This sermon was preached at Glenwood and Canoe Ridge Lutheran Churches, Decorah, Iowa, on September 30, 2018. It’s based on Numbers 11:4-29. If you’d prefer to listen to it, find it at https://soundcloud.com/stacey-nalean-carlson.
Numbers 11:4-29
When you are reading Numbers, Terence Fretheim says, think journey—journey through the wilderness of life.1 Daniel Erlander, as you’ve heard me say before, describes the Israelites’ time in the wilderness as a wilderness school.2 Wilderness time becomes transformation time. They’ve been slaves their entire lives. Now, with God having rescued them from Egypt, they must learn how to be a liberated people.
You’ve heard it said, It’s not about the destination. It’s about the journey. For the Israelites, that familiar saying rings true. They won’t be ready to reach their destination until they’ve experienced this difficult journey. They must learn how to be free. And as it turns out, it’s not easy.
The Israelites wept again. 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.
The people had cried to God to rescue them from Egypt, to deliver them from the hands of their oppressors. But now, doing the hard work of learning to be free, Egypt is looking good. They had fish there. And garlic!
Now that they have some distance from that terrible time of captivity—and now that they’re discovering just how difficult it’s going to be to truly become free—it’s too easy to look back and believe that maybe slavery really wasn’t so bad. At least they knew what to expect there.
Have you experienced periods of wilderness school in your life? Times when one thing had ended and you had to experience some real struggle and growth before you could embrace the next thing? I can’t even remember the details now, but I remember a time in my life when the lyrics of Carrie Newcomer’s song, A Light in the Window, were on a constant loop in my head. Now the old has already passed away, but the new is too new to be born today. So I’m throwing out seeds on the winter snow, as the cold wind begins to blow, standing here on a new threshold. I can see a light. There’s a light in the window.3
You know you can’t go back, but going forward is so hard. It’s such a difficult place to be, but also a powerful place to be.
Moses bears the brunt of the peoples’ frustration and pleads his case before the Lord. You conceived these people, God. You gave birth to them. You are the one who ought to be carrying them and feeding them. Not me. Where am I to get meat to give to all these 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.
It is clear that Moses loves these people that have been entrusted to him, but he is weary and overwhelmed. Later on in the reading we learn that he is carrying 600,000 people with his leadership. But even if he were only responsible for one, it could very well feel like too much.
Have there been times in your life when you’ve felt pressure to care for others, to provide for others, and the experience has left you weary and overwhelmed? It’s too much. It’s too heavy a burden.
It was probably year six or seven of being a pastor that I remember talking to a trusted, wise colleague, and telling her that I couldn’t keep on carrying all that I felt I needed to carry, all that I felt called to carry. I was weary and overwhelmed by the suffering of those around me. She said something to this effect: maybe it’s not so much a problem with what you’re carrying as it is a problem with how you’re carrying it. Those words have worked on me in the years since then. The problem with how I was carrying the hurts of those around me was that I failed to recognize I wasn’t shouldering that burden alone.
I am not able to carry all this people alone, Moses says. And he’s right. No one can do it alone.
So the LORD said to Moses, “Gather for me seventy of the elders of Israel…I will take some of the spirit that is on you and put it on them; and they shall bear the burden of the people along with you so that you will not bear it all by yourself.”
We are not expected to do the hard work of loving others all by ourselves. God provides others to come alongside us and bear that burden with us. We can trust God to do that. But it’s not easy.
Moses isn’t entirely convinced. He doesn’t question God’s promise to equip the elders to serve alongside him, but he does question God’s promise to give the people meat to eat. Here’s where he mentions to God, as if God didn’t already know, that the people total 600,000. Are there enough flocks and herds to slaughter for them? Moses demands of God. Are there enough fish in the sea to catch for them?
God’s response is to ask a question in return: Is the Lord’s power limited?
I wonder if we aren’t so often like Moses, stuck in the reality of what we can see and understand. The problem—whatever it may be—is so clear to us. In this case, too many people and not enough resources. In the case of the church today, too few people, at least compared to what was. The problem is clear to us. The solution is much harder to see. We fail to take into account God’s power. Is anything impossible for God?
In the wilderness, God provides quail for a disheartened people desperate for some semblance of security. In the wilderness, God provides compassionate support for a weary and discouraged caregiver. In the wilderness, God liberates God’s beloved ones from the last chains of their slavery and shapes them into a people marked by true freedom. God does the same for us.
And finally, the post-script to this story, the connection point with our gospel reading for today: A young man ran and told Moses, “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.” And Joshua…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!”
Moses understands the gift of spirit-filled folks speaking God’s word, living God’s word, in the community. Moses doesn’t gain anything by being the only one capable. That would perhaps do something for his ego. But it would do nothing for his well-being…and certainly nothing for the well-being of the whole people of God.
We live in the days after that first Pentecost, when the Spirit was poured out on all people. In baptism, we receive this same spirit that equips us to do God’s work in the world. The time we spend in the wilderness—as incredibly challenging and uncomfortable as it may be—becomes the means by which that spirit God has given us is strengthened, and our capacity for compassion and trust and hope grows and overflows. Thanks be to God. Amen.
1 http://www.workingpreacher.org/