Numbers 11:4-6, 10-16, 24-29
The rabble among them had a strong craving; and the Israelites also wept again, and said, “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.”
Moses heard the people weeping throughout their families, all at the entrances of their tents. Then the Lord became very angry, and Moses was displeased. So Moses said to the Lord, “Why have you treated your servant so badly? Why have I not found favor in your sight, that you lay the burden of all this people on me? Did I conceive all this people? Did I give birth to them, that you should say to me, ‘Carry them in your bosom, as a nurse carries a sucking child, to the land that you promised on oath to their ancestors’? Where am I to get meat to give to all this people? For they come weeping to me and say, ‘Give us meat to eat!’ I am not able to carry all this 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—if I have found favor in your sight—and do not let me see my misery.”
So the Lord said to Moses, “Gather for me seventy of the elders of Israel, whom you know to be the elders of the people and officers over them; bring them to the tent of meeting, and have them take their place there with you.”
So Moses went out and told the people the words of the Lord; and he gathered seventy elders of the people, and placed them all around the tent. Then the Lord came down in the cloud and spoke to him, and took some of the spirit that was on him and put it on the seventy elders; and when the spirit rested upon them, they prophesied. But they did not do so again.
Two men remained in the camp, one named Eldad, and the other named Medad, and the spirit rested on them; they were among those registered, but they had not gone out to the tent, and so they prophesied in the camp. And a young man ran and told Moses, “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.” And Joshua son of Nun, the assistant of Moses, one of his chosen men, said, “My lord Moses, stop them!” But Moses said to him, “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!”
Mark 9:38-50
John said to [Jesus,] “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” But Jesus said, “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us. For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.
“If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea. If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell, where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.
“For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”
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The news cycle this week has left me a little bit sore and limping, maybe you feel the same way, too.
It’s not like I didn’t already know that we are living in the most divided political climate this nation has seen in my lifetime. But watching the supreme court hearings this week was like watching a train wreck in slow motion on repeat.
It hurts my heart to watch the anger and the unkindness of both our political leaders and of our nation’s citizens, battling it out in editorials and facebook posts and talk-radio shows.
It hurts my heart to listen to emerging and re-emerging conversations of what it means to have power in politics or power in relationships, what it means to recognize the ways that we hurt and harm each other without knowing it or without knowing better.
It hurts my heart to think about the ways that our privilege, earned or implicit, can cause us to ignore or cast off the voices of those who suffer for their race or their gender or their economic situation.
And so I admit that I come to today’s gospel reading with a particular sensitivity to Jesus’s words about the perils of being stumbling blocks to one another.
Jesus and his disciples are still on on the road to Jerusalem. Along the way, Jesus continues to teach the disciples, in very plain terms, about his betrayal, suffering, and death. He keeps pulling children into their midst, to show them that the kingdom of God is a kingdom that values care and protection for the weakest ones, a kingdom that seeks justice for the broken-hearted and the oppressed, a kingdom that honors the meek and turns privilege and power upside-down. He warns them that pursuing this kingdom is going to require of them sacrifice and vulnerability, and that this work is going to feel more like a cross than like a blaze of glory.
Meanwhile, the disciples keep arguing with Jesus and with each other about who is the greatest, and they puff themselves up with delusions of their own power, and they aren’t humbled by their lack of understanding or by their weaknesses, but rather grow embarrassed and defensive.
Just a few verses earlier in this chapter of Mark’s gospel, the disciples had been asked to cast out an evil spirit from a suffering child. And they couldn’t do it.
While they are still licking their wounds and nursing their bruised egos, they see someone outside of their immediate friend group successfully casting out demons in Jesus’s name, succeeding at the very thing they were unable to do, The disciples feel jealous and insecure, fearful and frustrated.
And so they try to cut short the work of these other disciples. The put themselves in the way. They try to shut it all down. They can’t admit that God could be at work through someone else. The disciples are so preoccupied with their own fragile egos and their own overblown sense of good order that they’d rather stop a work of healing than let someone else do it. And somehow they think that Jesus will be proud of them for it.
Jesus starts ranting about cups of water and millstones and cutting off body parts because, on a long road of missing the point, the disciples have again missed the point about what it means to be a follower of Jesus.
Jesus rebukes them for being a stumbling block to those who would do the work of the kingdom on behalf of the ones who most need the kingdom.
And Jesus reminds them that, in this kingdom work, they need all the help that can get.
It hadn’t occurred to the disciples that they might actually need help to do the work of following Jesus. It hadn’t occurred to them that others might have strength where they only have vulnerability.
Thomas Merton, in his book, No Man is an Island, writes, “It is therefore of supreme importance that we consent to live not for ourselves but for others. When we do this we will be able first of all to face and accept our own limitations. As long as we secretly adore ourselves, our own deficiencies will remain to torture us with an apparent defilement. But if we live for others, we will gradually discover that no expects us to be 'as gods'. We will see that we are human, like everyone else, that we all have weaknesses and deficiencies, and that these limitations of ours play a most important part in all our lives. It is because of them that we need others and others need us. We are not all weak in the same spots, and so we supplement and complete one another, each one making up in himself for the lack in another.”
In their quest to define “greatness,” the disciples turn a blind eye to their own limitations and weaknesses and deficiencies, even though those are the very things that should allow them to bless the greatness of others. The disciples have forgotten that the work of Christ’s kingdom is shared work.
Moses knew what the disciples did not: that carrying the work of the kingdom is heavy, and is too much for any of us alone. Moses was putting out fires (literally), blazing a trail through the wilderness, feeding people, interceding between the people and God, and he knew in his bones that this work would take him down if he kept at it alone. When he cries out to God, God doesn’t lift the burden. Rather, God raises up for Moses seventy others to help him do the work, that they might provide for him some measure of respite.
In the same way, Jesus tells the disciples that “whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.” They need - and we need - partners in this hard and beautiful work of living out kingdom values of compassion, forgiveness, and justice. We need each other for support and for refreshment.
Priest and writer Henri Nouwen says, “We need to be angels for each other, to give each other strength and consolation. Because only when we fully realize that the cup of life is not only a cup of sorrow but also a cup of joy will we be able to drink it.”
In our sorrows and in our joys, Christ blesses us with the gift of companions for the journey. And not just companions, but partners, even surprising ones, in the work of building up Christ’s kingdom. They are our cup of cold water in time of thirst.
The temptation right now, in our politics and in our life as community, is to circle the wagons. To cling to those who affirm our biases. To shut people out. To crave the food of Egypt - whether that be our old assumptions about power and privilege, or our old assumptions about race or gender - because the wilderness of new conversations about these things seems to hard and harsh and hopeless.
But Jesus urges us beyond these temptations. Where we would rather throw rocks in one another’s paths, Jesus calls us to see our need for one another, despite the very real differences that divide us.
We don’t have to like each other. Or agree with each other.
But we do have to recognize that we need each other. God has put us here to be strength in each other’s times of weakness and to be forgiveness in each other’s times of trial and to be grateful for each other’s gifts even when we might feel jealous of them and to be patient with one another even when the work of transformation and justice seems slow.
The disciples might have messed up and misunderstood and bumbled their way through their faith, and Jesus might have gotten angry, but Jesus never kicked them out. Jesus needed them to continue his kingdom work. Jesus needs us, too. And so we need each other.
We need the politicians we love and the politicians we love to hate. We need the brave voices of those sharing their #metoo stories. We need the ones who refresh us and the ones who provoke us. We need the ones who offer the cup of cold water and the ones who trip us up. We need the ones who reveal the kingdom to us. And we need the ones who reveal to us the reasons we long for this kingdom to come.
The kingdom needs you. It needs your gifts and your passions. It needs your bruised ego. It needs your curiosities and doubts, your stories of triumph, your stories of brokenness. The work of the kingdom needs your profound moments of insight. It needs your biggest screw-ups and your deepest regrets.
We need you because you are a child of God. And the kingdom would be incomplete without you.
We need each other because we are all children of God. And we can’t do the work of the kingdom alone.
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