What are we passing on, and to who?

Last week Jo Keogan talked to us about LT4Youth, the Diocesan leadership training programme for young people, and our role walking with those young people as mentors and supporters. This week we explore this in terms of our mantle and we are asked: who are we passing our mantle on to and what are we passing on?

In the reading from 2 Kings we hear the story of Elijah passing his mantle on the Elisha. A mantle was originally a cape worn simply to ward off the cold. For Elijah it became a symbol of his prophetic call. As Elijah tours the sacred sites of the Northern Kingdom, Elisha tags along denying what is happening. At the end he watches his mentor being taken up to heaven in a fiery chariot and is rewarded with Elijah’s mantle. This symbolises that Elijah has passed on all he needs and that God will be with him as he had been with Elijah. Who are we preparing to pick up our mantles?

The other three readings help us explore the nature of our mantle, or what we are passing on. The Psalmist reminds us that this involves retelling both the grand stories of God, and the stories of this parish, the people who have been part of this parish whose ministries shape us today. In what ways do we pick up their mantle?

The message of Paul and Luke is simply learning to love as we are loved, and letting go of everything that stops us truly loving our neighbour as ourselves.  The passage from Luke seems harsh. Surely we should be able to bury our parents, to say goodbye, to honour those who love us. Maybe? But Luke like Paul was more concerned with what prevents us seeing others at all. Family and community defined people, defined what they believed, who they saw as worthy of attention, care and love. Family and community defined neighbour as people in that family and that community. Paul and Luke invited  those early followers to leave all that behind, to see people with fresh eyes as more than in and out. To embrace even the most despised as neighbour. So what beliefs stop us loving our neighbour as ourselves? What relationships blind us to those different from us? What do we pass on that blinds others? What do we need to let go of so that out mantle will be a mantle of love?