Lectionary Texts: Psalm 8; Numbers 11: 4-6, 10-16, 24-29, Mark 9:30-50

It’s not a good day for anyone in the three scriptures we read today – so you can imagine how I resonated with those. These are some of the most challenging weeks of my years here at Cornell. But these scriptures anchored me. Interestingly, they are not scriptures I chose. They are the lectionary scriptures – last week’s ones. These scriptures were given to me, like God’s grace. Whether we like it or not, whether we receive it or not, God’s grace is there. So were these scriptures. But I didn’t get to preach on these. God’s message to us last week was in the confession Hill made and the outpouring of grace he received from you. That was a powerful demonstration of how the body of Christ should act. So for today, I want to stay with these scriptures in the hope they will be good scriptures for you too. Yes, people in these scriptures aren’t having a good day, or a good week. Just like I am and we are.

First of all, Moses is mad at the Israelites. And what an interesting description we have of Moses! Imagine him standing before God with his hands on his hips and probably with a huge headache. "Why do you treat your servant so badly? Why have I not found favor in your sight, that you lay the burden of all these people on me? Did I conceive these people? Did I give birth to them that you should say to me, ‘Carry them in your bosom as a nurse carries a suckling child? Where am I to get meat for all these people? For they come weeping to me and say, "Give us meat to eat!" I am not able to carry all these people alone, for they are too heavy for me. If this is the way you are going to treat me, put me to death at once!"

As you can imagine, my prayer was similar this week -- but not that put me to death, part! (I am not ready for that yet!) Well, God does deal with Moses’ problem, but God doesn't just say, "Fine, here's some meat." This is the thing with God, you see. Sometimes, in fact often, we pray and expect God to throw us a solution. But in my experience God rarely works that way. The way God works is very similar to the way God worked in that encounter with Moses. God says to Moses, Go, gather the elders so that they might share the responsibility of leading the Israelites.

So, Moses gathers seventy at the tent of meeting. And God took some of Moses' spirit and placed it on the gathered elders. And they prophesied. But Eldad and Medad stayed in the camp. We don’t know why. Were they sick, or did someone intentionally exclude them from going to the tent of meeting? Whatever the reason, nobody expected these two to be a part of the leadership team. But God threw them a curve ball. God’s spirit came upon them too and they too prophesied. A young man came running in from the camp with the news. And that caused a jealous outburst from the elders. "Who let them in our club?" they seem to be saying. And Joshua, Moses’ assistant, urges him to stop them. He worried that this loss of control may threaten Moses’ leadership. Moses is clearly frustrated with Joshua and others. Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit upon them, he says.

The letter of James is very direct with its readers. We didn’t get to read all of James in our lectionary readings, but this is another of those letters you really need to read from beginning to end. It’s a powerful indictment on our leisurely, self-serving Christianity. Evidently his readers were no different in their actions and lifestyle than we are, planning their lives to suit themselves regardless of how their lives affected others. He warns them that riches will rot and that the poor will cry out against any of those who would harm them. If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill, what good is that, he asks. But in our reading today, we come to know his heart for prayer, for praise, for the sick and suffering for healing and anointing, for the confession of sin. He is one that makes that bold and definitive pronouncement on prayer that has been a source of strength for Christians throughout the generations: The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective. Notice, though, his entire letter is about the body of Christ, about its inclusivity rather than exclusivity, about caring for each other rather than looking out for ourselves, about having an authentic faith that lives out the values of God’s kingdom. James makes us squirm--maybe a little more than Moses did.

And then, when we think we've heard quite enough, Jesus lays it on the line for us. Our gospel reading starts where the Old Testament story ended. A member of the "inner circle" was annoyed because someone outside that circle was also able to use one of God's gifts, and evidently without the right credentials. Both Moses and Jesus were faced with the same problem: their followers just didn't get it.

That was an interesting exchange between Jesus and his disciples, wasn’t it? Jesus had just settled a dispute among his disciples about the question of who is the greatest. We talked about it two Sundays ago. These disciples are no different from us -- they struggled for power just as we do even within the church. Jesus must have been deeply hurt by that. Here he was going about the business of God's reign. He had offended both the political and religious authorities and the danger to his life was all too real. And yet his disciples, those who shared life and work with him, didn’t seem to understand the danger, risk and the cost involved in the kind of servant leadership he exemplified -- they were into gaining power for themselves.

Jesus took the opportunity to teach them what he meant by leadership. "Whoever wants to be first," he told them, "must be last of all and servant of all." This is not the kind of leadership practiced by those in power, be it political or religious. This must have been too much for the disciples to understand, much less to accept. So Jesus took a child, set him in front of them, and put his arm around him, and declared that to receive a child such as this is to receive him. It is those who are powerless such as children -- and by inference, the poor, the oppressed and the disinherited -- who are accepted in the reign of God.

It is interesting that both Mark and Luke follow the story of the disciples’ argument over greatness by the story of the "strange exorcist." This is not a coincidence. Power struggles, such as what the disciples engaged in, produce an attitude of exclusivism particularly towards those who are not the immediate members of the community. This is precisely what happened in the story of the strange exorcist. John told Jesus that he and the other disciples tried to stop a man, "driving demons in your name."

I wonder what kind of attitude John and the disciples would have had as they said this to Jesus. One indication of their attitude comes from their argument about who’s the greatest. I can easily imagine how a part of their argument could have been about the kind of spirituality the great ones have. Some may have even thought of themselves as an exclusive group within the disciple community. Those who think in exclusive terms find it hard to accept, even to tolerate those who are different, think differently or live differently. "Whoever wants to be first must be the least of all and the servant of all," said Jesus – and with that he rebuked that spirit in his disciples. That was contrary to the values of God's reign.

Other indications of their attitude come from the story itself. Consider the reason John gave for trying to stop the exorcist. "He was not one of us," said John. This explains it! He was not one of us -- not one of the twelve disciples. He was an outsider, not a member of our fellowship. He had no place in our community of disciples. Can you see the exclusivistic nature of their thinking? The sad thing is that that attitude was not limited to the disciples -- the church adopted it too. James writing to first century churches who had forgotten their heritage of sharing all they have speaks to the utter danger of making the church an exclusive club.

There's another hint about John's attitude that is instructive for us. "Teacher," he said, "we saw a man driving out demons in your name...." The contention is based on the name of Jesus. It is this name that distinguishes them from others. As they understood it, only the twelve had been commissioned by Jesus and were authorized to act in his name. This explains why they compulsively tried to stop the exorcist. Now, the interesting thing is that the exorcist was doing something the disciples themselves failed to do. In this same chapter, Mark describes an incident where some disciples in Jesus' absence could not heal a boy suffering from epileptic seizures (Mark 9:14-29). "Teacher," the boy's father addressed Jesus when he appeared on the scene, "I asked your disciples to drive out the spirit, but they failed." Can you see the irony? The disciples could not drive out the spirit in vs. 18, and in vs. 38, we have the story of a stranger who was able to "drive out demons in Jesus' name."

There's no doubt that the disciples knew how Jesus cast our demons. There's no doubt that they expected to be able to stand up to the occasion and exercise the power of healing. And there's no doubt that they invoked the name of Jesus in an attempt to heal the boy. But nothing worked. But that exorcist whom they did not know, that stranger they do not acknowledge as one of their own is driving out demons in Jesus' name! In contrast to their incompetence, that man is competent. Where they failed, he is succeeding. So they try to stop him, and tell him not to use their teacher's name in carrying out his work of healing.

This is where they went wrong. And unfortunately, this is exactly where the church too, goes wrong. The disciples thought that the power inherent in Jesus' name had become their property. This is why they wanted to stop the unauthorized use of that name. During the last Olympics, a pizza store in Atlanta, which for decades had the name Olympic Pizza, was forced to cover its sign, because the word Olympic had now suddenly become the property of the International Olympic Committee. And the church has often thought that the name of Jesus is the property of the church. I hope we understand this clearly. The power inherent in Jesus' name is not the property of the church and it cannot do with it as it wishes. That power is Jesus' personally and eternally. We cannot take, make it own or control it.

So you ask, how did that strange man learn to exercise the power that comes with the name of Jesus? Well, we can only guess because Mark doesn't tell us. That strange exorcist must have seen Jesus healing the sick and driving out evil spirits. He himself might have been a spiritual healer of some sort. But instead of finding Jesus a threat to his trade, he must have been deeply impressed by Jesus. Perhaps he had a genuine compassion for people suffering, just like Jesus did. And then there is faith. In the story of the epileptic boy, when the disciples asked Jesus why they were not able to heal the boy, you know what Jesus told them? "Because of your little faith." And in Matthew's description of the same incident he added, "I tell you this: if you have faith no bigger than a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there, and it will move. Nothing will prove impossible for you." (Matt. 17:20)

With faith no bigger than a mustard seed you can move mountains! Did you hear that? A really disturbing thought, is it not, that those disciples who lived so closely with Jesus did not share the faith with which Jesus was able to carry out his ministry of God's reign? Is it not an equally disturbing thought, then, that we the church that bears Jesus' name also may not have such faith? When did you last see the church engaged in casting out demons, whether it is in individuals or in institutions? When did you last hear civil authorities so threatened by the church as to ask "by what power and by what name do you do this?" like how they asked of Peter and John in Acts 4.

I want to tell you, that at bottom, our struggle these days is really about what it means to be people of God. It is the same question that people in Moses' time, in James' time, in Jesus' time didn't get. It is at bottom about how God’s grace is deeper and wider than anything we can imagine and so beyond our grasp. At bottom, it is about the kingdom principle that Jesus taught in our gospel lesson two Sundays ago and reinforces in a concrete incident this Sunday: Whoever wants to be the first must be the least of all and the servant of all. At bottom, life within God’s kingdom community means taking upon ourselves such a kingdom lifestyle that always looks towards God and one's neighbor, and not towards oneself.

But Jesus knows that this is hard for us. The reality of sin in our lives causes us to live and act in such a way that destroys community and lifts ourselves over others. And so, he goes on to use some strong language about putting stumbling blocks in front of one of the "little ones." I hope you remember that the child stood as a symbol of all those who are poor and disinherited. I pointed that out to you two Sundays ago, when we looked at how Jesus in a physical parable took a child in his arms to demonstrate the principle, Whoever wants to be the first must be last and the servant of all. Similarly, here the little ones are the poor and the disinherited, those in the margins -- even the people that the disciple community tried to push to the edges of their community. Strong words – It is better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than to put a stumbling block in the path of any such person. And if your hand causes you to stumble that way, or your foot – cut it off. I hope you understand that Jesus is not talking here about a mutilation or amputation of our physical bodies. This entire passage is about what the Christian community the Body of Christ must be like. That it must live with an inclusive set of values rather than be exclusive – that it must always have a place for the strange one and the little one. And the principle we need to live by in order to be that kind of community is set out right at the top. "Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all."

So, what’s the good news here? The good news is for the Eldads and Medads at the margins because even though they are not able to be among the chosen at the tent of the meeting God’s spirit is still given to them. The good news is for the poor, the suffering and the sick in the churches that James is writing to – because encouraged by his writing the people in those churches will begin to care for them. The good news is for those strange and diverse people among us who do God’s kingdom work even though we are often unrecognized and even opposed by the church. And the good news is for all of us who can recognize our sin, confess it, receive God’s forgiveness and turn away from it. The good news is for those of us who because of God’s grace learn to live like the least of all, and the servant of all.

You know, I could not survive these past weeks without God’s grace – none of us could. But these scriptures were a sign of God’s grace to me. I hope they are to you too.