September 27, 2009: Pentecost XVII
The Rev. Connie Reinhardt
I knew someone from college who spent a summer as a camp counselor. As with any camp experience, there was the usual assortment of campers: the easy ones, the homesick ones, the difficult ones. One story my friend told still makes me laugh: there was this one kid who hated camp. She didn’t want to be there; life was so much better at home; the food was terrible; the other campers were stupid; the counselors were mean. You might say that this kid was . . . a bit negative. So one day the counselor, having grown a bit weary of the negativity, was talking to the camper. “You know, you say a lot of negative things about being here. Do you think you could try and say one positive thing? We know there’s a lot you don’t like about camp, but how about coming up with one thing you actually do like? Just one thing. Something that you like.” So the kid thought about it. And then she looked the counselor in the eye and said: I like my shoes. The counselor figured to try to be positive in response. “That’s great. See, that wasn’t so hard. There is something you like.” And then the kid continued: but I’d like them better if I were at home.
I have loved that story since my friend shared it with me some years ago. And I always think of it when this lesson from the book of Numbers comes up in our lectionary – which is a scripture story I love. And I love both of these stories because they say something that I find really reflective of our human experience.
As we look at the story from Numbers, we encounter the Israelites as they are in the midst of their wilderness journey. Having been liberated from the harsh conditions of slavery in Egypt, they are now following Moses through the desert. And there, they wander. For a long time. And this funny thing starts to happen as they wander, and wander, and wander some more. The longer they wander, the less harsh slavery in Egypt seems. Nostalgia for the past softens the harshness of their experience there until hindsight and current circumstances shift their perspective on the life they had in Egypt. And so we hear from them this lament: "If only we had meat to eat! 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."
Right? I like my shoes, but I like them better when I’m at home. ‘Home’ has never looked so good, despite the groaning the Israelites did living under those terrible conditions in Egypt.
There is something so human about the Israelites in this moment that we encounter them. Sure, the whining and complaining is human; those of us here may have engaged in this kind of behavior on occasion. But so is this tendency to look back at the time ‘before’ – whatever that ‘before’ may be – and to see it as more perfect than it was. “When Michael was the rector here, St. George’s was problem-free” would be a good example. Is it true? Well. . . no. Of course there were problems when Michael was here. But when things are difficult now – which they are – it’s easy to remember the past as better than it was. “Before this merger conversation started, we never argued with each other.” Is this true? Not hardly. But that doesn’t stop us from looking backwards and projecting on to the past what we want to be true. And I think that it’s a way of acknowledging that where we are now is not the easiest place to be. That’s true for us at St. George’s right now, and that’s true of the Israelites in the wilderness.
So they complain about how terrible the food is in the wilderness – nothing but all this manna to look at, and eat. They remember their lives as slaves in Egypt as not so bad, and besides, the food was great. They do this so much in fact that Moses starts to get fed up. Moses, who is having his own meltdown that we witness in our lesson today. “Why have you treated your servant so badly?” he asks God. What did I every do to you, God, to get stuck with all of all of this whining and complaining and recasting of the imperfect past as so wonderful? “Where am I to get meat to give to all this people?” Moses says to God. “For they come weeping to me and say, 'Give us meat to eat!' If this is the way you are going to treat me, put me to death at once.” Hey God – I’m done. That’s what Moses says when at this point in his story – again, a very human response. I’m sure our vestry has felt that way on occasion the past few months, and our Merger Exploration Team as well. I know I have. Sure, it’s a little dramatic. But there you go.
My friend the camp counselor knew that the session or the summer would end and that one unhappy camper would return home to where she liked her shoes the most. Moses, though, doesn’t know when or where his journey with the Israelites will end. He does know that they are not going back to Egypt, no matter how good the food was there. We know that we cannot return to a time before we started engaging in this process at St. George’s, a process which has been hard on us in some ways. This is where we are now, and we aren’t going back. It’s not easy to be self-reflective, to look at ourselves as a community, to try to assess our strengths and our weaknesses – particularly our weaknesses. It’s not comfortable. We may long for a different time, an easier time.
Moses did. He wanted things to be different, and he cried out to God in his misery and yes, his drama. And God does respond, it’s worth pointing out. Moses says to God that he can’t carry the burden of leadership all by himself, and God doesn’t say, thanks for bringing this to my attention Moses; I’ll take it under consideration and get back to you. Moses says, I can’t carry all of this by myself, and God says, gather up seventy leaders and bring them together. And when Moses does that, God shares the spirit with those gathered so that they too can be leaders of the people. Moses is no longer the only one leading; the whole community is commissioned to lead together.
And that’s another place where this story has something to remind us here and now, in our current circumstances. One thing we need to remember: God has already done this commissioning for us. First, God has given us the Holy Spirit – bequeathed upon the church on the day of Pentecost some two thousand years ago. And, each of us has individually been given the Spirit in our baptism. Each of us has already been commissioned to be a leader in our community. We, collectively, are the ‘seventy’ in today’s lesson, no matter how many of us there are. We are commissioned to be leaders as we discern where God might be calling us to go. We are charged, by virtue of our baptism and our participation at this table to do the work of leading this community. Not just me, not just the vestry, but every single one of us. That participation and leadership will take different forms, because we each have different gifts. But we shouldn’t miss the central revelation here: that each of us is commissioned to help lead us out of the wilderness place occupy right now, and help move us forward in our journey.
It’s not that wilderness is a bad place to be. It isn’t. There are some real gifts of doing the work we are doing as a community right now. But where we are now is not where we are going to stay, is the point. We will move to somewhere else; where we go next depends on the participation of each one of us who loves this community and wants to do the work God is calling us to do.
The conclusion of this morning’s lesson from Numbers is Moses saying these words: “Would that all the LORD's people were prophets, and that the LORD would put his spirit on them!" The Lord has done this for us. We are the people Moses is talking about. We are commissioned to lead this parish and this community forward in own journey. Each one of us has a significant role to play; not one of us is only along for the ride. We have days when we may complain about eating manna, when we stomp our feet and demand meat to eat – but maybe we also have days when we speak words of encouragement to each other when someone else is having one of those days. Any of us can have days when we say, like Moses did, forget this God, I’m done. But we will also have days when we can say to God, I love this community too much to be done. I know you aren’t done with us, God, so I won’t be done with us either.
“Would that all the LORD's people were prophets, and that the LORD would put his spirit on them!" Blessed are all of us who have received this spirit. May we not let it lie dormant, but use it in service to each other and to our beloved church, at this stage of our journey and wherever we may go next. Amen.
