Day of Pentecost
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Lucia Lloyd’s Sermon: Eldad and Medad
Pentecost Sunday
May 31, 2020
Numbers 11:24-30, Acts 2:1-21
This passage about Eldad and Medad is one of my favourites. I think part of the reason for that is that while I try to do the right thing and be in the right place at the right time, I’m also a bit ADD, and so (as my family can attest) it’s not unusual for me to completely lose track of time and forget that I was supposed to have arrived someplace else half an hour ago. And, not surprisingly, from my childhood on there have been people who’ve scolded me for it. So I have a lot of sympathy for Eldad and Medad, who are not in the place they’re supposed to be in, when they were supposed to be there to meet God. But even though they’re not in the camp where they’re supposed to be, God’s Spirit finds them anyway and inspires them with prophecy.
And there’s something I find myself drawn to in the interchange between Joshua and Moses. When someone runs and tells Moses that Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp, Joshua is so upset by this that he tells Moses, “My lord Moses, stop them!” He probably thinks he’s doing the right thing here, he probably has good intentions. He wants to make sure everybody is following the rules. He knows the way worship is supposed to be, and he wants Moses to lay down the law, as it were. But Moses is having none of it. Moses realizes that doing so would be limiting God, and Moses wants more of God, not less. He replies, “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!”
One of the interesting things about being ordained is that you get to hear the experiences of others who have been through the ordination process, and of others who have been turned away from the ordination process. People in the Church pray for God’s guidance in these processes, and I do believe there are plenty of examples where God is guiding those decisions. At the same time, human beings all have flaws and sins, and everyone makes mistakes, even church people. There are mistakes in both directions: people who are moved through the process toward ordination when that is the wrong decision, and people who are prevented from moving through the process toward ordination when that is the wrong decision. Sometimes these wrong decisions are made at an individual level. Other times, these wrong decisions are made at a collective level or even a societal level.
When people bring forward the gifts God has given them for spiritual leadership, there is a long history of people in authority who have said “Stop them” to black people, to indigenous people, to women, to gay people, to trans people, to other people who were not where those in authority expected the Spirit to be active, even when the Spirit was active. And several of my friends who’ve had that experience have found this passage to be like water in the desert. Joshua is convinced he’s right that Moses should stop them. But Moses does the opposite. He says, Are you jealous for my sake? I wish more of God’s people were prophets, not less, and that God would put his spirit on everybody like this!”
We see something similar happening in our passage from Acts 2, as the Spirit is moving on Pentecost. This is not a system in which authority figures exercise control over people’s access to God.
This is not a system in which the young have access to God through their elders,
or women have access to God through men,
or even slaves have access to God through their masters.
In fact, Acts 2 quotes the prophet Joel
to point out specifically the action of the Spirit in the young just as much as in the old,
to point out specifically the action of the Spirit in women just as much as in men,
to point out specifically the action of the Spirit in slaves just as much as in masters.
“In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.”
The Spirit blows apart all our hierarchies and all our distinctions of age and gender and social status, the prophet Joel tells us, as God pours out God’s Spirit on all flesh. It is not that people at the top of the hierarchy are special, and the rest of us are common. You are each special. God’s Spirit is in the young, in the female, in the slaves, just as much as anyone.
We can hear the way Acts 2 is overflowing with enthusiasm to tell us about how far this extends. It bubbles over in telling us that the devout Jews living in Jerusalem are “from every nation under heaven!” In case we miss that, it goes on with even more enthusiasm to point out various nationalities by name: Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs,” and exclaims for each of them, “in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” So Acts 2 quotes Joel’s vision and expands it, by showing that not only does the Spirit blow apart all our hierarchies and all our distinctions of age and gender and social status, as God pours out God’s Spirit on all flesh, the Spirit blows apart all our distinctions of nationalities, as God pours out God’s Spirit on people from every nation under heaven.
So we get this vision of God’s Spirit and how it works, how each person is special and beloved and holy to God. And we read the news, and we see how far human society is from that vision of equality.
There are some aspects of what is happening in the U.S. that are specific to that country, and there are some aspects of it that are universal. I was reminded of this when I naively thought that a Canadian wouldn’t act like Amy Cooper, and then found out that Amy Cooper is a Canadian who moved the U.S. as an adult. The trouble is, it is easy for us to blame other people for racism while remaining oblivious to the racism in ourselves. We claim that we treat everybody the same, that we don’t even notice race, that we are on the side of equality and love, and so on. Still, the biases lurking below our conscious awareness remain, and the more we deny them, the more strongly they persist. It is why Jesus tells each of us to take the log out of our own eye so we can see clearly to take the speck out of our neighbour’s eye.
All of us want to feel good about ourselves, myself included. And the willingness to look at all the ugly stuff we’ve buried in our psyche under layers of denial, including the ugly stuff we’ve inherited and never cleaned out, is not a fun process. We don’t want to see the racism that is quietly scurrying around in the basement of our psyches. I wish the process were fun and had the adrenaline rush of victory, or the adrenaline rush of righteous indignation. I wish it were as quick and easy as the motivational slogans would have us believe.
We want to be on the side of good. We want to be teachers of good, fixers of society, healers, sources of love in the world. And so we assure our black neighbours that we are one of the good ones, that we are on their side, that we are their allies. And doing so allows us to think of the enemy of racism as something that exists only in other people. But when it comes to the choice between facing the racism in our own psyches or feeling good about ourselves, we will, without noticing it, revert to feeling good about ourselves, and our black neighbours will see that they can’t rely on us; we have left them in the lurch once again. But we will not want to see it, and so we will not see it.
The path for us to have something useful to say about racism involves the willingness to listen to black people and to read what they write. The path for us to become healers of the pain in the world involves the willingness to suffer the pain of not feeling good about ourselves. The path for us to become fixers of society involves the willingness to deal with the brokenness in our own psyches. The path to become sources of love in the world involves the willingness to acknowledge and confess our own sin.
It is the opposite of smugness. It’s one of those areas where the more you know, the more you realize how much more there is you haven’t yet learned.
I wish I were farther along in this process than I am, so I could be more help to others, as well as for the good of my own soul. A resource that is immensely valuable in starting this process is a book entitled White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo. In contrast to the various feel-good slogans that ring false, White Fragility has a bracing honesty to it which is oddly refreshing.
It is not especially popular these days to talk about sin. And yet the ability to talk about sin, and to talk about the persistence of sin in our lives despite all our good intentions, is one of the most valuable gifts our faith. As the apostle Paul admits, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” Even though we want to be good, the reality is that we continue to sin, and that we sin both in things done, and left undone. Humanity is not divided into neat categories of the righteous and the sinners; each of us is simultaneously saint and sinner. And as we know from Jesus’ conversations with the Pharisees, when we think we’re more righteous than others, is exactly the time when our own sin has taken over. So Jesus welcomes us to bring our sins to him in confessing them, knowing that we can face the ugliness within, because Jesus has already seen it in us and still loves us unconditionally.
We all need God’s mercy, that’s for sure. And we need the Holy Spirit at work in us, to cleanse us, to heal us, and to lead us to love and to God.
And there’s something I find myself drawn to in the interchange between Joshua and Moses. When someone runs and tells Moses that Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp, Joshua is so upset by this that he tells Moses, “My lord Moses, stop them!” He probably thinks he’s doing the right thing here, he probably has good intentions. He wants to make sure everybody is following the rules. He knows the way worship is supposed to be, and he wants Moses to lay down the law, as it were. But Moses is having none of it. Moses realizes that doing so would be limiting God, and Moses wants more of God, not less. He replies, “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!”
One of the interesting things about being ordained is that you get to hear the experiences of others who have been through the ordination process, and of others who have been turned away from the ordination process. People in the Church pray for God’s guidance in these processes, and I do believe there are plenty of examples where God is guiding those decisions. At the same time, human beings all have flaws and sins, and everyone makes mistakes, even church people. There are mistakes in both directions: people who are moved through the process toward ordination when that is the wrong decision, and people who are prevented from moving through the process toward ordination when that is the wrong decision. Sometimes these wrong decisions are made at an individual level. Other times, these wrong decisions are made at a collective level or even a societal level.
When people bring forward the gifts God has given them for spiritual leadership, there is a long history of people in authority who have said “Stop them” to black people, to indigenous people, to women, to gay people, to trans people, to other people who were not where those in authority expected the Spirit to be active, even when the Spirit was active. And several of my friends who’ve had that experience have found this passage to be like water in the desert. Joshua is convinced he’s right that Moses should stop them. But Moses does the opposite. He says, Are you jealous for my sake? I wish more of God’s people were prophets, not less, and that God would put his spirit on everybody like this!”
We see something similar happening in our passage from Acts 2, as the Spirit is moving on Pentecost. This is not a system in which authority figures exercise control over people’s access to God.
This is not a system in which the young have access to God through their elders,
or women have access to God through men,
or even slaves have access to God through their masters.
In fact, Acts 2 quotes the prophet Joel
to point out specifically the action of the Spirit in the young just as much as in the old,
to point out specifically the action of the Spirit in women just as much as in men,
to point out specifically the action of the Spirit in slaves just as much as in masters.
“In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.”
The Spirit blows apart all our hierarchies and all our distinctions of age and gender and social status, the prophet Joel tells us, as God pours out God’s Spirit on all flesh. It is not that people at the top of the hierarchy are special, and the rest of us are common. You are each special. God’s Spirit is in the young, in the female, in the slaves, just as much as anyone.
We can hear the way Acts 2 is overflowing with enthusiasm to tell us about how far this extends. It bubbles over in telling us that the devout Jews living in Jerusalem are “from every nation under heaven!” In case we miss that, it goes on with even more enthusiasm to point out various nationalities by name: Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs,” and exclaims for each of them, “in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” So Acts 2 quotes Joel’s vision and expands it, by showing that not only does the Spirit blow apart all our hierarchies and all our distinctions of age and gender and social status, as God pours out God’s Spirit on all flesh, the Spirit blows apart all our distinctions of nationalities, as God pours out God’s Spirit on people from every nation under heaven.
So we get this vision of God’s Spirit and how it works, how each person is special and beloved and holy to God. And we read the news, and we see how far human society is from that vision of equality.
There are some aspects of what is happening in the U.S. that are specific to that country, and there are some aspects of it that are universal. I was reminded of this when I naively thought that a Canadian wouldn’t act like Amy Cooper, and then found out that Amy Cooper is a Canadian who moved the U.S. as an adult. The trouble is, it is easy for us to blame other people for racism while remaining oblivious to the racism in ourselves. We claim that we treat everybody the same, that we don’t even notice race, that we are on the side of equality and love, and so on. Still, the biases lurking below our conscious awareness remain, and the more we deny them, the more strongly they persist. It is why Jesus tells each of us to take the log out of our own eye so we can see clearly to take the speck out of our neighbour’s eye.
All of us want to feel good about ourselves, myself included. And the willingness to look at all the ugly stuff we’ve buried in our psyche under layers of denial, including the ugly stuff we’ve inherited and never cleaned out, is not a fun process. We don’t want to see the racism that is quietly scurrying around in the basement of our psyches. I wish the process were fun and had the adrenaline rush of victory, or the adrenaline rush of righteous indignation. I wish it were as quick and easy as the motivational slogans would have us believe.
We want to be on the side of good. We want to be teachers of good, fixers of society, healers, sources of love in the world. And so we assure our black neighbours that we are one of the good ones, that we are on their side, that we are their allies. And doing so allows us to think of the enemy of racism as something that exists only in other people. But when it comes to the choice between facing the racism in our own psyches or feeling good about ourselves, we will, without noticing it, revert to feeling good about ourselves, and our black neighbours will see that they can’t rely on us; we have left them in the lurch once again. But we will not want to see it, and so we will not see it.
The path for us to have something useful to say about racism involves the willingness to listen to black people and to read what they write. The path for us to become healers of the pain in the world involves the willingness to suffer the pain of not feeling good about ourselves. The path for us to become fixers of society involves the willingness to deal with the brokenness in our own psyches. The path to become sources of love in the world involves the willingness to acknowledge and confess our own sin.
It is the opposite of smugness. It’s one of those areas where the more you know, the more you realize how much more there is you haven’t yet learned.
I wish I were farther along in this process than I am, so I could be more help to others, as well as for the good of my own soul. A resource that is immensely valuable in starting this process is a book entitled White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo. In contrast to the various feel-good slogans that ring false, White Fragility has a bracing honesty to it which is oddly refreshing.
It is not especially popular these days to talk about sin. And yet the ability to talk about sin, and to talk about the persistence of sin in our lives despite all our good intentions, is one of the most valuable gifts our faith. As the apostle Paul admits, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” Even though we want to be good, the reality is that we continue to sin, and that we sin both in things done, and left undone. Humanity is not divided into neat categories of the righteous and the sinners; each of us is simultaneously saint and sinner. And as we know from Jesus’ conversations with the Pharisees, when we think we’re more righteous than others, is exactly the time when our own sin has taken over. So Jesus welcomes us to bring our sins to him in confessing them, knowing that we can face the ugliness within, because Jesus has already seen it in us and still loves us unconditionally.
We all need God’s mercy, that’s for sure. And we need the Holy Spirit at work in us, to cleanse us, to heal us, and to lead us to love and to God.