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Pentecost 16
September 28, 2003
God, Not The Church
Numbers 11:4-6, 10-16, 24-29
Psalm 124
James 5:13-20
Mark 9:38-50
Moses selected seventy elders, but when the spirit descended on them, it splashed over and landed on people who were not chosen as elders. The distinction that Moses had made was not so distinct to God. Moses, ever on the side of God, sees the possibility that there would be no distinction at all between elder and laity.
James emphasizes the enfranchisement of the laity by comparing their access to God through prayer with that of Elijah.
Jesus refuses to grant the disciples patent rights to his name and power. He promises dire consequences for anyone who thwarts even the most modest of attempts to align with him.
M. Scott Peck insisted on a non-denominational baptism because he rejects the idea that church doctrine and order control the door to the kingdom. He says that taking communion while yet unbaptized was an essential step to his conversion. His comment reminded me of a time when I, a young pastor and full of my newfound authority, invited all baptized Christians to come forward for communion. It hurt my feelings after the service to find that other feelings were hurt because of me. A young boy who had always taken communion, though he had not been baptized, felt excluded by my action. I have never quite reconciled my servant role and my pastoral responsibility for church order.
The church serves God’s love for the world by treating holy things sacredly, but the church doesn’t make them holy. God does that. How does one treat something as holy? You submit yourself to it because it is deserving of your devotion. So, the church submits itself to the sacraments, but in administering church order, that delicate distinction can be subverted into the implication that the sacraments submit themselves to the church.
The distinction between elder and tribe, clergy and laity, is only appropriate as a submission to the Spirit of God and the leadership of that Spirit. Moses submitted to God’s call to be the pastor of God’s people. He wasn’t elevated to that position. In fact he says he’d rather die on the spot than bear that burden. I have felt the very same way. I didn’t express it as gracefully as Moses. I said I felt like an old sow with more piglets than teats. (Just like a gentile to identify with an unclean animal!)
Church order is not a matter of laity submitting to clergy, of course, but rather laity and clergy submitting to God. Just as the seventy gathered around Moses to support him in his submission to God, so the laity gathers around the clergy when the church is in submission to God. For, as the Psalmist reminds us, it is God who saves us; and, as that reminds me, it is not the church that saves us.
It is the task of the one who proclaims the Gospel to help the audience answer these questions faithfully and thereby to help the whole society answer. It is the task of the preacher to announce the reign of God, and it is the privilege of the preacher to thus participate in its coming. The reign of God is a human potential like clear sky on a foggy day. It is there if people can see it; but if people cannot see it, it may as well not be there. If they can’t see that fittest of all is the servant of all, then no one will aspire to be the servant of all.
It was curious that death came to two of the world’s most famous women in the same week, Princess Diana and Mother Teresa. A news commentator noted the irony by suggesting that it was an expression God’s sense of humor, demanding the world to hold up the two side by side. “If you believe in God,” he added parenthetically. Well, no one who believes in God revealed in Jesus would attribute to God such a treatment of human life, Allah maybe, not God. Without subtracting from the respect Diana deserves, we can still point to the contrast of these two lives and note that the reign of God is visible in the world or else we would never have heard of Mother Teresa. Here was a woman surrounded by the evil of abysmal poverty who relied on God and God’s righteousness to become the servant of people as helpless as infants, and she survived. She didn’t just survive. She led a long and meaningful life. So who is the fittest? Who is the greatest? I don’t think it is fair to compare two women whom we barely know, the Scriptures call us to choose between two definitions of fittest and greatest, that of the wild kingdom and that of God’s kingdom?
Roland McGregor, Pastor
Asbury United Methodist Church, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
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