Numbers
On Letting the Good Wine Flow
Introduction
The problem: stopping people
The
writers of Scripture are usually addressing problems in the communities for
whom they are writing. Rarely do they sit down on a beautiful, sunny day with
no problems running through their minds and produce Scripture. The problem
reflected in the first and third reading today is that of an official religious
institution restricting God's actions to the institution's actions. It’s the
problem of a religious institution claiming that it is the one official speaker
for God, and that all unofficial speakers should be quiet. It’s the problem of stopping
people who shouldn’t be stopped.
The problem
in the Old Testament
That’s
what’s going on in the first reading today from the Book of Numbers. In an “official gathering” the Lord God took
some of the spirit of Moses and bestowed it on seventy elders. His spirit
rested upon them and they began to prophesy. They began to speak in God’s name.
But two men, Eldad and Medad, weren’t
present at the "official gathering" when the Lord God bestowed Moses’ spirit on the seventy elders. So Joshua,
Moses’ aide, approached him saying, “My lord, those two fellows don’t belong to our
group [they’re not official], so stop them from prophesying”(Num
Joshua
wants Moses to silence them. He
refuses. Instead he asks Joshua, "Are you jealous for my sake [i.e., are
you trying to protect my position of authority in the community]?” Then Moses expresses the spirit of a good
religious leader, "Would that all God’s people were prophets! Would that the
Lord God would bestow his spirit on them all!"
Moses,
the Lawgiver of the Old Testament, is determined not to exercise his authority
in a way which would restrict God’s actions in the community. Moses is saying if you must be stopping
something, stop being an in‑group so that you can have an out‑group
to exclude. Stop monopolizing the Holy Spirit of God and imprisoning the voice
of prophecy.
The problem
in the New Testament
The
same thing is going on in the gospel reading today. John says to Jesus, the
Lawgiver of the New Testament, “Teacher, we saw a man who doesn’t belong to our
group [he’s not official]. He was driving
out demons in your name, so we told him to stop” (Mk
The injunction: stop
stopping people
There
was a movement in the early church to stop the baptizing of infants. Some
thought that only adults, who can make a conscious free choice for the
Christian way of life, should be baptized. To check that movement and to
encourage the baptism of infants, the early church recounted the time when
people were bringing their little ones to Jesus, and the disciples were
stopping them. Jesus rebuked them saying, “Stop stopping them. Let them come to
me” (Mt 19: 13‑15). That’s the
injunction of the scriptures this morning: Stop stopping people. Stop stopping Eldads and Medads. They have much good wine
to pour, and don’t deprive yourself of drinking it.
Stop stopping Gumbleton
Stop
stopping unofficial prophets and let them come to me, says the Lord. Stop stopping Thomas J. Gumbleton, Auxiliary
Bishop of
Years
ago Gumbleton made himself a very unofficial prophet (no longer one of “the
group”) when he wrote a letter to
This is the man
whom our Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist stopped. He was scheduled to give
a lecture on April 8 of this year in the atrium attached to the cathedral. The
lecture was being sponsored by Call to
Action-–a lay movement labeled by some as definitely unofficial and even as
“dissident.” On March 17, the rector of our cathedral notified Call to Action that the scheduled
lecture could not be held on cathedral premises. As one door closed another opened. All Saints
Catholic Church here in
Stop stopping married men and women
Fr. Hans Küng, a Swiss
German Catholic theologian, is another Eldad and Medad prophet. The institution
stopped him, too, when Pope John Paul II revoked his right to teach Catholic
theology. In a little volume (remarkably small for a man known for voluminous
and scholarly works filled with German thoroughness) he writes, “I cannot
believe that he, who warned the Pharisees against laying intolerable burdens on
people’s shoulders, would today declare all artificial contraception to be
mortal sin. I cannot believe that he, who particularly invited failures to his
table, would forbid all remarried divorced people ever to approach that table…. I cannot believe that he, who said `I have
compassion on the crowd,’ would have increasingly deprived congregations of
their pastors and allowed a system of pastoral care built up over a period of a
thousand years to collapse.”
He is speaking about the present
crisis of priest shortage and our strange band-aid creations to solve it (like
the Church of the Three or Four Holy Women). Some prefer not to call it a crisis but rather a blessed opportunity in
which we hear the voice of Jesus crying
out, “Stop stopping them, and let them come to me.” Stop stopping married men, and let them come to me." Yes,
even, "Stop stopping women, and let them come to me. Both have much good
wine to pour, and we should be drinking of it.”
Conclusion
On letting good wine flow
Some of the best wine in life
doesn’t flow precisely because we get in the way and prevent it from flowing. Once
in a while a fine wine will manage to slip through official channels and flow. I
recall one such fortunate slip through. Many years ago we buried Mamie
Schlaefer in St. Matthew’s Church in
At
the very end of a lengthy Mass a woman from the pews cried out, "Bishop, Bishop,
I want to say something." ‑‑
No answer, no recognition. Again she
cried out, "Bishop, Bishop, I know I'm not on the official list of
speakers, but I do want to say something.
I'll just come right up there and say it." Down the aisle she goes, and up the sanctuary
she comes. In that little conservative country parish where everything was
programmed, you could feel a tension in the air crying out, "Is there no
one to stop this Eldad and Medad who’s not on the official list of speakers? Will
someone please stop her, for she could go on and on, and we’ve been at it too
long already?" No one stopped her. Up she goes to the mike and delivers
her piece in praise of Mamie Schlaefer. She related how she had come to
Campbellsport many years before, how she had a nervous breakdown, how Mamie had
cared about her and had frequently called upon her, and how all that had given her
much hope and courage.
Well,
she didn't go on and on, as we all thought she would. She neatly exercised her
baptismal prophetic office and stepped down. And then a wonderful thing
happened: the whole church broke into a resounding applause! At that liturgy
the head of the Agnesian Order, the head of the Capuchin Order, the bishop of
Bluefields
The best wine at Mass that day had been saved
for last! It was wine we had almost
stopped from flowing and had almost not drunk. There's simply a lot of good
wine out there which we haven't been drinking, and it’s time to let it flow.