Shared Ministry

I know you are familiar with the board game, popular through the decades, Monopoly. It was well named because the object is to own everything from the Mediterranean Avenue to Boardwalk, even the utility companies, and the four railroad systems.  If you are that big owner, it is a free stroll around the board for you, and a trip full of risk for everyone else. They spend their meager $200 per round trip salary on rent and fees to you. Your only risk is the occasional bad news from “Chance” or “Community Chest,” or landing on the “Go to Jail” spot.

Having it all, and making others beholden to you, is how you want it to be. If it is a game, and you are the one with all or nearly all, that is great. In a game, a plutocracy is fine, so long as you are the big cheese. The bonus, in this case, is the game does not go on and on; your opponents rather soon go bankrupt. What about in real life? In the healthy, competitive free enterprise system, things go well when there exists a natural balance rising from the efforts of individuals, partnerships, corporations, and institutions.

So too in the spiritual world, there is a balanced economy of God’s gifts and activity of the Spirit for the wellbeing of the people of God. These are gifts given and activated by God in everyone for the common good. (1 Corinthians 12:4-7) You have been given the manifestation of the Spirit, and even I have. It is because of our baptism; it is because the Spirit indwells us. It is possible to ignore our gifts and leave them unused, unfortunately, but it is great news that we are gifted with varieties of gifts.

In the stories of the Old Testament, there is a thread showing a different economy of the Spirit. It seems that God’s Spirit was manifested at particular times, to particular people for particular outcomes intended by God. Looking over the lessons coming up this Sunday I found a surprising phenomenon recorded in the Book of Numbers. Moses had been the one through whom the Spirit moved. He was the prophet specially chosen to give the Word of the Lord to the people of Israel as they moved through the wilderness toward the land promised to them. In a time when Moses was overwhelmed, God showed that the Spirit would be given to others, to relieve him from feeling exhausted and burdened. It is long, but do read the passage.

The Lord said to Moses, “Gather for me seventy of the elders of Israel, whom you know to be the elders of the people and officers over them; bring them to the tent of meeting, and have them take their place there with you.” Moses went out and told the people the words of the Lord; and he gathered seventy elders of the people, and placed them all around the tent. Then the Lord came down in the cloud and spoke to him and took some of the spirit that was on him and put it on the seventy elders; and when the spirit rested upon them, they prophesied. But they did not do so again. Two men remained in the camp, one named Eldad, and the other named Medad, and the spirit rested on them; they were among those registered, but they had not gone out to the tent, and so they prophesied in the camp. And a young man ran and told Moses, “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.” And Joshua son of Nun, the assistant of Moses, one of his chosen men, said, “My lord Moses, stop them!” But Moses said to him, “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!”  (Numbers 11:16, 24-29)

Not only the seventy elders gathered at the tent experienced the infilling of the spirit, but also two out in the camp got the spirit. The Hebrew word used here for “prophesy” is transliterated hitnabei and means to display ecstatic behavior—dancing, writhing, emitting vatic speech, that is, the speech of seers. It seems it was a one-time occurrence to get Moses through the tough time. It comes loud and clear God does not have limits in the way that people have.

When the Spirit-empowered the believers after Christ’s ascension into heaven, the empowering was not a one-time thing but the promise of a whole new economy of the action of God through disciples. All the church is meant to be exercising the gifts that come from God. The Spirit is poured out, and we are to cooperate with for God’s purposes. Someone described a professional soccer match as thousands of people who desperately need exercise, sitting in the stands and watching twenty-two athletes on the pitch who desperately need a rest.

The church is not like that; it never should be. No one, no elite few, has a monopoly on God’s call toward gifted operation within the body of Christ. We enjoy a shared ministry. We all have ways to help and give support. We refine the gifts of the Spirit. We make commitments and offer our tithes. We give to special projects and capital improvements. All of this is in the name of love for others, and love for God. I am not sure how much prophesying, dancing, writhing, or oracle pronouncement we will do. As a group, however, I know that the Spirit will empower us to accomplish all that is divinely inspired and in God’s purpose.