Reformed Evangelical Synod of America

Homily for the Lord’s Day
The Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity – October 18, 2009

BCP Proper 26b
Numbers 11: 16, 24-29 – Psalm 51b – (Philippians 1: 12-18) – Mark 9: 38-50

(Note: The epistle from Philippians is used as the Evening Prayer reading this week in the local congregation in which the following homily is being preached, and thus is not figured in to the following text.)

Jealousy is, undoubtedly, one of the oldest negative human emotions. We only need to open our Bibles a few pages – page 12, in my principal study Bible for example – to encounter the story of Cain and Abel. The sense of jealousy, self-superiority, and ultimately self-justification that led to the first murder has remained a rampant ‘inspiration’ among our frail and fallen race ever since. Today, in our readings from Sacred Scripture, we are once again reminded of the impact of jealousy – even on the greatest of God’s followers. At the same time, God’s gracious sovereignty is demonstrated in both our reading from Numbers and our Gospel passage from Mark.

In our Old Testament reading, God instructs Moses to gather ‘seventy men who are recognized as elders and leaders of Israel’ and to bring them to the Tabernacle so that they may be filled with the Holy Spirit. The Lord knew that Moses was being overwhelmed by the constant battle to oversee the Hebrew masses… their ongoing petty disputes, arguments, and their ever-present complaints against God must have been horribly trying for him. He needed aid, and the Lord graciously provided. He promised that he would fill those selected with the power of the Spirit so that their wisdom and discernment might be made more and more perfect as it was manifest among the people.

On the following day, when Moses brought the seventy to the Tabernacle, two of them stayed back and did not come with the other elders. They are identified in our text as Eldad and Medad. Why did they stay back in the camp? There are several theories, but the most common among Christian commentators is that they recognized their unworthiness for such a great honor and chose to remain behind. Regardless of the reason, however, for their absence, God had other plans.

In truth, none of the seventy was truly ‘worthy’ of the honor, just as none of us are ‘worthy’ of God’s grace when left to our own devices. No matter how ‘worthy’ we feel that we are, our true, base nature remains a fallen one that is redeemed not by our own thoughts, but by the washing and the Word of our Lord. Perhaps the elders who went to the tabernacle with Moses recognized that it was God who was making them worthy. Perhaps they had witnessed enough during the time of the Plagues, the Passover, and the Exodus itself that they learned to place their reliance on God’s power as opposed to their own. Perhaps Eldad and Medad were so self-conscious that they knew they were unworthy, and that nothing they could do could make them worthy of God’s great gift. It didn’t matter. In the moment when the Spirit came to rest upon the others, the Spirit also entered into the minds and hearts of Eldad and Medad, and began moving them to speak the wisdom, love, judgment, and mercy of God among the people of Israel in the camp.

Perhaps in that moment, Eldad and Medad had an experience not unlike John Wesley described in his journals. By 1738, Wesley was a man on the brink of defeat. He had engaged in a highly unsuccessful mission in Colonial Georgia, and had returned to England under a deep cloud of suspicion. His experiences prompted him to pen in his journal:

I who went to America to convert others was never myself converted to God.

In the months leading up to the defining experience of his life, Wesley began meeting with Moravians in England. He had observed their quiet confidence in the midst of a storm at sea during his journey to America, and as a result became somewhat enamored with their inner strength. In early March, Wesley met with Peter Bohler. Concerning this meeting, he wrote:

…by [Peter Bohler], in the hand of the great God, I was, on Sunday, the fifth, clearly convinced of unbelief, of the want of that faith whereby alone we are saved. Immediately it struck into my mind, ‘Leave off preaching. How can you preach to others, who have not faith yourself?’ I asked Bohler whether he thought I should leave it off or not. He answered, ‘By no means.’ I asked, ‘But what can I preach?’ He said, ‘Preach faith till you have it; and then, because you have it, you will preach faith.’ Accordingly, Monday the sixth, I began preaching this new doctrine, though my soul started back from the work.

For weeks he tried preaching this ‘new doctrine’, but for whatever reason Wesley still found himself unsatisfied. In places he seemed to be successful, but in Churches he was having a harder time of it. Congregation after congregation forbade him to preach. In the week leading up to his experience at Aldersgate, he wrote that he had ‘continual sorrow and heaviness’ in his heart.

On Wednesday, May 24th, however, something changed.

In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.

Here was a man, steeped in the Scriptures, filled with a great desire to proclaim the Gospel to the unsaved, who himself had trouble believing what he had heard and preached. For whatever reason, John Wesley had held himself back, just as Eldad and Medad did in the wilderness. And yet, even in the midst of Wesley’s unwillingness, the Holy Spirit began a new, transforming work in him that would change the Church of England, and ultimately the face of Christianity in the New World. He began to find strength and certainty – not in himself, but in the Holy Spirit. Just as Eldad and Medad stepped out into the Camp of the Israelites with boldness, Wesley now embarked on a new journey of faith, a deeper one; one that had the power not only to transform the self, but others, through the compassionate mercy of God.

Of course, Eldad and Medad had their detractors. In fact, they had a very powerful detractor, namely Joshua, Moses’ assistant. Joshua, who would later go on to lead the Israelites, viewed himself as more than just an aide – he was Moses’ chief defender. Here were two usurpers to Moses’ authority; men of questionable faithfulness who had not come as directed to the assembly in the Tabernacle. Joshua, being a man of great stature as a warrior, perhaps places too much stock in human strength, and not enough in the concept of Divine Strength.

Moses reaction mirrors Jesus’ in our Gospel reading today when the apostles forbade a man to minister in Christ’s name. In this instance, the Apostles – whose jealousy serves as a fiery undercurrent to their report – fare far worse than Joshua; at least Joshua asked Moses about the situation before taking matters into his own hands! The Apostles had no such qualms, and found themselves harshly rebuked by Christ: “Don’t stop him!” was the reply they received. It was, in essence, the reply that Joshua received too.

The core lesson we need to take from our readings today is that God, not man, determines who his servants are. We may recognize them, ordain them, send them out… but it is God who places the Spirit within his people to accomplish great things. The same God who does this, gives to his people guidelines for recognizing who will be rightly filled with the Spirit for mission and ministry – he did in the Old Testament, and he does in the New.

For two thousand years, the Church has called and sent ministers of Word and Sacrament to meet the needs of the faithful. Sadly, the Church has not always done the best job of living by the Biblical guidelines for calling and sending people forth. At times, this has necessitated some rather unconventional ministries in the Church – ministries like John Wesley’s, or Martin Luther’s. These men, whose hearts were filled with the Gospel message proclaimed by Paul and the Church Fathers, often found themselves shut out of pulpits. Each resorted to different means to ensure that the Gospel of Grace was proclaimed among the people. Luther’s solution was, undoubtedly, the more institutional of the two, but Wesley’s was perhaps more dramatic. Though he never ceased to be a priest of the Church of England, Wesley often found himself and his evangelistic meetings to be in direct competition with the ‘accepted’ worship of the English state in the fields on the outskirts of the villages and towns he visited. He was considered – variously – wacky, novel, disobedient, and undoubtedly a whole host of other negative attributes were held by his detractors. And yet, in the midst of a cold, barren, and at times faithless Church of England, God had chose the voice of this humble, broken man to be a great vehicle for revival and faith in his homeland and beyond.

Had the apostles found that their competitor was preaching a doctrine that did not focus on Jesus Christ; had Moses discovered that Eldad and Medad were attempting to prophesy in a manner inconsistent with God’s revelation to the Hebrew people; had Wesley’s bishop determined that he was preaching a doctrine not in accord with the faith of the Scriptures, then all of them would have been fully within their rights to stand against the teachers, preachers, and prophets that sprung up in their respective day. More often than not, however, jealousy – as Moses cites to Joshua – is the reason to run ‘competitors’ out of town, not fidelity to the truth.

As believers, and as members of our own local congregation and our own Synodical fellowship, we must be sure and certain of what we believe, but at the same time we must be careful not to ‘un-church’ others who are preaching the sufficiency of Jesus Christ for salvation. We may have differing ways of approaching the message, but if the message is, at its root, the same, then we are called to lift our hearts and hands to God in thanksgiving for his providential provision of preachers of the truth, not to decry them as usurpers or threats to the kingdom in a sense of jealousy or envy when we consider their accomplishments.

Does this mean we should ‘give up’ our own distinctive and directions? No… on matters which are not essential to salvation, we are free to select practices that seem best and right, provided they are not directly opposed to the Word of God. Our liturgy and ritual, or others lack thereof, may be an important matter to us – but the most important matter must be the answer that is given when we give an account of our faith. Do we attempt to conform the Christian message to ourselves, or do we embrace the Christian message and allow it to conform us to Christ?

If the answer is the former, then God help us… but if it is the latter, God has already helped us as he helped Eldad and Medad, as he helped the Apostles, and as he has helped countless believers throughout the ages. To our good and gracious God –who ever stands ready to warm the heart and inspire the mind– be glory and honor, now and forever. Amen.