“When the Spirit
Rested on Them”
Meditation on Numbers 11:24-30
***
24 So Moses went out and told the people the words
of the Lord; and he gathered seventy elders of the people, and placed them
all around the tent. 25Then the Lord came down in the
cloud and spoke to him, and took some of the spirit that was on him and put it
on the seventy elders; and when the spirit rested upon them, they prophesied.
But they did not do so again. 26 Two
men remained in the camp, one named Eldad, and the other named Medad, and the
spirit rested on them; they were among those registered, but they had not gone
out to the tent, and so they prophesied in the camp. 27And a
young man ran and told Moses, ‘Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the
camp.’ 28And Joshua son of Nun, the assistant of Moses, one of
his chosen men, said, ‘My lord Moses, stop them!’ 29But
Moses said to him, ‘Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord’s
people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on
them!’ 30And Moses and the elders of Israel returned to the
camp.
***
In just a few
days, I will begin a 2-week-long adventure, serving as a commissioner at our
denomination’s General Assembly in Detroit, followed by 5 days of continuing
education at Bethel Seminary in St. Paul. This is the first time I will be away
from Ebenezer for 2 Sundays in a row!
I am a little anxious. As I have told you,
I am a nester. But the Spirit leads me out of my comfort zone and empowers me to
do things I have never done—and to learn more so that I can do more for Him and
His people. I feel called to go and be a peacemaker at General Assembly, to
partner with Christ in His reconciling work in our Church and world. I am going
because I want to be obedient to Him.
The schedule of GA
is intense; work on committees and in plenaries begins early in the morning and
stretches until late evening. We will be
eating together, praying and seeking the Lord’s will together, and arguing
about things that will affect congregations across the nation for years to
come. Happily, my son, James, will be with me as a ruling elder alternate. He
will be learning the process so that he may serve as a commissioner to GA in 2016—if
he is available to go.
The questions our denomination will be asking
at this year’s assembly include: are we being good stewards of Creation and
witnesses to the God of peace when our investments support fossil fuels –oil
companies—that are hurting our environment and companies such as Hewlett
Packard, which sell technology to countries using it for war and oppression. We will be discussing and listening to experts
talk about the way to peace in the Middle East—and how the Presbyterian
Church’s policies may be supporting injustice. The question of whether teaching elders should
be permitted to perform marriages for same gender couples in states that have
legalized same-sex marriage will be hashed out, once again. The committee to
which I have been assigned will be considering the question of synods—what they
do, what they should be doing, the power and authority they should have, how
many synods there should be, and how the synod boundaries should be drawn. The
role of synods has been debated at General Assemblies for more than two
decades—since 1993 when an overture from the Presbytery of Southern New England
proposed the creation of a special committee, among other things, to create a
plan to eliminate synods and to divide synod property between presbyteries and
the General Assembly. This issue has come up because many of our 16 synods are
simply not functioning well and some seem to not know what their function is. Our synod, Lakes and Prairies, is one of the
stronger ones. Among other programs and services for presbyteries, our synod offers
an annual synod school in July that draws as many as 700 participants.
Those of us who
have agreed to go to General Assembly are going because we have hope! Our hope is not in ourselves and our own
wisdom or abilities to bring about peace and further God’s Kingdom. Our hope is
in the Holy Spirit—God in our midst, the same One who led his broken but
beloved people out of captivity in Egypt so long ago, using a flawed, insecure
human being named Moses.
***
The book of
Numbers is one of the most neglected books of the Bible, and yet it is one of
the most Presbyterian; it aims to make religious life “decent and orderly.” And
it fits the context of James and me preparing to attend GA to help make
decisions about the rules, structures, and procedures of the nationwide Church.
The Hebrew word for this book is Bemidbar
or “In the wilderness,” [1]
which is how the book begins. The book became known as “Numbers” because it
is much more than stories about the long wilderness journey; it is full of
numbers, lists, and rules. In Numbers, we find “census and sacrificial donation
lists; details of the set up of Israel’s camp; the duties of the Levites in the
traveling sanctuary; laws regarding wives suspected of adultery”; laws for Nazirites,
those who take on extraordinary religious vows; a “complicated and mysterious ritual
for removing the extreme ritual pollution carried by death,” [2]
a tale of “daughters inheriting land; and a host of other rules and
regulations.” [3]
Today’s reading
begins the section of Numbers Old Testament scholar Everett Fox calls the “rebellion narratives.”
He says, “Virtually the first thing the Israelites do after setting out on the
second leg of their journey to the Promised Land—is rebel.” [4] They forget about God’s miraculous deliverance
from slavery and pharaoh’s armies. They grumble and complain against Moses,
Aaron, and God. The primary issue throughout the rebellion narratives is that
the people fail to trust in God.
In chapter 11, the people wandering in the
wilderness remember the good things they used to eat when they were slaves in
Egypt. They have a craving for fish, cucumbers, watermelons, green leeks,
onions and garlic. And meat! Now they only have “manna”—a substance from plants
that God provides for their sustenance every day. The people collect it each
morning, grind it or crush it, boil it, and make it into cakes. Before today’s
reading begins, the people are grieving what they no longer have and God’s
anger is kindled as a fire that literally “eats” the edge of their camp. After
the fire goes out, the children of Israel again cry out, “Who will give us meat?”
Moses is fed up with the people, who are
acting like babies, he says. He tells God, “I am not able, myself alone, to carry this
entire people…pray kill me, yes, kill me, if I have found favor in your eyes so
that I do not have to see my ill fortune!”
The Lord tells
Moses to gather 70 elders and take them to the Tent of Appointment where He
will speak to them. He says, “I will extend from them the rushing spirit that
is upon you and place it upon them” so that you will not have to carry the
burden of the people alone. The Lord says he will provide for them enough meat
that it will become for them something disgusting, because they have spurned
the Lord who is among them. In verse 23, God says to Moses, “Is the arm of YHWH
too short? Now you shall see whether my word happens to you or not.”
God does as He promises. He comes down on
them in a cloud and speaks to them and through them, extending the rushing
spirit that was upon Moses. When the Spirit rests on the people at the tent,
they begin to speak like prophets. The Spirit goes beyond the 70 chosen elders
to 2 men who remained in the camp—Eldad and Medad. And they begin to speak like
prophets, too. And Joshua, who will take over the leadership of Israel after
Moses dies, wants to contain the Spirit of God, which cannot be controlled by
human beings. Joshua says, “My lord Moses, stop them!” But Moses answers,
“Would that ALL the Lord’s people were prophets and that the Lord would put his
Spirit on them!”
***
Friends, too often we want to tame and
control God’s Spirit. We want to use it for our own purposes—so that God will
give us what we want. We are ungrateful, like the children of Israel. We
remember the past and we cry out for what we have no more, when we have “manna”
from heaven today—so many blessings that the Lord so generously
provides for us!
I hear
complaints about the denomination – how it isn’t doing the things we want or
talking about the things we think are important. And how we are losing members,
but it isn’t our fault! Sometimes I
hear people not just sharing happy memories but longing for what the church and
community used to be. People’s thinking has changed, and life is different. Families
are smaller. Both parents are working outside the home. Divorce is more common.
And there are fewer young people in church and Sunday school. These things may
be true, but we should never use our changing society as an excuse to be disobedient
to Christ’s call to make disciples. What it may mean is rethinking HOW we do it
and most of all, trusting in the God of miracles, the Ancient of Days, who will
never change. God is still with us—doing things in and through us we cannot
predict! If the people don’t come through the doors of our church to be
nurtured in the faith, then we should be going out to them!
Look around you at these wonderful people,
still loving and serving God and His church! Can’t you see Jesus in the love of
your neighbors? In God’s eyes, we are ALL children—there is no “young” or
“old.” There are no Boomers, Generation X’s and Millennials. We are all just
babies in continual need of His nurture and tender care.
The church of the
future will look different than the church of yesterday. But let us set aside
all fear and insecurity, and be willing to let God use us, as He used Moses, to
do things that we don’t always want to do or know how to do—things that
frighten, intimidate, and stretch us. Let us pray for God to lead and empower
us, believing with all our hearts that with God all things are possible! And you
never know what may happen—when the Spirit rests upon us!
Will you pray with me?
Holy Spirit, come and fill us now. Rest upon us. Change us.
Empower us with loving hearts, longing for nothing more than to worship and
serve you with our lives. Thank you for Jesus Christ, whose sacrifice made the
way for our salvation—for reconciliation with You! Forgive us for behaving like
the ungrateful children of Israel, who wanted meat when you gave them all they
would ever need—manna from heaven! Give us courage to step out of our church
building and reach out to people in our community, at our places of employment
and even at the lake. Lead us to make disciples, sharing our hope in Jesus
Christ with this broken and hurting world. Stir us to greater faith in our God
of miracles, the Ancient of Days, who never changes. Help us to trust even more
in you, so that we are willing to set aside our vision of what we think church
should be and embrace your vision of the Body of Christ. In Him we pray. Amen.
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