Gospel: Mark 9:38-50, 1st Reading: Numbers 11:4-6, 10-16, 24-29, 2nd Reading: James 5:13-20
“Would that all the LORD's people were prophets, and that the
LORD would put his spirit on them!” Well, folks, God did put God's spirit on
all people, and not only that, on all Creation and blessed them. It is in the
Creation story and in the book of acts. God breathed God’s spirit into us
all. Why don't we know it and see it? I
think, at times, we do, when people agree with us. But many times we feel divided from each
other by strong opinions and we refuse to see God’s Spirit working through
other people.
There might be a couple of reasons we don't see the Spirit so
easily in others. One is that the world is always telling us that some have
Spirit and some don't. The world tells us that folks have spirit and value if
they are young, wealthy, hip, and clean. Another reason we don't see the Spirit
in ourselves or others is that we see ourselves differently if we think of
ourselves that way. If we have God's Spirit, then we have responsibility as
well as gifts and we’re going to need to put those to work toward God’s vision
of healing and wholeness for all Creation.
That sounds hard! Sometimes we don't see the Spirit at work because
we're afraid. If I open myself to the Spirit, what will it mean for my life?
How will it change me? How will I be different? God is changing us. God is
lifting our eyes from our own troubles and scrapes, to see that we are not
alone, to acknowledge the Spirit in ourselves and others, and to see the bigger
picture of a world thriving in God's living Spirit. Sometimes we ignore the Spirit because we’re
afraid.
That's where the Israelites are, this morning. They don't see
they have Spirit, or power to do anything about the situation they are in, so
they are complaining and blaming others for their predicament. We always laugh
when we read this lesson, because it is so familiar. We can hear ourselves
whining like that. We can hear our friends, kids, and family whining like that.
“I'm sick of this food! This is disgusting! I want melon!” They blame Moses.
Moses blames God. Pretty soon everyone is mad at everyone else.
Instead, God reminds people that they do have the Spirit—that
Moses isn't the only one with gifts, and they are all capable and responsible
for the welfare of the people. It is the encouraging of the sharing of the
load, the sharing of the Spirit that is going to help, to inspire the
imagination, to move them forward.
All the people could think about was the past. Oh, there were
some good meals to be had in Egypt. And we can relate—remember the potlucks,
the smorgasboards, the coffee hours, the bake sales? But is that all there is of life? You eat
three meals a day, but when you live in slavery, that is a barrier to the
Spirit. The people needed to be faithful and free. They needed to be free of
Pharaoh and that oppression. They were
freed to be in Wilderness School, as Dan Erlander likes to call it, in his book
“Manna and Mercy.” The people were learning what it meant to be free, to
recognize the Spirit in each of them, to work together in community, to handle
things as mature adults, and to take responsibility for their part. They
were learning what it meant to listen to God’s voice, showing them how to care
for each other and look out for the little ones and neglected ones. We might just be in Wilderness school
ourselves, in these Covid times, this upheaval, learning to be free and
faithful.
So God appointed 70 elders and God reminded them, they have the
gift of prophecy. God gathered them around and asked them to tap into their
dreams for the future. What were their hopes for their new land? What would it
be like there? How would it be to live in freedom? I doubt it was very hard for
those elders to go there. They just needed to be reminded to let their hopes
and imaginations work. Then their anxiety and living in the past melted away,
for that moment, and the community was able to move forward. But it wasn't just
the 70 official elders that were accessing their hopes and dreams. Here come
Eldad and Medad. Can't you just imagine these identical twin hoodlums—the
rhyming names just add another level of humor to this story! Moses says, “I'll
take all the help I can get! Are there any more Eldad's and Medad's out there?
Find your Spirit! It is in there! Find your hope, your creativity
and share it with the community! It isn't food we're in short supply of, it is
imagination.”
And God is saying that to each of us, today. You have the
Spirit. It was promised in your baptism and it is still there, no less
effective than that blessed day. And you know what, I am going out on a limb to
say that even those who aren't baptized have that Spirit, too. God created us
each one, breathed God's Spirit into us, and blessed us. Of course people are
out there doing God's work that have nothing to do with the church, but God is
working through them all the same, and maybe even more effectively than some of
us who feel we need permission to prophesy or dream.
You know that dream, that vision you have. It isn't about
something shallow, but it is a bigger dream about the interconnectedness of all
Creation. It is about wholeness. It is hopeful. I invite you to let God reveal
that dream to you. I invite you to let yourself dream it, to listen to God, to
listen to the Spirit in you, to prophesy.
And I would love if you would let me know what you discover, what you
see and hear when you let yourself listen to God’s dream.
So now we come to the Gospel reading about cutting off hands and
feet. Not a favorite reading for most preachers. This is where I am this week.
The Israelites were in despair, and in their despair they were particularly
shortsighted. All they could think of was the food they wanted to eat. They
would have sold themselves back into slavery, sold their bodies, their
children, their wives and mothers and fathers back into slavery for some tasty
leeks. They would have cut off their freedom for a cheap price. They would
have cut off Moses and Aaron in their fear and anger and blaming just to eat
one meal with garlic.
The Disciples were jealous. They had just failed at casting out
demons. Now there were these other guys, who didn't even know them, who hadn't
been through the training that were successful. The Disciples are so
shortsighted. Their own egos are getting in the way. They would cut off these others who are doing
Jesus’ work of healing just because they weren’t authorized.
So Jesus says something to point out just how shortsighted they
are being. It is absurd, to get their attention. Very similar to when a kid
scrapes his knee and we say, “Shall we amputate?” In that moment the pain and
the wounded pride are all on the kid's mind. Their foot has sinned against
them, their eye has caused them to stumble.
But when we say, “Shall we amputate?” it is a reminder of the greater
good of that leg. In the same way, Jesus says, “Shall we amputate?” Jesus is
saying, “Go ahead and amputate if you think that’s going to help.” Jesus is saying, “Go ahead and cut off the
body part you are blaming,” knowing we will stop and think about whether that
blaming makes any sense or maybe there is some other reason why we stumbled and
a way to take responsibility and take action rather than blame and complain.
We are a congregation remembering the good old days. We are stumbling—we are messing up. We are struggling—we can’t meet in
person. We might go down the rabbit hole
of complaining or blaming or cutting off.
But if we start cutting each other off and deciding who is in and who is
out, we start cutting off the body of Christ. In times of distress the church
has sometimes blamed our problems on The Jews or women or LGBTQ people and
hacked and cut at the human family, only finding that we’ve been wounding the
family of God, the body of Christ. Recall
the reading, “The hand can't say to the eye, 'I have no need of you.” “Whoever
is not against us is for us.” We are all one. We can't afford to cut each other
off. Since each carries God's Spirit, we can't afford to do without each other,
just as we can't afford to live without an appendage. We need each other.
In the first reading, the people want to condemn Eldad and Medad
because they weren’t where they expected them to be. In the Gospel the Disciples want to condemn
others who are casting out demons. We’re
really bad at knowing what is acceptable and what isn’t. God is constantly surprising us by going
outside the boundaries we’ve drawn. Jesus
points out the absurdity of the violence we commit against each other when we
draw lines and hack off parts of the body of Christ. And he points out the absurdity of violence
when he took the cross on his shoulders and put up no defense against it. He took that violence upon himself, down to
hell and back, and showed us that violence has no power over the author of
life, that life and the sharing of it, is what is truly powerful.
Even Jesus stumbled. He
stumbled on the way to his crucifixion.
He stumbled when he told the woman that she was a dog when she asked for
healing for her daughter. It seemed that
what he cut off in that instance was limits that he had put on God’s love. He cut the chains for all who were guilty of
sin and took that upon himself. He cut
the power of death away, by dying himself, and rising again to new life. So we are invited to cut our ideas of who is
excluded. We are to cut our blaming and
complaining and accept the challenge of living abundantly, faithfully, freed to
love and serve our neighbor. We are to
help cut the chains of our most helpless neighbors and to live in community and
mutual support and prayer. This is
sweeter than any potluck or bakesale.
This is better than any past we lived—Jesus is with us now and we are
learning and praising and dreaming God’s dream of wholeness and community.
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