Sermon Text: 1 Kings 19:19-21
Date: June 29, 2025
Event: Proper 8, Year C
1 Kings 19:19-21 (EHV)
So Elijah went from there and found Elisha son of Shaphat. Elisha was doing the plowing with twelve teams of oxen in front of him, and he himself was driving the twelfth team. Elijah crossed over to him and threw his cloak over him. 20Then Elisha left the oxen and ran after Elijah. He said, “Let me kiss my father and my mother good-bye! Then I will follow you.”
Then Elijah said, “Go back! For what have I done to you?”
21So Elisha turned back from following him. Then he took the team of oxen and slaughtered them. Using the equipment from the oxen as fuel, he cooked the meat and gave it to the people, and they ate. Then he got up, followed Elijah, and served him.
How Committed Are We?
Commitment, dedication, and drive—all of these are concepts that you might hear associated with lifestyle choices. How committed are you to eating right, exercising, and getting to or maintaining a healthy weight? How dedicated are you to growing your knowledge and understanding of core subjects necessary for work or home life, or even expanding into new areas? What is your drive to be the best or do your best in competitions or personal goals?
Of course, with all of these things, commitment, dedication, and drive can ebb and flow. Today I might be very set on that exercise plan, but what about tomorrow after a rough night’s sleep?
We are not here today to discuss our commitment to physical well-being or pursuing new insights and knowledge. Today, our focus for worship is on our commitment to our Savior: our personal faith and our drive to share what he’s done with others. So today we wrestle with the question, “How committed are we? How committed am I? How dedicated am I to being Jesus’ disciple, Jesus’ ambassador, and Jesus’ witness?”
Our First Reading takes us back to the time of Israel’s divided kingdom, well after the high points of the reigns of kings David and Solomon. The prophet Elijah primarily worked in the northern kingdom of Israel, where dedication to God—especially from the ruling class—was often a real problem (though that’s not to say things were great in the southern kingdom either). So Elijah continually confronted stubborn kings and false prophets, a ministry that really took its toll on him.
In the immediate context of 1 Kings, we’ve just seen God work a great victory over the prophets of the false god Baal through Elijah. The true God consumed a sacrifice on the top of Mt. Carmel with fire from heaven, while the sacrifice prepared for the non-existent god remained untouched. But, coming out of that, the queen threatened to kill Elijah, which sent him into a depressive spiral. He fled to the mountain of God, and there God spoke with him, addressed his concerns, and got him back on the proper footing. God sends Elijah out with some tasks to carry out, including anointing future kings in the area, and a prophet to be his successor, Elisha.
In this brief account this morning, we have Elijah carrying out one of God’s tasks for him. So Elijah went from there and found Elisha son of Shaphat. Elisha was plowing with twelve teams of oxen in front of him, and he himself was driving the twelfth team. Elijah crossed over to him and threw his cloak over him. This was the call to Elisha to follow Elijah, learn from him, and train to be the next in line.
On a surface level, it sounds like Elisha has the same request for Elijah as the last person in our Gospel had for Jesus, but with a tremendously different reaction. When Elisha says, “Let me kiss my father and my mother good-bye! Then I will follow you,” Elijah’s response is very permissive: “Go back! For what have I done to you?” But when the third man called in the Gospel said, “I will follow you, Lord, but first let me say good-bye to those at my home,” Jesus’ response is harsher: “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God” (Luke 8:61-62).
What is the difference? Jesus knows the man’s heart in the Gospel. Evidently, his request to say goodbye to his family was not a one-and-done thing. He was willing to put his “hand to the plow,” that is, to start the work of being Jesus’ disciple or even his witness, but the pull of his family back home would have been strong and would have been a distraction from the work Jesus was calling him to do.
As we look carefully at the details of Elisha’s farewell with his family, while we don’t have exact insight into his heart, there’s a lot to show that Elisha considers this a hard break in his life, that little from home would have been pulling him away from his work as God’s prophet. The introduction to our First Reading makes it clear that Elisha is a man of great wealth. He’s plowing his field with at least 24 oxen (if not more, if the teams were larger than two animals) and using at least 11 employees to drive the teams he couldn’t. Even in the most conservative number, that is an extraordinary number of animals and would have covered a large amount of land and a massive amount of crops. Elisha is no subsistence farmer.
But what does Elisha do with that wealth? He leaves it. In fact, he makes it clear just how clean a break he’s making with his wealthy home life: he uses the tools of his trade to provide a farewell dinner. His team of oxen is the meal; the plowing equipment is the fuel to cook them. He’s not burning down all that his family has, but he is making it clear that his time with this work is over. He would be the Lord’s prophet from here on out.
We might say that Elisha was “all-in.” He’s not putting his hand to the plow and looking back; he’s drawing a clear line. This is the end of one chapter of his life and the beginning of another, and from here on out, Elisha will be dedicated and committed to the ministry God is calling him to. After the meal, Elisha got up, followed Elijah, and served him.
Let’s get back to our question: how committed are we? Does our heart look more like Elisha’s, or is it a little more hesitant? Is God clearly our number one priority in life, or is there some fuzziness there?
We should be clear, total commitment to Jesus doesn’t have to look like Elisha or the Twelve, dedicating nearly every moment to the gospel ministry. I can assure you that even as a pastor, that is not what this typically looks like. This commitment is less about hours spent and more about our life’s priorities.
Which would you rather have: a good friend or a Christian life clearly lived? Which would you rather have: earthly pleasure right now or eternal joy in heaven? Which would you rather have: earthly popularity or a clear conscience before God?
Now, those pairs of things are not necessarily mutually exclusive of one another. But what if they do go that way? When push comes to shove, where is your commitment?
All too often, you and I are tempted to take the immediate comfort or peace over the eternal goal, and from that temptation, we frequently choose the wrong path. I’d rather this person not think little of me, so I’ll do what I know is wrong so they’ll like me. I’d rather not have conflict between this unbelieving family member and me, so when presented with an opportunity to share the truth about God’s love and forgiveness, I remain silent so I don’t cause problems. When it comes to potentially having fun right now in a way that God says is sinful, I might take the fun now rather than prioritizing my life of thanksgiving to God. I often embrace the here and now over (and sometimes, against) the eternal.
Is that really the way we want to live our lives, though? Or would we rather seek God’s perspective, his eternal perspective, and see that trading eternity for the here and now is like trading a billion dollars in a year to get 20 bucks now, but infinitely worse? Yet, so often, we make this horrendous trade.
Because of that, Jesus took up our lack of commitment on himself. Where we have been wishy-washy at best, Jesus was fully and completely dedicated to you and me. He could not stand the thought that sin would separate us from him for eternity; he could not tolerate the reality that we deserved hell as the punishment for our sins, so he put his hand to the plow and never looked back; he made clear that saving us from our sin was his number one (and in some ways, only) priority. The intro verse to our Gospel makes that attitude clear: When the days were approaching for him to be taken up, Jesus was determined to go to Jerusalem (Luke 9:51). Like a man obsessed, in the best way possible, Jesus—true God and true man—went forward to accomplish our salvation, even though it meant sacrificing his life and suffering the punishment of hell on the cross.
That means that as we look at our commitment and dedication to our faith and sharing our faith, and we see it lacking, we know that even for that, there is forgiveness. We haven’t always had God as our number one priority, but we have always been his. And that is meant to bring comfort, not guilt. We have failed, but Jesus has not. We have sinned, but God has forgiven us. We often don’t prioritize our eternal well-being, but God always does.
Jesus’ forgiveness is where we find the strength to be “all-in” for him. Truly, God’s forgiveness was the thing that motivated Elisha as well and would motivate those in our Gospel to recalibrate their priorties.
What will being fully committed to Jesus look like? It will mean time in God’s Word to find strength to combat the pull of the here-and-now that so loudly shouts for our attention and admiration. It will mean seeking God’s comfort in sorrow, God’s perspective in hardship, and God’s forgiveness in sin.
We all will have different ways to slaughter our team of oxen and burn our plows. That may mean deciding not to hang out with this person or that group that often presents temptations to this path. That may mean finding our voice to share God’s love or an invitation to hear it with us at church with someone who you might not think is interested. That may mean finding peace with the ongoing, chronic problems and heartbreaks in our life, trusting God’s promises that he’s working things out for our eternal good and the assurance that he is with us as we bear the crosses in this life.
Ultimately, we want our commitment to our Savior to be complete because it is the most critical thing in our lives. Our salvation is the one thing that we take from this life into the next; that salvation will mean an eternity of perfect joy with our God, leaving behind all of the brokenness and corruption of this fallen world.
Until the day that God brings us out of this sin-stained life, find your reconciliation with God at Jesus’ cross, be dedicated to him, and structure your plans, goals, and even relaxation around him and his will for your life. Your sins and my sins are forgiven. Let’s follow him! Amen.
