This is communion Sunday. Here on the table are special elements set aside for worship. In the Presbyterian tradition, only a minister of word and sacrament is authorized to consecrate the elements. And only ordained officers of the church are granted the privilege of distributing the elements to the community.
The elements need to be consecrated - that means to be set aside for a special use - because they are ordinary, the stuff of every day life. As we go about our daily lives, we eat ordinary bread, we drink ordinary juice or wine. These too are gifts of God, and as such are to be received and used with gratitude. But when we take communion, we bring a higher purpose and a deeper meaning to the table we share. And to remind of us the special significance this moment of remembrance and reconsecration has for us we restrict its use.
Even though in our polity elders have equal authority with clergy in most areas - and veto power over some issues - it takes special action by a Presbytery to authorize an elder to administer the sacraments, and permission would absolutely never be granted if clergy were available. We have boundaries. We accept them as appropriate. I have never even heard of an elder insisting on her equal right to all pastoral functions. And even if it were to happen, it would simply be dealt with by pointing to the appropriate passage in the Book of Order, and the decision would either be accepted or the individual would move to a denomination where the boundaries are differently drawn. But the situation that long-ago day in the wilderness of Sinai was much more serious than that.
Imagine, if you will, that this morning someone who is not an ordained deacon or elder were to come forward and try to take the plate of bread from one of the designated servers. Imagine, if you can, that they each have hold of the plate and are trying to get it away from the other person. The bread spills. Perhaps they knock the table over and the juice cups scatter as well, leaving large purple puddles on the carpet.
Pretty shocking scenario, isn’t it? Never happen - not in a Presbyterian church! "Decently and in order" is our motto. And if it were to happen, it could only be because someone had totally lost it, and would not only be put out of the congregation but would likely be hauled up on charges of disturbing the peace,
aggravated assault, or even put away in a home for the terminally bewildered.
Numbers 16 is the most dramatic chapter in an already very dramatic book. If you recall, last week we saw that the Israelites fear of the so-called "giants" who inhabited the Promised Land led to God’s decision to delay the occupation until the current generation had died and a new generation - hopefully one more given to trust and obedience - had taken their place. But that sentence has only temporarily silenced the rebels.
The disgruntled faction - what Scripture calls "the rabble" - have already proposed choosing a different leader to replace Moses and Aaron. Their discontent surfaces again in this passage, this time infecting the leadership as well, and a new twist is also added. Not only is it just a matter of second-guessing
Moses' political leadership of the community, they are now demanding equal access to God. And so this chapter weaves together two kinds of conflict, one political and one religious.
The challengers come from two tribes, Reuben and Levi. As Reuben was the eldest son of Jacob, he had some claim to primacy - if leadership was to be inherited, father to son, as was customary in those days and times. So Dathan and Abiram’s primary grievance is purely about who’s going to call the shots for the tribes. Recent polls show that the majority feel that the people are going in the wrong direction, that Moses’ leadership has brought them to the brink of ruin.
"Is it too little that you have brought us up out of a land flowing with milk and honey to kill us in the wilderness, that you must also lord it over us? It is clear you have not brought us into a land flowing with milk and honey, or given us an inheritance of fields and vineyards." [16:13-14a]
Lee did not read this portion of the text for you. And the reason she did not is because this political conflict is secondary. And yet almost every source I looked at focused on the political rebellion rather than the religious one. One reason, of course, is that it’s much easier to find a contemporary application for this kind of conflict, and pastors from one side of the country to another use this text to rebuke congregations for grumbling about their leadership. But aside from the fact that I don’t have quite the clout that Moses did - disagreement with me does not equal disagreement with God - I also don’t think it’s the main point of the
passage.
Korah is from the tribe of Levi. He’s a kinsman of Moses and Aaron, also Levites. You may remember that it was the Levites who rallied to Moses side after the incident of the golden calf, and won reprieve for themselves by killing their brothers, friends and neighbors. Yes, that’s how they got off the hook. Moses said
to them, "Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, 'Put your sword on your side, each of you! Go back and forth from gate to gate throughout the camp, and each of you kill your brother, your friend, and your neighbor.'" [Ex 32:27] And so they did. In recognition for their service, YHWH God gave the surviving Levites the honor of tending to the tabernacle and its furnishings. Moses said, "Today you have ordained yourselves for the service of the LORD, each one at the cost of a son or a brother, and so have brought a blessing on yourselves this day." [Ex 32:29]
Now, this is pretty hard for us to swallow. And absolutely nobody wants to touch it. At least, all of the modern scholars and preachers I looked at ducked it like the proverbial hot potato. The 18th and 19th century theologians weren’t so touchy. But what does it mean for us? How can we bring this shocking story into the 21st century? Now, I’m not preaching on Exodus 32 today - but you have to have the context to understand what it means for the Levites to be in the forefront of today’s rebellion. They had been willing to take up the sword against their own kinsmen at Moses’ command, and yet were not willing to follow Moses’ leadership when it came to matters of worship.
And I think that the common thread between both actions - obedience in the first case, disobedience in the second - has to do with their desire for power. Killing is, of course, the ultimate expression of power over another person. And many people think that the priesthood is a position of power. But the exact opposite is true. Accepting the priesthood means giving up power, rather than grasping after it.
The Levites, along with all the other tribes, had observed the consecration of Aaron and his sons as hereditary priests. It took seven days to complete the ordination ceremony, and it was made very clear to everyone that if the rules were not strictly observed they would die. But now listen to them confronting Moses: "You have gone too far! All the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the LORD is among them. So why then do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the LORD?" [v. 3-4]
Now this may be very sound contemporary theology. You and I are all equal before God. Ordination - whether as minister of word and sacrament, elder, or deacon - does not make any of us holier than the rest of our brothers and sisters, or more welcome in God’s presence. And it does not give us power over one another. And the way God set things up for Israel does not grant either power or holiness to the participants. Although it looks very different, the same thing is true for us. Our common baptism into Christ does not confer personal holiness, and the setting aside of some through ordination does not confer power. On the contrary: these gifts provide protection from God's unapproachable holiness, and the privilege of service.
There are three lessons for us to learn from this passage. All of the clues are in Moses’ response to Korah, which I will take in reverse order.
Moses ends his speech to Korah and company by pointing out that Moses isn’t the one who put the system together. The whole thing was God’s design. "Therefore," said Moses, "you and all your company have gathered together against the LORD. [v. 11] And so the first lesson for us to beware of grasping after power. God is in charge, even when there is a human target close at hand who it is easier to blame. Sometimes the human target is indeed blameworthy, the immediate cause of our frustration - or your suffering. But since God is still the one who put it all together and to whom you are ultimately responsible for your actions and reactions, how we respond to these situations must be with humility and a desire to seek the will of God.
The key to our second lesson comes in verse 9. "Is it too little for you," says Moses, "that the God of Israel has separated you from the congregation of Israel, to allow you to approach him in order to perform the duties of the LORD's tabernacle, and to stand before the congregation and serve them? [v. 9] We do tend to take for granted the privileges we have been given by God. We forget what it cost to become members of his family, with unlimited anytime minutes of free access. Forgetting what we owe God, many of us think that God should be content with the leftovers of our lives, and complain that God isn’t treating us as well as we deserve. And even when we have worked hard and been faithful, even though we may have stepped up to the plate when no one else would, we are still prey to the temptation of thinking that God owes us. And that’s exactly the trap the Levites fell into. As Paul told the Corinthians, "So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall. [1 Co 10:12]
And the third lesson is found in verse 5 as Moses spells out God’s return challenge. "In the morning the LORD will make known who is his, and who is holy, and who will be allowed to approach him; the one whom he will choose he will allow to approach him. [v. 5] The final and most important lesson is that God is holy. The Israelites were afraid of God - and with reason. We have forgotten that God is to be feared as well as trusted, obeyed as well as enjoyed. We forget that being the priesthood of believers is a privilege, not a right. We forget that being the temple of the holy spirit has obligations as well as rewards, and that we are unable to satisfy even the least of these demands under our own strength. It is Jesus who satisfies God’s requirements, not us. We come to the table unable to be holy as he is holy, but willing to be made holy by Jesus Christ.
As Paul reminds us in his letter to the Ephesians, all the gifts that God has given us, all the privileges we have, all the taken-for-granted intimacy and provision and guidance are ours only in Christ - as we identify with his suffering and self-giving, as we are willing to die his death in order to experience his resurrection. That is what it means to put on Christ. Neither you nor I have the right to come to this table that Jesus has prepared for us. Neither you nor I have garments fitting for this feast. We may only come clothed in Christ, and willing to be changed by him.
