The Spirit Doesn't Always Play By The Rules
THE DAY OF PENTECOST
Numbers 11:24-30 • Acts 2:1-21 • John 20:19-23
Moses had a problem. The people of Israel wouldn’t stop grumbling about their situation, and the Lord was getting pretty angry about it. This time, the people were upset because they didn’t have any meat to eat. God had delivered them from slavery in Egypt. God had led them through the Red Sea on dry land. God had rescued them from Pharaoh’s army. God had given them water to drink and manna to eat. But the people wanted more.
“The rabble among them had a strong craving,” the Book of Numbers tells us. “If only we had meat to eat!” the people cried. “We remember the fish we used to eat in Egypt for nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic; but now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at.” Then the Lord became very angry, and Moses, sensing that there was nothing he could do to satisfy the people’s hunger or assuage God’s mounting wrath, became distraught.
“Why have you treated your servant so badly?” Moses said to the Lord. “Did I conceive all this people? Did I give birth to them, that you should say to me, ‘Carry them in your bosom, as a nurse carries a sucking child, to the land that you promised on oath to their ancestors?’ Where am I to get meat to give to all this people…? I am not able to carry all this people alone, for they are too heavy for me.”
And God listened to Moses and told him what to do. “Gather for me seventy of the elders of Israel…bring them to the tent of meeting and have them take their place there with you. I will come down and talk with you there; and I will take some of the spirit that is on you and put it on them; and they shall bear the burden of the people along with you so that you will not bear it all by yourself.”
This was a good idea. Moses needed help, and God promised to give it to him. So Moses assembled seventy leaders from among the people, and God came down in the cloud and spoke to him and took some of his spirit and spread it among the seventy elders. As a sign that they had received a share of the spirit, those elders began to prophesy—they began to speak dramatically whatever words God gave them. Although, after a few moments, those prophetic utterances stopped, the community recognized that the elders had been endued with some of the divine spirit—that God had given them what they needed to accomplish their task. Finally, Moses would have the support he needed.
But there was another problem. Eldad and Medad, who had been registered among the elders but who had not gone to the tent of meeting, received their own share of the spirit back in the camp, and they began to prophesy. This renegade activity, operating outside the boundaries that God had established through Moses, threatened to undermine his authority and that of the seventy elders whom God had deputized. “My lord Moses, stop them!” cried Joshua, Moses’ faithful righthand. But Moses didn’t seem at all concerned. “Are you jealous for my sake?” he asked. “Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!”
It turns out that God’s spirit is shared not only through duly authorized methods like the ordination of seventy elders but also through renegades like Eldad and Medad, who refuse to play by the rules. And, over the centuries, the rabbis have helped us understand why.
The ancient Jewish scholars who wrestled with this text proposed a few possible interpretations, most of which revolve around the mathematical challenge presented by the number seventy. God asked Moses to set apart seventy elders, but there were twelve ancestral tribes among the people, and seventy isn’t divisible by twelve. How was Moses supposed to spread his authority evenly among the tribes? If he chose six elders from each tribe, that would produce two too many, and five from each would leave him ten short. Jealousy would arise if he selected six from some tribes and five from others, so the rabbis, who creatively and faithfully interpreted the biblical text by expanding the story, proposed that Moses must have cast lots, writing the word “elder” on seventy slips of paper while leaving two slips blank. [1]
Some rabbis believe that Eldad and Medad drew the blank pieces of paper, but God’s spirit found them anyway. Others propose that those two were uncomfortable accepting the honor of being chosen an elder among their people, so they stayed back on purpose, trusting that God would use the seventy others in their place. And, in turn, God rewarded their humility and gave them the gift of prophecy that, unlike the gift given to the other seventy, did not cease. Still other rabbis believe that Eldad and Medad refused to accept an authority that was derivative of Moses’, preferring to exercise their own brand of leadership. [2]
In any case, it is remarkable that Moses responded to their unexpected and unauthorized prophecy not by becoming defensive but by encouraging more unbridled, unregulated work of the spirit. When Joshua came to him in a panic, he said to Moses literally, “My lord Moses, imprison them!” He wanted to lock them up, or at least place upon them the same burden of leadership that the seventy elders bore—a weight that, in theory, had left them with no time or ability to continue prophesying. The rabbinic tradition holds that Eldad and Medad had prophesied that Moses would die and that Joshua would be the one to lead them into the land of promise. No wonder Joshua reacted so strongly. Their prophesy represented a double-threat—both to Moses’ authority and to his life. But Moses, in his humility, would rather celebrate the spirit’s presence among God’s people than cling to either his own authority or his life.
This encounter reminds us that sometimes the Spirit shows up in ways that are prescribed by religious institutions, but sometimes those institutions fail to anticipate just how God’s Spirit will show up. Some of us like structure and good order. We find it easy to trust that God will become manifest through clearly defined channels like ordinations and vestries and bishop elections. And, while it’s true that the Spirit does show up in those ways, as the story of the seventy elders demonstrates, we must also recognize that there is no process, no prescription, no ballot, no liturgy, no sacrament that can contain the fullness of the Holy Ghost.
During the next three months, while I am on sabbatical, I bet the Holy Spirit will show up in ways that surprise all of us. If you haven’t noticed, I’m the kind of person who really likes it when God’s Spirit comes in carefully prescribed and clearly defined ways. Deep down, I know that my love of good order, although well-intentioned, can become an idolatry. By stepping away from this place for three months, I trust that new and unanticipated opportunities for leadership, creativity, and innovation will arise and that they will come not only in the ways that the staff, vestry, and I have planned but also in ways that right now only God can see. And I believe that will be true not only here at St. Paul’s but also in my own life as I leave behind the comfortable routines where I am in charge and accept a period of unfamiliar renewal.
When the Spirit shows up and surprises us, what will our reaction be—that of Moses or that of Joshua? Will we recognize the Spirit when she threatens our sense of order, or will we write her off because she hasn’t made an appointment or bothered to knock on the front door? The Spirit doesn’t always come as an invited guest. Sometimes she blows right in through the window with gale force winds, threatening to rip the shutters off. Sometimes it’s easier to dismiss her as a drunken mistake than to take her seriously.
But God’s ultimate vision for the world is not a neat and tidy place, where those who have been appointed by the religious community are permitted to speak with divine authority but a world in which all people have received a share of the divine spirit. In those days, God declares, all people will prophesy—not only the ones we expect to speak on behalf of God but all people, regardless of age, gender, or economic status.
Our celebration of Pentecost is a celebration that those last days are here among us, even now. This chapter of salvation history in which we live is defined by the universal, unrestrained work of the Holy Spirit. “Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!” Today, Moses’ dream has been realized. God has poured out that spirit upon all flesh. We are all Eldads and Medads. May God give us the wisdom and the humility to see it.
1. https://www.sefaria.org/Sanhedrin.17a.5?lang=bi
© 2023 The Rev. Evan D. Garner
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church – Fayetteville, Arkansas