September 29, 2024

Prophets All

I feel compelled to offer a disclaimer at the outset.  The plain truth is, I don’t like the message I am about to deliver today.  This is a sermon being preached to the preacher, and it makes me uncomfortable.   Jesus said a lot of things that I wish he hadn’t, and this is one of them: “Whoever is not against us is for us.”  The implications of that are staggering, and the end result doesn’t set well with my basic make-up.  Now that I’ve got that off my chest, let’s get on with it.

Before explaining all that, I think I need to back up and talk about the way things would be in the world, and in the church, if I were in charge.  First of all, if I ran the show, people would be rational.  Nobody would cut me off on the highway, and if I wanted to move over in front of someone, they would slow down and let me in.  Everyone would have a clear sense of appropriate boundaries.  People would stick to their own turf, and not interfere in mine.  Now, that just all seems to make sense, doesn’t it?  For instance, take those who choose to believe in a strict code of moralism.  That’s fine with me, but if the world worked the way I wanted it to, they wouldn’t be allowed to try to influence public policy with their moralism – while those of us with more moderate, and more reasonable approaches, would of course have tremendous influence on public policy.  And, by the way, things would be a far sight different in church, too.  If I were in charge, I’d be in charge.  People would do things my way.  Important issues I’d get to decide, and the insignificant and tedious stuff other people would take care of.  That’s what I mean – everyone would know their place.  It would all be so reasonable.

That’s why I started to have trouble right off the bat when I read this passage from the book of Numbers.  The Lord God gives a commandment to Moses.  Now, the Bible makes it clear that God really is in charge.  And a commandment from God is – well – a commandment from God.  So God told Moses to get all the officers and elders together at the tent.  And when Moses did this, scripture says the Spirit of God came and “rested” on all of them.  Now that’s a beautiful thing.  I love it when a plan comes together.

But here’s the catch.  These two guys, Eldad and Medad, didn’t go to the tent.  They stayed in the camp.  Now, they were bona fide, registered, card-carrying elders and everything, but they didn’t follow orders.  So the Spirit of God came and rested on them right there in the camp.  Some of the folks got wind of this and were understandably upset.  All the elders were supposed to gather at the tent.  The Spirit of God thing was supposed to happen there, and these guys were in the wrong darned place!  Now, here they were prophesying and doing their thing just like the elders who did what they were told.  Joshua is my kind of guy.  He spoke right up.  He said to Moses, “Stop these guys!”

I’m with Joshua.  These fellas were breaking the rules.  And not just Moses’ rules.  These were the Lord God Almighty’s rules!  It was God who said, “all elders are to be at the tent.”  They weren’t at the tent.  So how does Moses deal with these rule-breakers?  He says to Joshua: “Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the LORD would put his spirit on them!”

Now, if you’ll pardon me, that stinks.  Moses just changed the rules in the middle of the game.  He told all the elders to get to the tent.  And when these two didn’t do what they were told, and got the Spirt poured out on them in the wrong place, Moses just said, “wouldn’t it be great if all the people were like them!”

Now, here’s what really burns me.  As if all that weren’t bad enough, Jesus takes the whole thing even farther.  When some guy started going around casting out demons in Jesus name, John tried to put a stop to it.  Understandably.  This clown was not one of the disciples.  He hadn’t been part of the crowd, probably hadn’t ever even met Jesus.  He didn’t have the proper authorization – no credentials – no seminary education – no Clinical Pastoral Education – no Ministers’ Council membership card!  Just who did he think he was?  And how did Jesus deal with this crisis?  He told them to leave the guy alone – let him keep it up!  And he tops it off with this beauty: “Whoever is not against us is for us.”

Excuse me?  Do you have any idea what the ramifications of that statement are?  It means that the distinctions among us get awfully blurry. It means the apathetic and uninvolved are part of the good guys.  Now, that really burns my beans.  Jesus doesn’t even seem to understand how things work.  In my tidy little world where people act reasonably, the rule is that those who opt out, who become indifferent, who put on a cheap show that’s “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” are playing for the wrong team.  The rule is: non-involvement and carelessness are just as bad as active opposition.  The rule is: whoever is not for us is against us.  Just listen to our country’s historic leaders – either you’re a supporter of the United States and whatever war we are in at the time, or you’re an enemy of freedom.  Jesus has got it all turned around.  He obviously just doesn’t get it.

Here’s my problem: If you listen to Moses and Jesus, you get the idea that there aren’t really hardly any rules at all.  It sounds like they’re saying that so long as it turns out OK, it doesn’t matter if you do what you’re told, or wear the right uniform.  It sounds a lot like situational ethics to me.

Well, as much as I like my world to be tidy, I’m starting to wonder if Moses and Jesus were onto something.  We live in an increasingly, sharply divided world.  The middle ground seems to be disappearing faster than Florida’s coastal wetlands.  There are hardly any purple states in America.  They are mostly only red and blue.  No one is allowed to support a reasonable compromise for the Israel/Hamas crisis.  You are either in for the long, bloody haul, or you’re a cut-and-run coward.  There’s no place in the lexicon for sincere believers who question authority, and sometimes even question their faith, you’re either a raging fundamentalist, or you’re part of the atheist, liberal elite.  Most frightening of all, there’s less and less ground to stand on for those of us who see the Spirit of Divine power at work in all times, and all lands, and all hearts.  Vast numbers of people in this world are being drawn to see their own faith (be it Muslim, Christian, or Jewish) as the exclusive abode of God’s promise, and those of all other faiths as infidels, terrorists, or hate-mongers.

Increasingly, our beliefs and actions are prescribed and proscribed by those who assume authority, be it political, ecclesiastical, or ideological.  And growing numbers of hot-blooded and hot-headed supporters are blindly following their pronouncements.

It’s a very dangerous world.  And maybe, just maybe, what we need is someone taking a sledgehammer to our rules, mucking up the fine, sharp lines we draw between ourselves, and scattering power around among the powerless like Johnny Appleseed planted trees.

That’s a bit of what is being suggested in these scripture passages.  I mean, once you let the Spirit have free reign to just do whatever the heck seems good in any given situation, you have anarchy.   And maybe, just maybe, we need a pinch of anarchy these days.  Maybe just enough to remind us of our common humanity, and our shared frailties.

I’d like everyone to be like me, and see the world the way I see it.  And when I look around and see other kinds of Christians (Catholics and other Protestants, fundamentalists and evangelicals), and when I see people of other faiths (Jews, and Muslims, and Buddhists) growing in power and getting all excited about their faith, it makes me a bit uncomfortable.  I start to worry that maybe they’ll just take over, and I’ll become obsolete.  It’s like the Spirit isn’t paying any attention to the boxes I’d like to put it in.  And I confess, it makes me nervous.

But when we conceive of the power of that Spirit being loosed in people of faith all over the globe to build a new spirit of love and truth, it’s a pretty darned impressive vision.  Isn’t it?

I’d like my world to be tidy, predictable and reasonable.  The way to make a world tidy, predictable and reasonable, is to have very clear rules, and make sure everyone follows them.  And mostly those rules have to do with ensuring that I can get my way to the greatest degree that fairness allows. It’s as simple as that.  But the more I read the Bible, the more I get the idea that the Spirit of the Lord has a little anarchy in its system.  The more I read the Bible, the more I get the feeling that that Spirit doesn’t like rules so much as faithfulness and results.  The more I read the Bible, the more I get the notion that the Lord of Life wants every single person to be empowered to speak life-changing words, come up with world-shattering ideas, and turn things upside down.

I’m not real happy with it, because it makes my life a whole lot more complicated.  But I have to admit, in my best of moments, I sit back and simply shake my head in awe at those who claim the power to live out and act out a vision that the Spirit has given them. In my best of moments, I marvel at the rebirth of faith that I see around the globe, from third world countries, to Asia, to Dallas, to Boston.  In my best of moments I forget about the rules I’d like to see put in place, and the world the way I’d like it to work, and I say, “Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the LORD would put his spirit on them!”