‘Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them’ Numbers 11:29
I remember a cheeky church growth metaphor of a bottle with a cork on it. The cork is labelled ‘Vicar’ with the implication that priests keep the fizz down in churches and the importance for church growth of getting loosened from clericalism.
There’s always a fizz about St John’s but I don’t think it's because you’re Vicar-less! Maybe it's because the Holy Spirit is at work as described in today’s scripture.
In the passage we heard from Numbers Chapter 11 Moses appointed seventy elders to help him lead God’s people in the wilderness and God gave them some of the Spirit put into Moses. There was a manifestation of prophecy demonstrating the Spirit coming on the seventy just like at Pentecost. This stopped and then two people, Eldad and Medad got the Spirit and prophesied though not members of the seventy Moses had chosen. An overzealous young man tried to get Moses to stop this ‘illegitimate’ manifestation of the Spirit. Moses refused saying what was prophetic in a wider sense, my text which points to Pentecost: ‘Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them’.
‘Does God confine the gift of his Spirit to authorised channels?’ is the question, and it comes up again in the Gospel - indeed the Numbers passage was chosen for today to illuminate Mark 9 verses 38. We read there how Our Lord’s disciples tried to stop someone casting out demons in his name because he was not an obvious, or should we say ‘legitimate’ follower of Jesus. ‘But Jesus said, ‘Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterwards to speak evil of me’.
Both Our Lord in the Gospel and Moses in the first reading disown clerical arrogance which sees the Holy Spirit just flowing through the channels they have authorised. God is bigger than the institutions he sets up to help his people function right. God is bigger than the church and can make exceptions we should go along with, but - and it's a contentious ‘but’ - we are bound as a rule to expect the Holy Spirit to flow primarily through the channels he authorises. For us Anglicans the Holy Spirit is known as God’s grace and comes primarily through the church. ‘In what ways do you receive… God’s grace?’ Our Catechism asks and it gives this reply. ‘I receive… grace within the fellowship of the Church, when I worship and pray, when I read the Bible, when I receive the Sacraments, and as I live my daily life to his glory’.
Without bishops and priests we cannot have sacramental grace as the Churchwardens know to their cost, working against the odds sometimes to bring priests in to preach and celebrate the eucharist for us in our vacancy - God shorten that and bring us one after his own heart to serve here as our parish priest!
The second reading from James 5 is as ever independent of the other two readings. It provides us with the origin of the Sacraments of Anointing and Confession. Though described in the catechism as lesser sacraments the Church of England reserves these healing sacraments to those ordained in apostolic orders, namely bishops and priests. ‘Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise. Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord. The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed’ (James 5:13-16a). The confessing of sin to one another became historically confession to a priest, for practical reasons and linked also to Our Lord’s gift of authority to forgive sins to his apostles and by implication to their successors in John’s Gospel Chapter 20.
Returning to our thinking about the working of the Holy Spirit from the other two readings, we see in the instruction of the apostle James the sacramental role of the elder or priest in ministering healing to the sick: ‘call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord’. That we do - and even in a vacancy church members should know it can be made available after any eucharist - but this sacrament is allied to the prayer of church members. God authorises sacramental channels like the eucharist, confession and anointing which are available to all through bishops and priests. At the same time Our Lord commends intercessory prayer in his name by church members alone or in twos or threes as a powerful vehicle of the Holy Spirit as in John 16:23, ‘if you ask anything of the Father in my name, he will give it to you’ or in Matthew 18:19, ‘if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven’. This morning we are agreeing together for God to heal those on our sick list and those on it are assembled by church members. As a priest I see people healed again and again when they receive the sacrament of anointing. Sometimes that healing is a death at peace with God. A couple of weeks ago I was called to a dying priest wanting to make his confession. Within hours of the sacrament being administered he passed peacefully to God. Yet I can relate as many of you can relate how God in his faithfulness answers prayers of both the ordained and non-ordained for their needs and for those in their circle. How important such prayer is in our lives!
Our Lord shares authority with the apostles and their successors, just as Moses shared with the Seventy, to bring God’s care further across the world. At the same time today’s scripture is a powerful reminder that, important as apostolic order is, it is inseparable from apostolic vitality in the sense of all Christians being open to being agents of the Holy Spirit through care and through prayer. ‘Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them.’ Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful people, and kindle in us the fire of your love!
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