Singing for a New World: An Advent Vision of Hope (Advent IV: II Kings 2:9-12)
It is no wonder that the Jesus movement, especially in Luke’s rendering, would begin in singing that brings to speech an alternative world soon to be enacted in and through Jesus. We may take the singing at the outset of Luke as the offer of an alternative world that would defeat and displace the world of Roman domination and priestly supervision in Israel. Thus Mary could sing of a world turned upside down:
Mary with Jesus and Joseph. Ethiopian Coptic Orthodox Church. Photo by: Maciej Wojtkowiak
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty (Luke 1:52-53).
Zechariah could break his silence and sing of mercy, forgiveness, light and peace:
And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;
for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,
to give knowledge of salvation to his people
by the forgiveness of their sins.
By the tender mercy of our God,
the dawn from on high will break upon us,
to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace (Luke 1:76-79).
Pious Simeon could sing of transformative gifts to be given to both Gentiles and to Israel:
…a light for revelation to the Gentiles
and for the glory of your people Israel (Luke 2:32).
And John could sing the old promissory logic of Isaiah about the good route home:
The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
“Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.
Every valley shall be filled,
and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
and the crooked shall be made straight,
and the rough places made smooth;
and all flesh shall be the salvation of our God” (Luke 3:4-6).
Singing is an act of defiance; it refuses dominant notions of reality and opens the way to a different world marked by a more excellent way. The church has entrusted to us a legacy of singing that is grounded in the dangerous counter-construction of Elisha. We must take care to keep that legacy alive and generative and not let it dissolve into well-meaning but impotent romantic mantras. The counter-world of Elijah and Elisha requires robust insistence upon vivid imaginative figures. It recruits us to sing in defiance and expectation of a home where we may be transformed by energy about which the rulers of this age know nothing.
On the face of it, the Elisha narrative offers no reference to singing. I think, nonetheless, that we may tease out some singing from the narrative if we can begin by considering a legacy of “chariots” in Old Testament texts. Chariots were both embodiments and emblems of immense centralized authority, so that every ambitious ruler of necessity had to assemble a mass of chariots, the preferred armament of the day. This includes:
Joseph, the Egyptian prime minister (Genesis 41:43);
Pharaoh in his pursuit of escaping slaves (Exodus 14:6-10);
The kings who resisted Joshua and the Israelites (Joshua 11:4-5); and the Canaanites (Joshua 17:26);
Samuel anticipates the way in which the coming kings of Israel would act in imitation of these practices:
He will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be horsemen, and to run before his chariots; he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and some to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war and the equipment of his chariots (I Samuel 8:11-12);
The Philistines (I Samuel 13:5);
Absalom, fulfilling Samuel’s anticipation (II Samuel 15:1);
Solomon of course (I Kings10:26); and
Sadly, the Israelites who filled their land in destructive ways:
Indeed they are full of diviners from the east
and of soothsayers like the Philistines,
and they clasp hands with foreigners.
Their land is filled with silver and gold,
and there is no end to their treasures;
their land is filled with horses,
and there is no end to their chariots.
Their land is filled with idols;
they bow down to the work of their hands,
to what their own fingers have made (Isaiah 2:6-8).
“Chariots” embody and represent worldly power that is capable of immense violence and destruction.
But the text of ancient Israel makes clear, negatively, that the force of horses and chariots in their creaturely limitation is no match for the power and intent of YHWH:
I will gain glory over Pharaoh and all his army, his chariots, and his chariot drivers. And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I have gained glory for myself over Pharaoh, his chariots, and his chariot drivers (Exodus 14:17-18; see also Joshua 111:6-9. 17:18).
Israel does not shy away from asserting the mighty power of YHWH that is readily mobilized on behalf of the wellbeing of Israel. Thus the derivative energy of the church sings of the mighty power of God:
O worship the king, all glorious above!
O gratefully sing God’s power and God’s love;
Our shield and defender, the Ancient of Days,
Pavilioned in splendor and girded with praise.
O tell of God’s might,
O sing of God’s grace,
Whose robe is the light, whose canopy space.
The chariots of wrath the deep thunderclouds form,
And bright is God’s path on the wings of the storm
(“O Worship the King, All Glorious Above,” The Presbyterian Hymnal, 476).
I sing the mighty power of God that made the mountains rise;
That spread the flowing seas abroad and built the lofty skies.
I sing the wisdom that ordained the sun to rule the day;
The moon shines full at God’s command, and all the stars obey.
(“I Sing the Mighty Power of God,” ibid., 288).
These hymns are now mostly out of favor in the church, as the church does not want to give voice to martial imagery. But the church must insist, even in this context, that God’s governance must not only concern unconditional love, but also needs to affirm God’s power to defeat the forces of evil in the world. Thus the church becomes a “vehicle” [sic!] for acknowledging real power in the world, and then insists that all such emergences of power are finally penultimate in a world where YHWH governs. For all of our present aversion to such imagery, the church will not and cannot abandon its claim concerning the good governance of YHWH—Father, Son and Spirit—who will prevail. Thus Paul, in his great celebration of the “love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord,” will not avoid martial imagery:
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us
(Romans 8:37).
Not only can YHWH prevail over the might of horses and chariots, but the text is also capable of imagining chariots in the service of YHWH. Most spectacularly, the singular departure of Elijah to heaven is accomplished via the imagery of chariots. On the one hand, Elijah ascends via chariots of fire and horses:
A chariot of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them, and Elijah ascended in a whirlwind into heaven (v. 11).
YHWH has chariots at his disposal. On the other hand, “chariot” as a sign of power is assigned to Elijah himself as an instrument and weapon of YHWH’s mighty governance:
Elisha kept watching and crying out,
Father, Father! The chariots of Israel and its horsemen! (v. 12).
Elijah embodied and represented the force of YHWH’s power, and is lifted into the presence of God.
Not only are chariots instruments and exhibits of power, but chariots are also a means of transport. We may consider the spectacular case of Jehu, the rebel who seized the throne of Northern Israel. Jehu famously “rode furiously (RSV: “like a maniac”) as he pressed toward the kings of Israel and Judah (II Kings 9:20). He then shot King Joram in his chariot (v. 24), and then King Ahaziah (v. 27). Jehu had no problem with moving targets in his great rush to power.
The other mention of “chariot” we may consider in these narratives is the interaction of Elisha with his servant in the face of a Syrian threat. When his servant has his eyes opened via the prayer of Elisha:
The mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha (v. 17).
This odd sighting receives no commentary. It is, however, enough to make the claim that Elisha was not left without protection or resources. He was in truth surrounded by protective resources now seen by the servant but unknown to the Syrians. Thus the long legacy of “horses and chariots” as an emblem of power is deployed to assert YHWH’s attentiveness to Elisha. YWHW has immense resources to offer to his prophetic servant.
Given this long legacy of “chariots” as a cipher for power, we may consider its force in these two prophetic tales. In II Kings 2:11-12, Elijah is carried away via a chariot of fire, and then he himself is identified as such a force in the world. In II Kings 6:17, chariots of fire are dispatched on behalf of Elisha. These two references gladly attest that YHWH has the capacity and power in the world via “horses and chariots” that in the end will prevail over the worldly deployment of such instruments of war. When we consider the usage of “chariots” as emblems of YHWH’s sovereignty, it is not at all a far leap to the African-American spiritual, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” There were indeed violent and aggressive chariots in the field of battle, but this one now is “sweet,” eagerly welcomed:
Swing low, sweet chariot,
Coming for to carry me home.
Swing low, sweet chariot,
Coming for to carry me home.
I’m sometimes up, I’m sometimes down
Coming for to carry me home
But still my soul feels heavenly bound
Coming for to carry me home.
I looked over Jordan and what did I see?
Coming for to carry me home
A band of angels coming after me
Coming for to carry me home.
Thus the Elisha text generates singing! The spiritual is the creation of Wallace Wallis, a Choctaw freedman in the Indian Territory of Oklahoma. (The state of Oklahoma, finally, in 2011, designated the song as the official state gospel song). The song anticipates, on the lips of the enslaved in their yearning, that a chariot will come for them as it came for Elijah. The destination of the awaited chariot is to “carry me home,” recognizing, of course, that slave habitation was not and could not ever be “home.” The song offers a cagey double-edged imagery. On the one hand, it appeals to biblical geographical imagery of crossing the Jordan River into the land of promise. On the other hand, it anticipates a “band of angels” on their way to heaven. It is easy to conclude, as many have, that the song is coded in double-speak to express geographical relocation outside of slave territory (via the Underground Railroad). The coded language of “heaven” “via a band of angels” was perhaps to disguise for white owners that the aim was heaven and life-after-death. If taken in that way, then the hope is no threat to enslavement in this world. The anticipation is that the rescue chariot of God would whisk them away to freedom. These chariots of emancipation, dispatched by the emancipatory God, would “swing low,” low enough to pick up and rescue the lowliest slaves. While the social imagery is used carefully and knowingly, it is powerful enough to permit the construction and performance of a world alternative to the exploitative royal world of ancient Israel, or the oppressive slave economy in the US. In this “other world” that the song imagines, there are measures of wellbeing that neither the royal world of ancient Israel nor the slave-owning economy of the US could ever possibly deliver. This hope and yearning for home is powerful seeded by the deployments of chariots in these two prophetic narratives.
This song readily calls to mind a second such song that brings to voice slave hope for emancipation, namely “Steal Away to Jesus”:
My Lord, he calls me,
he calls me by the thunder;
the trumpet sounds within my soul,
I ain’t got long to stay here.
Steal away, steal away,
steal away to Jesus, steal away, steal away home,
I ain’t got long to stay here.
The green trees are bending,
poor sinners stand trembling;
The trumpet sounds within my soul;
I ain’t got long to stay here.
My Lord, he calls me,
he calls me by the lightning;
the trumpet sounds within my soul,
I ain’t got long to stay here.
This song, also sung by Wallis, voices a lively eager yearning for freedom, cast in code language. The rhetoric suggests a flight to “Jesus,” but the appeal is likely coded reference to an alternative life in a territory of freedom. The refrain, “I ain’t got long to stay here,” is an eager acknowledgement that life in the slave economy is unbearable and it is now time, past time, to flee north to freedom. We can see the Elijah-Elisha narratives generate singing that is an act of hope and resolve to leave a world of oppression for the sake of an alternative. It was indeed just such a counter-world that Elisha enacted one episode at a time, as he enacted and brought into being a world of goodness unimpeded by the demands of the dominant royal world. In the singing propelled by the prophetic narratives, we have a defiant dismissal of the world of white domination and abuse.
It is no wonder that the Elijah-Elisha narrative would evoke singing for another world. It is no surprise that voice could be found to break the submissive silence imposed in the slave economy. It is easy to see why and how the Elisha narrative calls for singing of another world. Singing is the inescapable force of a world beyond the tight prose world of white domination. Every time the church sings, it parses another world presided over by the God of good news. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s depended upon the singing of “We shall overcome” wherein its practitioners reassured each other. Protesters in South Africa who posited a world beyond white apartheid could sing, “We are marching in the light of God.” These two prophets dismissed the dominant royal world that could not stop or negate their transformative generativity. They performed an alternative world and have since evoked singing of another world not governed in exploitative ways.
