Grace Notes // When We Were Kings Part 2
Week 6 // Death In The Pot
Written by Kelly Burton
This week in Chapter 4, we find Elisha and his servants returning to Gilgal in the midst of a famine. We don’t know if Elisha knew before about the famine or not, but it probably would have become evident quite quickly. Elisha decides that he needs to feed a hungry crowd of prophets with a stew. He sends his servant out to gather herbs, and the servant finds a wild vine and picks as many gourds as he could carry.
He cuts them up and puts them in stew, despite not being familiar with these specific gourds. When the prophets begin to eat the stew, they cry out “Man of God, there is death in the pot!” The gourds that the servant found, were in fact poisonous. Elisha tells his servant to get some flour, adds it to the pot and the stew is miraculously safe to eat. A very calm response to a pretty dramatic exclamation.
Last Sunday Pastor Holly identified four signs from this story that point us back to Jesus and how we are called to live together.
THE SIGN OF THE POT: YOU WERE MADE FOR COMMUNITY
What can we learn from a pot? The fact that Elisha was making a stew is telling. Stew can include basically any combination of vegetables and meat. They are particularly good for tougher cuts of meat or harder to cook vegetables, because they all simmer together in the pot for a long time until they’re tender and delicious.
Community rooted in Christ really does look like a stew sometimes. It is forgiving to the tough and “less desirable” parts of ourselves, making them soft and tender. Community takes things that seemingly don’t work well together and turns them into something amazing. The story specifies that it is a large pot which the Lord’s prophet Elisha was going to use to feed people who had been living in famine. Jesus works that way with us. His grace is deep enough to encompass whatever we carry and wide enough to sustain us no matter what we’re going through. He makes it known that there is enough provision for everyone, but it is made easier when we come together in community. Jesus pulls us in together, no matter our toughness, and uses us to care for one another and to bring about His will on earth.
THE SIGN OF THE SERVANT: BRING WHAT YOU CAN, AND KNOW WHAT YOU ARE BRINGING
A question many of us have asked is whether we really contribute something to the body of Christ. Hint: yes, you do. Each of us bring unique gifts, callings, skills, experience and knowledge. Along with that though, we also bring our wounds, trauma, and the lies we’ve believed. We all bring something to the table.
It seems unlikely that food would be lying around in a famine if it were edible. The gourds were probably there because the locals knew what they were. This would have been a very different story if the servant had asked the locals about them and whether they were safe to eat.
As followers of Christ, we have a responsibility to bring what we can to the table. Community as Christ intended, is ready to accept us as we are, with open arms. As we grow, though, we have a responsibility to recognize whether what we are contributing is causing harm or good. We are accepted as we are, but we also want to make sure that what we are bringing to the community will bring life and not death.
THE SIGN OF THE PROPHETS: BE AWARE OF WHAT’S GOING ON AROUND YOU
Once again, this story could have gone quite differently. If the prophets had not been there to recognize that the stew was poisonous, it could have been a disaster if Elisha had used it to feed the crowd.
When we live in community, there are going to be times when we need to make others aware that something is not good. That doesn’t mean we go out looking for sin in other people. We don’t need to call out planks while we have splinters. But we do need to be attuned enough to Christ and to one another to be able to know when something isn’t quite right.
Pointing out when there is an issue in our communities is hard. It’s a scary thing to do, especially if we’re not sure how it will be received. Saying nothing, though can only do more harm. Even if it doesn’t poison us, it could hurt others in or around our community. Just as we have a responsibility to ensure we aren’t causing harm ourselves, we have a similar responsibility to call out something that could be harmful to others.
THE SIGN OF ELISHA: YOU CARRY THE SOLUTION
There will be plenty of times when we have to acknowledge when something in ourselves is wrong, like the servant. And there will be plenty of times when we need to alert others to the fact that something is wrong, like the prophets. But living in Christ means that there will also be times when we are the ones who need to act to right those wrongs.
This doesn’t mean that we are fully responsible for the health of our community. As a follower of Christ, you have access to the fullness of God, the solution to everything. You have been uniquely equipped by God with the provision to make things right.
God uses community to turn what could have been death into a meal for those experiencing famine. It wasn’t perfect, but perfection isn’t the point. If we wait for everything in our lives to be perfect before we come to the table, we will never show up. We’re human beings – we will always bring some messiness and imperfect with us, but we bring that messiness and imperfection to the one who has the power to make it perfect. Once we overcome our fear of imperfection, we can focus on showing up more fully for our brothers and sisters in Christ.
In The Word
2 Kings 4: 38 – 41
Acts 8 & 9
Processing
What am I bringing to the table—both good and imperfect? Do I have blind spots?
What is holding me back from coming more fully to the table?
How can we lovingly and graciously help our friends and loved ones be aware of what they are bringing to the table (both good and bad)?