Ever felt irritable? Of course you have! Do you feel irritable right now? It’s almost certain some here are. Well, the Old Testament reading is for you.

The prophet Elisha, disciple of the great prophet Elijah, is really irritable. He suspects Elijah is going to leave him. Elijah keeps trying to shake him off as he travels to Gilgal. ‘Stay here’ he keeps saying. But Elisha keeps refusing. A group of prophets from Bethel needle him: ‘God’s going to take your master away’. ‘Yes, I know’, snaps Elisha, ‘Shut up!’ (The version we have says ‘Keep silent’ but it’s a bit more rough and ready than that isn’t it?)

On they go and reach Jericho. The prophets here have a go at him. He must be really irritated by now. ‘Don’t you know that God’s going to take your master away?’ ‘Yes, yes, I know; just shut up!‘

Elisha tries to strike a bargain with Elijah. ‘If I see you go, give me a double share of your spirit.’ He means twice the prophetic power Elijah had. Some ask! He does indeed see Elijah go, in a startling vision of fiery horses and chariot.

The next bit of the story is not in our reading. Elisha has seen Elijah taken up. So what about the double share? Elijah’s cloak drops from the chariot of fire. Elisha picks it up and comes to the river Jordan. How to get across? He rolls up the cloak and beats the river with it. The waters part. He crosses on dry land. He did indeed see his master in the divinely sent fiery chariot and has indeed been given a double share of the spirit. Irritability has been ousted by a divine gift.

Today’s Gospel reading, from Mark, also invites us to see. To see Jesus. We are invited to see Jesus in glory. It’s not fiery but certainly brilliantly luminous. It’s a glimpse of glory.

This reading is given to us just three days before Lent begins. Lent seems designed to make us irritable. I know I should take it seriously but … Lent’s about self examination and fasting and Bible reading. It’s all a bit much isn’t it? But Lent is nearly here and going to happen. It’s going to start in three days on Ash Wednesday. But wouldn’t it be so much easier if we didn’t have it at all?

Take a lesson from Elisha. Irritable though he is he sticks with Elijah and his outrageous wish to see God in action, whisking up Elijah into the heavens is rewarded with the divine gift of the Spirit. So maybe the Church is wise in giving us Lent after all. Maybe we should stick with it. Maybe God is at work in our world, in the Church and in our souls after all.

Mark’s account of what we call the transfiguration of Jesus is at the turning point of his Gospel. The Galilean ministry of teaching and healing gives way to the journey to Jerusalem and the momentous events that take place there. Three times at this point in the Gospel Jesus says, ‘I’m going to be arrested, mocked, killed and rise again.’ This is not his public teaching. This teaching is entrusted to his inner circle of disciples. Coming down from the mountain of transfiguration he tells the disciples not to tell anyone about it until he has risen from the dead.

Lent and Holy Week are there in the Church’s Year to prepare us to meet the risen Jesus. Jesus is of course risen now. This is the truth we believe in. As the long ending to the weekly collect has it, ‘…who is alive and reigns together with you and the Holy Spirit now and for ever.’ But each year we have Lent to take the time to examine if our souls and our church are indeed open to the new, eternal, risen life and rule of Jesus our Lord and King.

On Ash Wednesday the Church hears the priest give this invitation: ‘I invite you in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial and by reading and meditating on God’s holy word.’ This is rich diet of spiritual practice and all the resources are there for us each to enter in. We must remember too that like Elisha we have been given the overflowing gift of the Spirit that grounds and empowers our spiritual practice. It was given irrevocably at our baptism and confirmation. It is invoked by the priest at every Eucharist when the words are spoken; ‘Send down your Holy Spirit on your people’ . As St Paul teaches in Romans chapter 8, the Holy Spirit dwells, lives, has taken up residence, in our hearts, grounding us in the life of God. We resist the Spirit to our agony; we embrace the Spirit for our joy. This is the choice each Lent invites us to make.

The observance of a holy Lent prepares us to meet with the risen Christ. This is a life-giving encounter but it is not necessarily comfortable. On the northern shore of Lake Galilee, right by the tiny Church of the Primacy of Peter there is a bronze sculpture of the risen Christ commissioning Peter. Jesus reaches out his hand over Peter. Peter looks as though he has been struck and leans, almost topples over backwards. The repeated words ‘Do you love me?’ strike him and us and invite us to serious self-examination.

And Lent is an opportunity not just for individual Christians to examine themselves. It is an opportunity for Church communities to examine their corporate lives. They can ask of themselves the questions, ‘Does this Church community love Jesus’?. Are we just polishing our self-image? Let us examine ourselves. The Church of England says of itself that it is both catholic and reformed. A Reformation Latin tag about the Church is that it is ‘semper reformanda’, ‘Always to be reformed’. This doesn’t mean neurotically constantly changing, but always ready and willing to be reformed, re-shaped in Christ.

If this seems too demanding for a Church we must remember that the Church has been brought into being, brought into life by the Spirit. Elisha received this divine gift. It is the Church’s Pentecost gift. It’s there in the Creed: ‘We believe in the Holy Spirit … We believe in one holy and apostolic Church. A Church’s self-examination is always Spirit led, so that it may more truly and faithfully be the Church of Jesus Christ.

Lent is a season of searching for each Christian and for each church, for all Christians and for all Churches. It may make us irritable, uncomfortable, with its invitation to self-examination. But Lent leads us step by step into the presence of the crucified and risen Jesus and the new life that comes through him. And every step of the way it is empowered by the Holy Spirit, given to us and ever present.

This Lent may we have courage to ask for a double share in that Spirit.

Service: Canon Bill Croft. 11th February 2024. (St John The Baptist Church Peterborough UK)

Readings: 2 Kings 2.1-12; 2 Corinthians 4.3-6; Mark 9.2-9