TWENTY-SIXTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

[cappie]

The human desire for orderliness and predictability is a good thing, because of it our science and technology, our agriculture and our medicine is made possible. Yet sometimes this trait, this part of human nature, gets in our way.

It is this fact that lies behind today's Old Testament Reading and today's
gospel reading.

As we heard, Moses gathered 70 leaders of the Israelite community together one day so that they might assist him in bearing responsibility for watching over and caring for the people of God.  He calls them to go out with him to the Tent of the Ark of the Covenant which was placed outside of the rest of the camp, and to receive there from God the same gift of the Holy Spirit that he had.

And so they do.   But there is a catch. It turns out that two of the seventy leaders did not go out to the Tent of the Ark of The Covenant.

Instead, for some unknown reason, they stayed in the camp with the rest of the people and it is there that the Spirit descends upon them, and it is there that they prophecy, and it is there that they are caught by a young man.  

They are caught by him breaking the rules and regulations set down by Moses, they are caught doing things out of turn, improperly, and without due authorization, and the young man runs out to the tent of the Ark of the Covenant and he reports all that he has seen to Moses.

Joshua, who is with Moses, hears the young man's report at the same time Moses does, and like John the Apostle in today's gospel reading, he attempts to put an end to the irregularity. We hear him say to Moses:      "My Lord Moses, Stop Them!  --- Stop them from disobeying you.      Stop them from doing things in the way they are not supposed to      do them.  Stop them from defiling the Spirit of God."

My Lord, Stop Them...

How many people have we tried to stop? How many people have we stifled because they are not doing things the way we think they should be done?  Because they are not precisely following the plan that we expect them to follow? 

It is a serious question.

The apostle John came up to Jesus one day.  In  today's gospel  reading we hear  him say: Jesus, I was walking down the road with the rest of the disciples,  and we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, we tried to stop him because we don't know who he is, we tried to stop him because he doesn't follow us.

It's like an echo isn't it - these two passages we are looking at today.

 Jesus - We tried to stop him!...  My Lord Moses, stop them!

What was John missing? What was Joshua missing? What are we missing?

What are we missing when new people come into our church  and then leave it just as quickly as they came? What are we missing when members of our own family tell us that we are driving them away?  And when strangers tell us that they do not feel welcome in our midst?

 Are the expectations we place upon others to do things just so - just a little bit too much? But Moses said to him, "Are you jealous for my sake?  Do you  think I really care if Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp instead of here?  Would that all the Lord's people were prophets and that the Lord would put his spirit in them.  Would  that they would prophesy in the camp, and speak God's word in the tabernacle, and communicate the will of the Lord to one another while walking through the desert and when they are eating and when they are playing.

It is good to have order. It is good to do things in certain ways.
Having customs and traditions and rules and regulations makes sense to me.

They make sense that is until they get in the way of embracing other people
- until they become instruments of judgement instead of instruments of grace, until they become things that blind us to what God is doing in our midst instead of helping us to see.  And then they have to prioritize - according to the simple law of the Spirit - the law of love - the law that embraces all our relations - the law that the Apostle Paul tells us in the Letter to Romans gives life.. 

 But Jesus said to John, "Do not stop him!  Do not prevent him  from doing good in my name simply because he is not following you  and the other disciples.  He is on my side.  For no-one who does  a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me.  Whoever is not against us is for us.  Truly, I tell you, whoever give you a cup of water to drink because you bear my name will by no means lose the reward."

Whoever is not against us is for us.

We are dedicated by our vows of faith and our pledges of loyalty to being loving and caring members of God's family. We are set apart by our faith - we are made holy in other words -      so that our presence in the larger world and in the intimacy of our families is a life giving presence.     

As Christians we have committed ourselves to doing the work God calls us to
do and to seeing others in the way that God sees us, and judging others in
the way that God judges us.

We can only really keep our vows and pledges, we can only be true to our commitment, we can only fill the world's need for us if we embrace one another and celebrate our common bound in God, the bound that was signed and sealed upon the cross of Christ. upon the cross of the one who said before he died, for us:

A new commandment I give you, that you love one another as I have loved you.