TWENTY-SIXTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME B

[cappie]

This doesn’t seem to be a good day for anyone in the scripture readings  today.  God has Moses gather the elders so that they might learn to share some of the responsibility of leading the Israelites.  God took some of Moses’ spirit and placed it on the gathered elders, who then prophesied. But there were two men, Eldad and Medad, who stayed in the camp. They too received part of Moses’ spirit and they too prophesied, which caused a jealous outburst from the elders. They seem to be saying, “Who let them in our club?” Moses is frustrated, and he fervently wishes that all God’s people would be filled with God’s spirit.

 Today’s Gospel reading starts much as the Old Testament story ended. A member of the “inner circle,” the “club,” was put out 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.

What the people in Moses’ time and the people in Jesus’ time didn’t get was what it means to be a part of “the people of God.” In any age, being a part of the people of God means taking upon oneself a certain lifestyle, a certain set of principles, the responsibility to live a certain way in community with others. It means looking always towards God and one’s neighbour, and not towards oneself. In Mark’s Gospel, when Jesus talks about this lifestyle he calls it “the kingdom of God.” And this kingdom of God wasn’t something to wait for–it was becoming a part of their lives right then.

Living in this kingdom means taking a whole different view of what it means to be successful. In his letter, James lambastes those who aren’t living as the people of God ought to live. He lays their sins right in front of them and offers them an ultimatum. Jesus, too, uses some pretty harsh images to shake people up, to remind them that sin is serious and the consequence of sin is being cut off from God, much as a hand can be cut off from the body.

But Jesus doesn’t leave us to think about the effects of sin; he offers us an alternative. And it’s a quite simple one. In last week’s Gospel, Jesus picked up a little child and said, “Whoever welcomes a child in my name, welcomes me; and anyone who welcomes me, welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” Today, it might strike us as a charming thing for Jesus to do when he uses a child as an image. In that age, though, it was remarkable.

Children had no status at all.   And here Jesus was forcing the adults to rearrange their thinking. He was forcing them to understand that unless   they began to accept ALL God’s people as part of their community, unless they began to live as if they really understood that the kingdom of God was in their midst, they were in danger of falling into serious sin.

But we don’t really want to talk about sin today, do we? But it’s part of us.  As we think about it, Moses was dealing  with the sins of pride and elitism.  We have to look to the Gospel to put this issue into perspective, to help us know how to begin dealing with our sinfulness–because in this life, no matter what anyone says, we aren’t going to get it completely right.

We can, as Jesus says, “become like little children.” We can be open enough that God’s word might still teach us something. We can be secure enough in our faith that our relationships with others, even those very different from ourselves, will enrich us rather than intimidate us and cause us to shut others out.

The secret is in understanding what Jesus’ disciples were missing in today’s Gospel: that the kingdom of God is here among us.  Cleanse me from my unknown faults, we pray in today’s Psalm. Often, like Joshua in the Old Testament and John in the Gospel, perhaps without noticing it, we cloak our failings and fears under the guise of our desire to defend Christ or the Church.

But as Jesus says today, instead of worrying about who is a real Christian and who is not, we should make sure that we ourselves are leading lives worthy of our calling as disciples