Sermon on the Good Shepherd

 

Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets!

What would that look like? Imagine a bunch of random people out in the streets, prophesying at the office, at Market Basket, in West High School. Imagine everywhere you look, there’s someone filled with the Spirit of God and proclaiming truth to everyone around them. Officials would probably call it mass hysteria. Someone might even call the police.

How about random people doing deeds of power in Jesus’ name, people who don’t even go to church maybe, healing the sick and casting out demons with the name of Jesus? How would we feel about that? Would we react like Jesus does, saying don’t stop them because if they’re not against us they must be for us? Or would we feel threatened, feel like our special privileges were being infringed upon? Would we ask to see their Confirmation certificates? Would we try to sign them up for a program? What would we do about such chaotic behavior?

In the Hebrew Scriptures and the Gospel today, we see two stories of unauthorized holiness.

After a lot of God’s people complain to Moses that they’ve had it up to here with manna, Moses complains to God that he’s had it up to here with these people. God decides Moses needs some extra hands, so he tells Moses to appoint seventy elders to prophesy to the people.

We often think of prophecy as a prediction of the future, but, really, a prophet is just someone who listens to God and tells others what they hear.

In one of the verses the Lectionary left out, God tells Moses, “The Lord will give you meat, and you shall eat. You will not eat it for just one day, or two days, or five, ten or twenty days, but for a whole month—until it comes out of your nostrils and becomes loathsome to you.” Seriously, God says you’ll have meat coming out your nose. This is the message the prophetic elders were to relay when they gathered at the tent and received a portion of the Spirit Moses had.

Now, Eldad and Medad are on the list of elders authorized to prophesy, but for some reason they aren’t in the tent with the others. Apparently, I guess, the Spirit of God can’t be confined to a tent. Well really, what would be the use in keeping all the prophecy inside the tent? I would think the sooner the hungry rabble hear about the coming feast the better. But Joshua isn’t having it. “Stop them!” he says. These guys aren’t in the official tent. They shouldn’t be prophesying. They’re out there in the camp with the riff-raff, telling just anyone who will listen, that meat is on its way.

Funny thing, by the way: the Lectionary also leaves out the end of the chapter, where God blows in a huge flock of birds, and everybody who was complaining about the manna gets to eat fresh quail. Then they all get sick. Maybe they were in such a hurry to eat that they undercooked it and got salmonella? I imagine quail really did become loathsome to them after that.

But aside from that—do we ever try to put up a tent around the Holy Spirit? Do we think we need to decide who is entitled to hear and tell the words of God? Or do we make room for the unexpected, for God’s Spirit resting on outsiders?

Our other story of unauthorized holiness is in our reading from Mark. In the earlier part of Chapter 9, the disciples had been trying to cast out a demon and failing. Jesus had to come and sort that out. So it must really gall them when they run into some local yokel doing what they couldn’t. Who does this guy think he is, invoking their rabbi’s name? He’s not part of their circle. What does he even know about Jesus?

After all, they were the ones who’d been traipsing all over Galilee with him, leaving their day jobs and getting sand in their shoes while they tried to figure out what in the world he was talking about, like—your foot can cause you to sin? Being salty is the way to peace?— They might find his words confusing, but they’re proud to be in the “in crowd” that gets to hear these enigmatic sayings. I mean, at the top of this chapter they had seen Jesus glowing on the mountain, having a literal summit meeting with Moses and Elijah. They’re his chosen Twelve, the keepers of his Messianic secret. He’s THEIR Jesus.

So Jesus’ reaction to this outsider casting out demons surprises them. Jesus is apparently not interested in keeping good deeds of power inside some tent of exclusivity. In fact, he evokes some pretty harsh imagery about those who put up obstacles in front of people who believe in him. He says they’d be better off drowned. He figures this unsanctioned exorcist must believe in him, since he’s using his name to help people. Jesus’ bottom line is: When the Spirit of God is spreading; don’t get in the way.

The institutional church has historically restricted certain holy actions to the qualified and the authorized. For a long time in our tradition, only baptized people could take Communion, and of course before that happens, only clergy can baptize. Then when you get older, only a bishop can put his hands on your head and “give” you the Holy Spirit at Confirmation And before he does that, you have to take a class to make sure you have all the right answers to all the right questions.

And it really doesn’t matter what Christian tradition you belong to. We all strive to do everything “decently and in order.” If you’re Roman Catholic, you are required to confess all your sins to a clergy member, turning the sound advice we get from the author of James into a law. If you’re Eastern Orthodox, you only sing a capella. If you’re a certain kind of Lutheran, you have to wrap your head around Consubstantiation before they’ll let you receive Communion. I’ll let you Google that hundred dollar word. If you’re Amish, you live off the grid.

If you’re a Baptist or a member of any of a number of Evangelical Protestant churches, you have to pray the equally ritualistic “Sinner’s Prayer” and “ask Jesus into your heart” before they’ll baptize you. You are then expected to give a testimony about all the sins you were saved from, even if you were “saved” at age four.

(As a side note, I’m really excited to be singing the song we’re doing at the offertory. It’s the first song I ever memorized, at age six. As far as I was concerned, “They’ll know we are Christians by our love” was the whole point of life, and I assented with my whole heart. But still they waited two more years to baptize me. Because even the supposedly freewheeling Evangelicals have rules.)

If you’re a high church Episcopalian like I have been since college, you have to remember when to cross yourself and when to bow and kneel. Heck, if you attend St. Andrew’s, you have to sing the Doxology after the Offertory, even though it’s not actually in the Prayer Book liturgy, so the ushers know when to bring the money to the altar.

None of these orderly, predictable practices are bad things. Most of them greatly assist participants in their piety. But they are not very spontaneous. Most of all, they are very, very lawful.

Okay, now, this might sound like a digression, but bear with me. It’s going somewhere.

In the game Dungeons and Dragons, players use a chart to describe their character’s moral profile. The vertical axis of this grid runs from good to neutral to evil, from top to bottom, and on the horizontal axis from left to right, are the words lawful, neutral and chaotic. There’s a diagram on the table with the bulletins if you’re interested.

I will admit I haven’t actually played the game yet, but many of my younger friends do, and they often refer to the moral grid. If you’re a player and I’ve got this idea wrong, I hope you will forgive me.

Okay, so—in the upper left corner of the moral grid, we have Lawful Good, a character who seeks to benefit others by following a moral code. This is probably what we usually think of when we think of goodness—obeying the rules, including and especially the Golden Rule. Biblical figures under this heading might include Moses as the original lawgiver, and, I think, the much-maligned Pharisees. They’re strongly bonded to their moral code and act with prosocial intentions. Our Psalm for today is a hymn of praise to the Lawful Good.

Lawful Good characters have nice manners. They fasten their seat belts and obey the speed limit. Lawful Good never gets in trouble with the police and always colors inside the lines.

The author of the James epistle is an excellent example of Lawful Good. This passage contains several rules of thumb for the accessing the Holy Spirit. Happy? Sing a hymn. Sick? Have the elders anoint you with oil. Messed up your life? Confess your sin to a fellow believer. All good advice. In fact, the organized Church has been following his advice for a couple of millennia now, in the liturgical practices of Reconciliation and Unction, as well as in centuries of sacred music. Nothing wrong with all that. It has worked great for a lot of people for a long time. Lawful Good.

But I wonder how often we make people feel left out by being too wedded to the Lawful Good. I include myself in this question, me with all my genuflecting on cue. Are there rules, either subtle or obvious, by which we determine who is in the “in crowd”? Do visitors end up feeling like we all know something they don’t? I wonder if there’s a way we can remedy this.

But onward with our grid.

In the lower left corner, there is such a thing as Lawful Evil. These are characters who live within a legal code but follow those rules to do terrible things. This is more common in the world than you might think. Think Darth Vader or a Nazi camp commandant. A person can follow the rules and not be a force for good.

In the middle on the left is lawful neutral, your basic, mostly law-abiding citizen who does no great harm but also no great good. There are also squares for neutral evil, neutral good, neutral neutral… You get the idea.

But today I’m more interested in the right side of the chart, in the chaotic characters. Chaotic beings don't always follow the rules. They color outside the lines and act unpredictably. In our culture, we often associate chaos exclusively with bad things. We tend to think that order is always good, and that chaos is always a problem to be solved. But as we just noted, it’s possible to quite orderly and also quite wicked. Chaos itself is neither good nor bad.

You’ve got your Chaotic Evil characters, of course, in the lower left corner of the grid, people like the Joker from the Batman stories. Chaotic Evil characters have antisocial intentions. They follow no rules and just want to see it all burn. That demon the disciples couldn’t cast out, the one that kept trying to throw a kid into the fire, is a chaotic evil—no rhyme or reason, just trouble for its own sake.

But can chaos be prosocial? Can it be good? Let’s think about the upper right square on the grid, chaotic good.

Chaotic Good characters like Robin Hood and Han Solo will break the rules when that’s what’s needed to bring justice and wholeness to the world. According to one internet primer on the moral alignment grid, “Chaotic Good characters will use any means necessary and available to them to benefit the most people possible.” In other words, for this type, there are more important things than obeying the law.

Jesus often operates this way, much to the annoyance of the Lawful Good Pharisees. Heal on the Sabbath or let a guy live with a withered hand until the next day? Easy. Heal the hand. A random, possibly outcast woman wants to wash your feet with tears and use her hair for a towel? Cool. Go with it. Because in Jesus Land, love always trumps the rules. Jesus acts by the promptings of the Spirit of God to turn safe, familiar blind beggars into scary riddles, to touch lepers, to flip the tables in the Temple. This is the same Spirit that rested on Eldad and Medad, the one that prompted them to take God’s Word outside the confines of the tent. You just never know what the chaotic Holy Spirit will be up to next.

The point is, I have come to see the Holy Spirit as the original Chaotic Good. The Holy Spirit speaks through the prophets, prompts them to do some crazy things like Isaiah prophesying in the nude for three years and Hosea marrying someone he knows will cheat on him and Jeremiah basically becoming a street mime. The Spirit certainly turns Mary’s life upside down, bringing her a baby before the wedding and leaving Joseph totally confused. It’s the Holy Spirit who teaches John the Baptist to eat bugs and drives Jesus out into the wilderness for forty days.

The Spirit even breaks the space/time continuum so Jesus can have that mountaintop meeting with Moses and Elijah. Later, the Spirit breaks the old law of Babel to let people communicate across language barriers in the second chapter of Acts—and if Pentecost isn’t a prime example of Chaotic Good in action, I don’t know what is.

I wonder if the fire we are going to be salted with is the Holy Spirit, appearing as little flames over all our heads and causing us to do crazy things. Like maybe having a respectful conversation with our schizophrenic neighbor, or even just putting together food bags for hungry folks who show up outside food pantry hours.

I wonder if maybe the reason the disciples failed to conquer that Chaotic Evil demon was because they were still thinking it was all about rules. Maybe they had watched Jesus cast out demons and thought he had a foolproof method, and that if they followed it, they could bring order to demonic chaos. But, see, it’s not necessarily about defeating chaos; it’s not chaos but evil that’s the problem. Maybe they were working the wrong axis of the grid. Maybe it takes a Chaotic Good to cast out a Chaotic Evil.

I am reminded of the five practices of our Diocese: We show up, we tell the story, we splash water, we share food, and—what’s the last bit? God surprises. Are we open to the chaotic surprises that might be coming our way as gifts from the Spirit?

Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets!

Well, since Pentecost, all God’s people are prophets.

Of course, it would be foolishness to suggest that the Holy Spirit can only work with people who’ve been confirmed by a bishop. But what if, at a minimum, we all really believed in our confirmations? We’ve received the Holy Spirit. The guy in the pointy hat has told us so.

All holiness is authorized. We are qualified to prophesy. We can get out of the tent and tell the people God’s message of untamed abundance. We can dance before the Ark like David. We can make a spectacle of ourselves. We can sing out loud. We can welcome unexpected allies. Hey, we can even move the chairs around. We are free to follow the way of Love, where rules may be all well and fine, but where maybe the best stuff happens when we see the Holy Spirit coloring outside the lines, being extremely chaotic, and extremely good.

Art credit: Patrick Greene