God is No Pragmatist

Numbers 20 often befuddles us.  After all, the story is pretty straightforward:  Israel needs water, God provides water.  All that Moses does is to strike a rock instead of speak to it, and for that he is told that he will never enter the Promised Land.  I don't know about you, but to me that seems a little out of proportion.

Several things present themselves to help me get my head around the incident.  Let me just ponder the most important one: Moses is Israel's leader, and leaders are always held to a higher standard.  That's the responsibility of leadership.  After all, if a person wants the ability to influence people for good, they need to be aware of how easy it is for them to influence them for ill, too.  Leaders, by the nature of their position, can set good or bad examples, with consequences far beyond their apparent meaning.

Here's an example.  I grow up in the shadow of Nixon's Watergate scandal.  Now, on the surface, it's kind of small potatoes:  a bothced break-in and a badly conceived lie.  But the ramifications have been enormous--the hastening of an entire era of lost confidence in institutions and authority.  (I'm not saying Watergate is the only event that undermined our confidence, but it surely helped that loss of confidence get rolling.)  How do a minor crime and a lie have that kind of impact?  When they're perpetuated by the leader of the free world!  If the President does that sort of thing, it sets an example for lesser government officials and for all sorts of people in power that power can be used for personal benefit.

Anyhow,  leaders--in the world and in the church--are held to higher standards, and this is especially true in Moses' case.  If God's favorite can so casually disregard His Word, surely everyone else can, too!  So, parents, bosses, pastors--everyone in authority ought to recognize that they wield that authority to lead on God's behalf, and with that responsibility comes responsibility.

Honor Your Leaders

            Numbers 16-17 remind us that bad times and bad news often create crises of leadership.  After all, Hosni Mubarak managed to rule for 30 years, but food shortages and inflation finally created conditions in which his leadership couldn’t be sustained.  I follow any number of friends in Wisconsin on Facebook, and many of them are up in arms about Gov. Scott Walker’s budget proposals:  lost tax revenue means lost services and benefits and people don’t want to take that lying down.  (I suspect we’ll see the same sort of things around here in the next week or so when Gov. Snyder presents his budget.)

            I don’t have a horse in any of those political examples, I’m just trying to point out that bad times lead to shaken confidence, especially in leaders.  Now, Israel had had a bad run.  Tired of their time in the desert, in the cusp of entering the land the Lord had promised, they found themselves heading back to the wilderness.  Now, we know that they were heading back into the wilderness because of their own problems—complaining, lack of faith, etc.  But Korah managed to cast it in terms of Moses’ poor leadership:  “Who are you?”  The Lord answers that question with an earthquake and fire, but still the people grumbled and blamed Moses for the disaster.

            What ought we learn here?  First, we might learn to take Jesus’ advice and look at the log in our own eyes before removing splinters from someone else’s.  Korah (and a great number of Israelites) should have considered that the reason they were heading into the wilderness was their own failure to honor the Lord by going into Canaan.  Second, we might learn to look take a more honest appraisal of ourselves:  did Korah really think he could have brought about a different result than Moses?  I find that it’s much easier to criticize and complain than it is to offer solutions that work.  (I don’t like how the cost of health care has risen over the last 15 years, but, as a matter of honest appraisal, I have no idea how to fix it.)  Finally, this kind of reading might make us consider the ways that the Lord has told us to honor our leaders—whether secular (Rom. 13; 1 Pet. 2) or spiritual (1 Tim. 5).

All Too Human

            One of my favorite quotes is attributed to Lionel Blue, a reform rabbi and a British broadcaster.  He said, “An aged rabbi, crazed with liberalism, once said to me, ‘We Jews are just ordinary human beings.  Only a bit more so!’”  I like it because Israel was called to be a representative race; they were to model what lives in the image of God should look like.  And, boy, did they ever!  Called to be the Lord’s unique people, they were often human in a much-too-Adam kind of way.

            So, here they are, the recipients of God’s promises, delivered from Egypt, led through the Red Sea, confronted by the Lord on Sinai, named His holy people, granted a great deal of instruction about what it meant to be His holy people, living around the Tabernacle—in which their God graciously stooped to dwell.  And that’s all within 18 months!  Now, they send scouts into the land this God had promised, and the spies say, “It’s nice, but we can’t afford it.”  Imagine a rich uncle who says, “I’m going to give you a house.  I’ve picked out a nice 4,500 square foot one for you, and it has everything your family could ever want in a house.”  Would you say, “Sorry, I don’t think you can afford the house you promised”?  I don’t think so.  I think you’d take the house and say thank you.

            Not Israel!  They don’t think that the God who drowned the army of Pharaoh in the Red Sea can evict a few troublesome Canaanites.  No wonder God is so ticked off!  It’s not like He did His mighty acts of salvation so long ago.

            So, here we have Israel behaving just like the rest of fallen humanity—only a bit more so.  They can’t quite commit themselves to the Lord and His ways—just like Adam and Eve couldn’t, just like the generation of Babel couldn’t, just like we often can’t.

            Then, they do the natural thing (humanly speaking).  They decide to get it for themselves.  How human is that!  We don’t believe that God can get it done, but we believe that we can.  No wonder we seem to spend so much time ‘in the wilderness.’  It’s in the wildernesses of life that we finally give up on getting stuff done for ourselves and learn what it means to rely on the promises that God has made us, promises that find their focus in Jesus, who is everything Adam was supposed to have been, who is everything Israel was supposed have been, who alone demonstrates a heart living completely on the promises of God.

Sharing the Burden

            I’m old enough to remember the administrations of five U. S. presidents.  Reagan was, of course, the oldest man ever elected to the Presidency (he was just shy of 70 when he began his first term).  Everyone knew he was old; he even promised not to use Mondale’s youth and inexperience against him.  Bush, Clinton, Bush, and Obama, however, were not quite as old when they took office:  Bush 41 was 64, Clinton was 46, Bush 43 was 54, and Obama was 47.  Ok, so I know some history.  What’s the point?  Did you ever notice how much these men aged in office?  Do an internet search—before and after—the office took a toll!

            Moses knew something about the burden of leadership.  “These aren’t my children,” he fairly shouts.  “I didn’t conceive them, and I can’t be responsible for them.  You do something with them!”  You can understand the frustration:  according Numbers 9, they were only about a year out of Egypt.  So far, there had been griping about water and food (Exodus 15-16), cowardice at the foot of Sinai (Ex. 19), idolatry (Ex. 32), and the loss of two of the first five priests for writing their own rituals (Lev. 10).  Add to that the daily burden of administering a truckload of people, and you have a leader who is heading for a breakdown.

            This is not the first time Moses has flirted with burnout.  At the start of this little adventure, Moses’ father-in-law, Jethro, had told him that he needed help (Exodus 18:13-26), and it says that Moses set up a system to adjudicate cases.  However, here, a little more than a year later, Moses needs the same advice.  The Lord places His Spirit on 70 elders of Israel.  It’s as if the Lord is saying, “Look, I placed you in charge, but you don’t have to do everything.  I can give the gift of my Spirit to whomever I want.”

            There’s lots to see here, and one of those things is that leaders too often carry their burdens all alone.  Moses certainly did!  He didn’t share his burdens with anyone else and He forgot that the burdens were already the Lord’s.

            It’s not just leaders, either.  Most of us forget that the burdens are the Lord’s:  He is the one who has promised to work them all out for our good (Romans 8:28).  Perhaps we should from Moses the importance of turning our troubles over to the Lord—especially those things that are simply beyond our control.  And many of us don’t do a very good job of sharing our burdens with Christian friends.  I don’t know quite where it came from, but American Christians at least sure seem to have bought into a myth of ultimate self-sufficiency.  (I can’t tell you how many times over my ministry I’ve visited a sick person who’s having a hard time accepting help.  They explain themselves with a shrug of the shoulders and the statement, “I’m the one who helps others; I guess I’m just not very good at taking help.”)  What unnecessary burdens we bear!

            Moses needed to learn to trust the Lord and to trust others to help him.  Many of us could learn those same lessons—before we become like an American president, old and worn before our time!

How Does God Guide?

            I notice two things in Numbers 10.  First, I couldn’t help but be a little jealous of the clarity that Israel seems to have had.  After all, where the cloud of the glory settles, that’s where you go and set up camp.

            I’d love to have that kind of guidance!  What I seem to get is a struggle to choose wisely based on advice of Christian friends and the principles that can be discerned in the Scriptures.  (Even then, notice that little word ‘discern’!  Sometimes the Scriptures themselves don’t seem all that helpful.)  How do we make God-pleasing choices when we are confronted by an uncharted future, no clear path, and two or more possibilities each of which could be understood in some ways as God-pleasing and in other ways as not-so-God pleasing.

            There are lots of decisions like that:  live and work here or there?  This school or that one?  Keep on with this activity or try something new?  An example from my own life is when I have had to consider Calls to other churches.  On the one hand, it’s God’s call.  Going would certainly be God-pleasing.  On the other hand, maybe it’s a test and the Lord actually values faithfulness and perseverance over newness.  I can find Bible passages to support both sides.  And maybe what I think is God’s leading to try something new is really just a desire for a new field because I want to get away from past mistakes or to undo parts of my history that will influence me no matter where I go.

            Oh, to have the cloud of the glory leading me to just where I need to go!

            However, at the end of Numbers 10, there’s an odd little story.  The camp is on the march and we find out that Hobab, Moses’ brother-in-law has been staying with them.  (Remember Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, had joined them in Exodus 18.)  Hobab decides that this would be  good time to return to his own affairs and Moses begs him to stay with them, telling him, “You know where we should camp in the wilderness” (10:31).

            Well, perhaps things aren’t so clear for Israel as we thought!  Yes, the cloud of the glory is leading them, but they still need the help of a wise and experienced friend to get them to the specifics of a site.  It seems to me that part of the wisdom the Lord calls us to is the wisdom to recognize the general directions He leads us in, to embrace His guiding presence in Word and Sacrament, and to seek the counsel of wise friends who might know more about the lay of the land than we do.  The Scriptures do provide guidance, but it’s not a ‘do-this, not-that’ kind of guidance so much as a ‘I-value-this-sort-of-character’ guidance.  We have the assurance of God’s presence in His Word and Sacrament, even when we are struggling with decisions.  And it’s good to remember that serious decisions are often best made in community, since our decisions often affect others and since the Lord often offers His guidance under the guise of Christian friends.

Downright Neanderthal or Downright Liberal?

            Leviticus 24:17-23 and Numbers 5:11-31 seem really harsh, even unjust.  In the first passage, we have the famous ‘eye for an eye’ passage.  What did one wag say?  “If we trade and eye for an eye, we’ll all go through life half-blind.”  It just seems kind of primitive.  If ‘an eye for an eye’ seems kind of primitive, Numbers 5 seems downright Neanderthal!  A woman is to be hauled before the priest if a ‘spirit of jealousy’ overcomes a husband and he suspects her of adultery.  Wow!  What about him?  What if he’s just a suspicious jerk?  What if she suspects him of adultery?  And the prescribed ritual smacks of the Salem witch trials. . .

            So, what shall we do with this kind of thing?  Here’s a case where we must be sensitive to the original historical context.  If modern ears hear ‘an eye for an eye’ as ridiculously vengeful, we have to re-tune those ears to the ancient Near East.  The ‘eye for an eye’ regulation in its original paragraph and in its original setting is a limitation on the amount of retribution that can be collected.  So, if you punch me in the eye, the Lord will allow me to punch you in the eye.  But I can’t gouge out both of your eyes, no matter how angry I am.  The original intention is to protect the guilty party from overly harsh punishment.  (Notice, too, that this regulation is for Israel under Moses’ covenant.  It might be good advice for all sorts of governments, but it’s specific to Israel as a nation.  In the New Testament, Jesus overturns it, Matthew 5:38ff.)

            The same thing is true with Moses’ regulation about divorce and testing for adultery.  In an oppressively patriarchal world, a man can’t just have his wife stoned (Lev. 20) on a whim—at least not in Israel.  In Israel there had to be proof of sin.  So, short of catching her in flagrante delicto, he had to go through a whole process to prove her faithlessness.  The system discouraged false or casual accusations.  So, while it seems unjust to us, in its context, this regulation is almost liberal in its provision for and protection of a woman from the whims of her husband.

The Numbers of Numbers

            I spent way too much time this morning sorting through the various ways that people understand the number in Numbers.  Some argue for a literal numbering, that is, that Israel at Sinai had around 600,000 fighting men and a total population of some 2 million people.  Others say that the word of ‘1,000’ ought to be taken as a ‘military unit’ with the result that Israel numbered between 20,000 and 100,000 fighting men and maybe 400,000 total people.

            There’s no one explanation that will make everyone happy.  Fortunately, it seems to me that the question is finally beside the point.  As I read Numbers 1, there are two underlying themes.  First, no matter of if Israel numbers 2 million or ‘just’ 400,000, the Lord is clearly providing—miraculously—for a lot of people.  (For comparison’s sake, Tulsa, OK, has a population of about 400,000 and Houston, TX, has a population of about 2.2 million.)

            Second, this is a census of fighting men.  Notice that the total population is speculation; only the men above 20 who are able to go to war are counted.  Notice also that Numbers opens at the end of the encampment at Sinai.  Israel has been at Sinai 11 months, and now they are beginning preparations to journey to and enter the land that the Lord had promised them.  Numbers is the story of the journey to that land, the refusal to receive what the Lord had offered, and the delay and judgment that refusal brought.

            The overall lesson, then, seems to be along these lines:  1) Israel had sufficient strength for the task at hand.  2) Moreover, she had evidence of the Lord’s provision and His promise to enter the land on their behalf.  3) Unfortunately, either of those facts was able to overcome Israel’s doubt and disbelief.

            How about you?  Are you underestimating how the Lord has equipped you for the tasks of the day?  Are you embracing His promises, made certain in Jesus’ death and resurrection, so that you have the confidence to follow Him wherever He leads?