“Claim the Voice, Share the Gift”
Numbers 11:24-30
Acts 2:1-13
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
6/4/17
The stories we just read from Numbers and Acts are stories of God’s people in crisis. They reveal displaced groups
at cross roads struggling to discern identity and purpose. And the particular
leaders involved – Moses in the wilderness and the Apostles in Jerusalem – come
to God confessing their emptiness and vulnerability. As creative, diligent, and
even faithful as they may be, they know that, on their own, they cannot overcome
the height, depth, and breadth of their crises. They need help.
Leadership in
the household of faith, leadership of any kind for that matter, can be an
intensely demanding obligation. It requires gifts of discernment, courage, and
decisiveness. Because leadership is fundamentally an act of service, it also
requires mature sensibilities of compassion, humility, and justice. Perhaps
most challenging to individualistic cultures like ours, effective leadership
requires a commitment to the well-being of others before one’s own well-being.
Without these attributes, leaders may
become like Pharaoh, for whom neither slavery nor genocide is too high a price for
wealth and power; or like the sons of Eli who are spoiled, selfish, and deaf to
wisdom and holiness; or like King Saul who, lacking all gifts for leadership,
goes insane before everyone’s eyes; or like Jezebel, who holds the reins of
power by the force and fury of cruelty, and does so long enough that eventually
the eunuchs who are supposed to protect the queen throw her to her death from a
high window.
All of these key figures face
crises, and all of them, ignoring higher virtues, seek the guidance of flatterers
and the security of violence. Their stories live on in scripture, and we read
them and heed them as cautionary tales.
Moses and the Apostles face their crises differently.
In Numbers, the Israelites are newly-freed slaves. They’re on the run
and complaining about how tired, hungry, and afraid they are. Their escape from
Egypt has become a desert pilgrimage that seems crueler than Pharaoh’s
taskmasters. Their story illustrates that when something gets the best of us,
only the worst remains. And when the emotional dam bursts, the Hebrews project
all their fear and anxiety onto Moses, whose own frustration grows.
In Acts, the disciples feel all alone in
the world. They had expected Jesus to return Israel to a power and a glory that
would last forever. And after Resurrection, all Jesus does is vanish in the
mist. Sure, the disciples have been praying and eating together, but they find
themselves mired in a kind of static wandering. Their only accomplishment seems
to be choosing Matthias as Judas’ replacement at the table. But to what end?
What do their rituals accomplish? Whom do they follow?
While Moses
and the Apostles often prove flawed and fumbling, they are servants of God.
During their crises, they find themselves filled with something mysterious and
moving. They open themselves to the Spirit, who comes not to resolve every problem,
but to help shoulder the burden of leadership. The Spirit reveals itself as a
gift being offered not simply to
people like Moses and the disciples. The Spirit proves to be a gift who offers itself
to all people through the likes of Moses
(who murdered), and Peter (who denied), and Matthew (who swindled), and Bartholomew
(who did nothing memorable at all). Leaders of God’s people are those who,
having embraced their giftedness, seek to evoke, celebrate, and trust the
giftedness of others.
Remember the
stories: Some of Moses’ spirit leaks out beyond the designated seventy to a
couple of nobodies named Eldad and Medad. When they prophesy, Joshua cries out,
“My lord Moses, stop them!”
And Moses, who
is learning more by the moment, scolds his reactionary young assistant, who
will eventually succeed Moses and lead Israel. “Are you jealous for my sake?”
says Moses. I wish every one of God’s
people were prophets! I wish God’s spirit would fall on all of you!
Isn’t that what happens in Jerusalem?
“Are not all these who are speaking
Galileans?” ask the observers of Pentecost, “And how is it that we hear, each
of us, in our own language?” Luke goes on to name sixteen different
nationalities and ethnicities who hear God’s deeds of holiness and power being
proclaimed in their own languages. Add the Galileans, and it’s seventeen.
Those who watch all of this happen
are bewildered. And who wouldn’t be? To learn that God’s Holy Spirit dwells
inherently in all of Creation, that it really is written on human hearts, and that
no one and no thing lies outside the loving desire and redeeming reach of God –
such revelations challenge the comfortable but mistaken notions of redemptive
violence and of God’s household as a place for deserving members only.
In both the wilderness and
Jerusalem, the Spirit of God makes itself known through an outpouring of
prophetic speech, through gracious words uttered by folks who are ordinary,
fallible, hesitant human beings. Many different voices in our world claim holy
authority. And many of those voices seem diametrically opposed to each other.
While we’re not called to judge, we are called to discern. And we each have to
do that. When I hear a voice claiming cry
in the wilderness status, I listen for accents of Love, of peace, of
forgiveness, of promise, and of grateful openness to all of God’s creation. To
me, such things declare the presence of the Holy Spirit. By contrast, when a
voice claiming prophetic authority provokes fear and division, envy and
vengeance, and creates barriers to relationships and healing, I cannot trust
that voice.
It seems to me that right now, many
of the voices screaming at the extremes are really quite close together in
effect. Both poles tear at the wounded, fragile body of the Creation. So, whether
a voice drives into crowds of people on a bridge, or stirs the chaos of ignorance
and hate, or jeopardizes the well-being of the future for profit in the present,
or brutalizes an effigy for laughs, such a voice does not declare the Holy
Spirit of God.
Brothers and
sisters, we are called to claim our spiritual gifts and to speak so confidently
of redeeming Love and reuniting Shalom that we sound drunk to those who fear
both the moment and the days to come.
This is our prophecy, our Pentecostal
gift to share – to speak and live the resurrecting grace of God.
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