eating him up on the outside, whilst something else did it within. ‘Go and see the prophet’s new man’, he would say. It was always ‘The Prophet’ – never his name, never anything cheeky like ‘the boss’ – just ‘the prophet’. ‘Go and see him and see what has (at this point he struggled) what has become of him.’ So, in the end, I did.
It was an unassuming house, just like the others in the village. Its neat little walls and its rough little windows told you nothing from the outside. Inside the man was tending a fire, flickering and dancing as it burned. The flames were everywhere, it seemed. Some were painted on simple pieces of pottery. Some were daubed on the walls – streaks of ochre and red smudged from the earth. There were sculptures too – great and small. Some were fashioned from clay, others carved from whatever wood he could find – little groups of flames twisting and turning around each other like dancers in an embrace.
He looked up to greet his visitor, and bade me sit beside him in the fire’s glow. ‘How was it’ I asked hesitantly ‘with the prophet, I mean’. ‘I know what you mean’, he said kindly ‘clearly he had answered that question before. “When the previous man left and The Prophet asked me to serve in his place, I felt as if God had torn a hole in heaven and poured the blessing straight down on me. Our adventures began and we never looked back. Kings quaked, soldiers flinched, prophets cheered – it was a dream come true. Except, that is, for the day we went to Dothan.
I knew we were on the run, but it never felt that way, not with him. That morning I walked out to fetch the water so the prophet could wash and a glint of sun on metal caught my eye. Just beyond the city walls the enemy soldiers were sitting in row after row, each one like a jackal sizing up its kill – waiting to pounce. Dropping the pail on the ground, water glugging out onto the thirsty earth, I ran in to tell him. ‘Master, master’ I cried – ‘its over, we are surrounded’. He shook his head, just slightly, as a man might with a child whose innocence comes out as folly. ‘No’ he said, ‘you have it wrong ‘they are surrounded’.
As I turned, he prayed, and the sky behind the soldiers began to boil. Blue-grey turned to orange, crimson and scarlet. The clouds rolled back to this side and that, like curtains on a stage. And there, behind them, was an army – horses and chariots as far as the eye could see. Each rider had an arm outstretched with a sword held aloft. On their perfect blades they caught the vault of heaven above and the licking flames below. To this day I could not tell you whether their horses were pawing at the ground or stirring up the flames with their hooves. Either way, though, the flames seemed to rise and fall like surf rolling up a beach. I looked back at the prophet and his cheeks were glowing in the light of the flames. His eyes seemed to reflect the swords raised aloft. He looked so happy I thought he might actually laugh. He was never like that for long, though, and there was work to be done. As the army of the skies faded from view, we led those other poor blind fools off to Samaria. Their eyes were opened, the prophet & the king decided their fate and we ate and drank together until the sun went down.’
The sun outside was gone now, and he stirred the fire. The stick he poked it with was perfectly tooled, with a sharpened bronze head on the end. Seeing me stare he smiled. ‘A little souvenir’, he said ‘a gift from an Aramean spearman- reckoned he would never use it again’. We sat in companionable silence, watching the flames as they bucked and danced. Outside the stars were coming out. There was nothing to cover the windows. ‘I like to see out always’, my companion explained with a twinkle in his eye ‘Just in case there’s something interesting out there’.
It was time to leave and I stood up, brushing the dust from the floor off my clothes. As he shook my hand, his dry, gnarled woodcarver’s fingers firmly gripping mine, he seemed to remember something. ‘Who sent you’ he asked ‘did you say it was your father?’ I nodded, suddenly embarrassed. ‘Your father, eh? Fancy him being so interested in an old fool like me. What’s his name?’
‘Gehazi’, I said, and walked away under the night sky.
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Two men, Gehazi and this un-named servant, were marked for life by their encounter with God – one for good and one for ill. Do you bear God’s impression on heart and soul?
Alan Bean. Image: creative commons