"Turning Battlefields into Banquets" (August 9, 2026 Sermon)

Preaching: Rev. Dr. Stephen M. Fearing

Text: 2 Kings 6:8-23

A king makes war plans in private, yet every move gets exposed and every ambush fails. That tension kicks off a startling passage from 2 Kings 6 where Elisha seems to know what’s said in the enemy’s bedchamber, an army surrounds a small city at night, and a terrified servant asks the question we all ask when pressure closes in: “What shall we do?” 

We start with an everyday analogy, chess against an increasingly smart AI, to name that unsettling feeling of being anticipated and outmatched. Then we follow the story to Dothan, where Elisha prays for something more practical than a weapon: opened eyes. The mountain blazes with horses and chariots of fire, and the sermon presses into what that means for faith, fear, and spiritual perception. When we can finally see more clearly, we stop treating violence as the only option. 

The biggest shock comes next. The enemy is struck blind, led straight into Samaria, and the king of Israel is ready to finish them off. Elisha refuses the logic of revenge and orders a table instead: food, water, a great feast, and safe passage home. We also hold a necessary tension, critiquing cultural obsession with military violence while honoring the real sacrifices of service members and veterans, echoing the pastoral and prophetic balance modeled by Harry Emerson Fosdick. 

If you’re hungry for biblical peacemaking, Christian nonviolence, and a faith that expands your moral imagination, press play. Subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review with one place you want to choose feeding over fighting.

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Transcript

Opening Prayer For The Word

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Gracious God, your word is very near on our lips and in our hearts. As this word is read and proclaimed by the power of your Holy Spirit, make it become in us the word of faith. Then send us in joy to bring this word to others who also need the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Elisha Outsmarts The King Of Aram

SPEAKER_00 0:30

The scripture reading this morning is from 2 Kings chapter 6, verses 8 through 23. Once when the king of Aram was at war with Israel, he took counsel with his officers. He said, At such and such a place shall be my camp. But the man of God sent word to the king of Israel, take care not to pass this place, for the Arameans are going down there. The king of Israel sent word to the place of which the man of God spoke. More than once or twice. He warned a place so that it was on the alert. The mind of the king of Aram was greatly perturbed because of this. He called his officers and said to them, Now tell me, who amongst us is betraying us to the king of Israel? Then one of his officers said, No one, my lord king, it is Elisha, the prophet in Israel, who tells the king of Israel the words that you speak in your bedchamber. He said, Go and find where he is. I will send and seize him. He was told he is in Dothan. He sent horses and chariots there and a great army. They came by night and surrounded the city. When an attendant of the man of God rose early in the morning and went out, an army with horses and chariots was all round the city. His servant said, Alas, master, what shall we do? He replied, Do not be afraid, for there are more with us than there are with them. Then Elisha prayed, O Lord, please open his eyes that he may see. So the Lord opened the eyes of the servant, and he saw the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. When the Arameans came down against him, Elisha prayed to the Lord and said, Strike this people, Lord, with blindness. So he struck them with blindness, as Elisha had asked. Elisha said to them, This is not the way, and this is not the city. Follow me, and I will bring you to the man whom you seek. And he led them to Samaria. As soon as they entered Samaria, Elisha said, O Lord, open the eyes of these men so that they may see. The Lord opened their eyes, and they saw that they were inside Samaria. When the king of Israel saw them, he said to Elisha, Father, shall I strike them? Shall I strike them? He answered, No. Would you strike those whom you have taken captive with your sword and with your bow? Set food and water before them, so that they may eat and drink, and let them go to their master. So he prepared for them a great feast. After they ate and drank, he sent them on their way, and they went to their master. And the Arameans no longer came raiding into the land of Israel. Holy wisdom, holy word. Thanks be to God.

SPEAKER_01 4:06

All right, friends, let us pray. The Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable and pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

Chess, Duolingo, And Feeling Exposed

SPEAKER_01 4:24

So, how many of you all know how to play the game chess? Yeah? I've played chess my entire life. I'm not that great at it, but I've started to kind of pick it back up and learn more. When Hazel Grace and Winnie, or when Hazel Grace started the Spanish submersion program at Jones Elementary School, uh Trish and I both downloaded the Duolingo app so we uh you know could uh try to get ahead of the time when she when the two of them can conspire in another language. Um so I downloaded the Duolingo app, was learning Spanish, but you can also learn chess, as it turns out, with Duolingo. So that's what I've been doing the past month or so. I've been kind of relearning chess, and um I've I've found something that's actually quite annoying is that as I get better, the app is giving me an AI opponent that's getting harder and harder. It's quite rude. Um but I'm I'm getting to this point where I'm getting this feeling like my AI opponent knows what I'm about to do before I even do it. I have a very particular way that I like to open up my chess game. I try to control the center of the board immediately, getting the pawns to the center, the knights out. Um, if I'm feeling particularly frisky, I'll try to get my queen into the action really soon to put my opponent kind of on the defense early. But lately, that particular kind of opening hasn't been working for me because my AI opponent knows that I'm about to do it. It's quite, quite frustrating. Um, is it going to make me a better chess player? Yes. It's still really annoying.

Dothan Surrounded And Eyes Opened

SPEAKER_01 6:06

I'm guessing that that's how the king of Aram felt at the beginning of today's passage. You may remember last week we talked about the story of an unnamed slave girl who was owned by a general named Naaman, who was a general in the army of the Arameans, which is another word for Syria, Syria in modern-day Syria. But they were the primary antagonists to the Israelites at this point in 1st and 2 Kings. And as Elisha is getting his prophetic ministry underway, the Israelites and the Arameans are trading hostilities. But the king of Aram, we don't know what his name is, the text doesn't tell us, is getting really annoyed by the fact that whenever he tells his troops we're going to do such and such, he finds that the Israelites already know what the what the game plan is going to be. It happens once, and he's like, okay, that's a coincidence. It happens twice, and he's like, okay, maybe that's bad luck. And then it happens 17 times, and he goes, okay, something's going on here. So he gets all of his generals together, and he comes up to he comes up to the only rational conclusion that most people in that position would, which is we've got a spy, right? Somebody is feeding the Israelites the intelligence. So he gets his generals together and he says, Okay, which one of you is spilling the beans to the Israelites? And they all kind of look at each other sheepishly, and then one general raises his hand and says, Actually, Mr. King, it's not us. It's that Elisha dude. He knows everything. He knows by the power of the Israelites God the things that you say when you are alone sleeping at night. Well, I don't know about you all, but that's rather disconcerting. So the king of Aram says, Okay, bring me this guy so that I can kill him. And that's exactly what he does. He sends the Arameans off to capture Elisha. They do some intelligence and they figure out that he's hanging out in this relatively small city in the northern part of Israel called Dothan. So the Arameans send their army to surround Dothan in the middle of the night, and early the next morning, Elisha's servant gets up and leaves the apartment and goes outside to grab a cup of coffee and a newspaper at the bodega around the corner, and notices that there is a whole army surrounding Dothan. So he goes and he finds his master, wakes him up, and says, Um, excuse me, Mr. Elisha, it's a small, small problem. Uh, there is an army surrounding us. But Elisha is not that concerned. He's still kind of sleepy. He's acting kind of like Jesus does in that boat of that story that you all know from the Gospels. Elisha says to his servant, It's fine. We outnumber them. The servant's like, What are you smoking? Okay? But Elisha says, No, trust me. Go out and look again. And the servant goes out and sees something different this time. He sees all the army, but around the Arameans' army, he sees this heavenly angelic army with all of these horses and chariots of fire. The authors of 1st and 2 Kings really like chariots, and they really like them to be on fire. I don't know why. It's pretty catchy. But in this moment, um the Elisha's servant recognizes that uh that they're not alone. Elisha finally wakes up and goes out and joins him and says, Hey, watch this. And he calls on God to um to strike the Israel the Arameans blind.

Blindness, Capture, And A Strange Escort

SPEAKER_01 10:10

I'm sorry, I have music coming from my phone for reasons that I do not understand. You what? It's the Holy Spirit. I don't know. That's yeah, actually, I know what happens. It's an old person problem. No, I'll actually tell you what it is. Um, for some reason, my Spotify was open, and my girls had the same Spotify account, so occasionally it'll just start playing music. So Hazel Grayson Winnie, thank you for interrupting Daddy's sermon. So, all right. Anyways, where were we? So uh God strikes a blindness uh on the Aramean army, and Elisha captures the very army that was sent to do what? To capture him, right? Very ironic. So Elisha takes the army captive and says, Okay, follow me, and they have no choice but to follow him. And Elisha leads the armies into uh into Samaria, which is the capital of Israel. Elisha knocks on the door of the king of Israel and says, Hey, look what I found. And the king of Israel says, That's awesome! Thank you. Let's kill them all, because you know, we're in a time of war, and that makes sense when your enemy wanders helplessly right into your arms. But then, as you heard Bob read, uh read for us, Elisha does a remarkable thing. Elisha says, No, these are not your captives, these are my captives. I don't want us to fight them. I want us to feed them. And that's exactly what happens. The blindness gets lifted off of the Aramaean army. They look around in panic, as any of us would, but that panic was short-lived because shortly after that the Israelites set a table in the presence of their enemies. Have you ever heard that line before? And then after they had their fill, Elisha and the Israelites send the Arameans home unharmed. It's a remarkable story.

A Banquet Instead Of Bloodshed

SPEAKER_01 12:26

It's remarkable because you and I are living in a very pugilistic culture right now. I know that's a really big word. Does anybody know what a pugilist is? It's a boxer. It's an old term for a boxer. We we are told, taught right now, in all corners of our culture, it feels, never to turn the other cheek, but instead to fight, fight, fight. And yet in this story, Elisha says, no, now is the time to feed, to feed, to feed. So I invite us all to be curious together what it might look like, what the world might look like where we no longer bomb our enemies, but we feed them.

Honoring Veterans While Rejecting War

SPEAKER_01 13:15

Now, whenever I have a sermon where I critique our country's obsession with military violence, I think it's very important to acknowledge that we can critique our culture's obsession with military violence while not disparaging our men and women of the armed forces. You know, I did three funerals this week, two here at Guilford Park. I did one down at Forbus and Dick. And two of those three folks that I helped the people sing to heaven were servicemen, were combat veterans. So whenever I preach sermons like this, I always admit that I'm not in the military. I don't come from a military family. I don't know what that sacrifice takes. And I think it's really important that we hold that balance together. You know, one of my um, and now my computer is acting up, my goodness. Um,

Expanding Moral Imagination For Peace

SPEAKER_01 14:09

one of my favorite preaching heroes was Harry Emerson Fosdick, who was the founding preacher of Riverside Church in uh the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and he was a noted pacifist preacher who would frequently criticize the uh military-industrial complex in his sermons from that pulpit. But every single week, when he learned that there were service men and women that were in worship at Riverside, he took time out of his busy schedule to write each of them handwritten notes of gratitude for their service. I love that pastoral prophetic balance, and I kind of want us to have that vibe here together this day as we express wonder at this inexplicable story about feeding our enemies instead of bombing them. And it's interesting that I mention Harry Emerson Fosdick because I believe our closing hymn today is God of Grace and God of Glory, in which Harry Emerson-Fosdick famously pins, Cure thy children's warring madness. And so together I just invite us all to wonder what it might look like if we feed our enemies instead of bombing them. And I mentioned our courageous and brave service men and women, and the ones that I know would be the first among us to long for a world in which all battlefields become banquets. So I don't have all the answers. I'm not the president of the United States or commander in the military. I don't know what it's like to make those calls. I will freely admit it. But you and I are stewards of a radical story like this that compels us to not accept that warfare is the only option. Because Elisha's servant looked out and he saw that warfare, he thought that warfare was the inevitable option. Right? The king of Aram looked out and thought that warfare was the only option. The king of Israel looked out and thought that warfare was the only option. But the God who you and I dare to call the Prince of Peace, called a prophet named Elisha to expand the moral imaginations of the Israelites and everyone to say, do not make that assumption that we always have to turn to fighting before we feed our neighbors. Friends, in the name of the Prince of Peace, may all of us, God's beloved children, say Amen.