‘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!"’ (Num. 11:29).

This morning we catch the People of God at a tricky point in their journey from slavery in Egypt to freedom in the promised land. God has triumphed over Pharaoh’s army at the Red Sea; the People have been to Mount Sinai and have received the Law. Now God’s People the Jews, after a period of re-organization described at some length in the Book of Numbers, continue the long journey to the land promised to Abraham. Along the way there is grumbling and discontent after the experience at Sinai; there is regret for the varied fare of Egypt and dissatisfaction about the mysterious and monotonous manna they have to eat.

This grumbling grieves Moses; it vexes him as the People’s leader. He seeks relief, a broader sharing of leadership with others. This is the point where the story gets strange. In the Book of Exodus, at a similar crisis in Moses’ leadership, his father-in-law (the experienced priest Jethro) recommends to him that he appoint judges to share with him the burden of decision making (a wonderful case study in business management, if you will!). It seems a practical and useful decision.

But in our reading this morning, from Numbers, the solution arrived at is very different. Moses chooses prophets not judges from among the elders, seventy of them; and to top it off, God himself chooses two more. What is strange is that a prophet (in the Book of Numbers) is a rather odd choice for shared leadership. Prophets in early Hebrew tradition have the gift of ecstatic utterance; they are given the spirit to speak God’s Word in a way which is largely unintelligible to the listener. One can imagine a judge being some help in a leadership crisis, but it is hard to imagine how an enthusiast who is babbling unintelligibly and gyrating wildly could be any use at all. It is very strange indeed that this is the Book of Numbers’ solution to Moses’ vexing problem.

The answer to this riddle is that the story likely comes down to us from upholders of the prophetic tradition, finding its place in the Scriptures as a testament to the lively value that was attached by God’s People to prophecy. Moses probably would have found a judge more useful, but the leadership crisis wasn’t really the point. In the story, Moses puts his seal of approval on prophecy ("Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets"), and helps to connect this part of the tradition to God himself. Prophets and their ecstatic utterance were a reminder that God was present with the People, touching the hearts of the prophets and thereby the hearts of the people. Not a bad witness, I think, for the Scriptures to give.

So much for God’s ancient People; what now for us? The story says a number of things to those who stand in relationship to God through Jesus Christ. First, note that prophecy is spoken of as a "spirit", which is first upon Moses himself. Now for us, the community of faith is rooted in the presence of the Spirit, not only in its leadership but in its very being. The God who once dwelt in the pillar of cloud and who was encountered in the Tent of Meeting (which is where Moses encounters him in our reading today), is now the God who has taken flesh in Jesus Christ, and who dwells within us in the power of the Holy Spirit. It is this living presence, and no other, which animates our life.

Second, the spirit of prophecy that is within Moses is shared with others. One gets a sense of abundance in the story; an abundance which we encounter over and over again in the Church. God really has given us every resource we need for our life together in Christ; every grace, every gift, every blessing we need. Yet this knowledge is one we have to acquire over and over again; we keep trying to operate out of a model of scarcity. We need to remember that gifts for ministry, the service of others in God’s name, is given by God without stinting. The abundance is meant to be shared, passed on, lavished liberally upon others, just as God takes some of the spirit which is upon Moses and distributes it abroad.

Third, the gift of the Spirit is meant to overflow and pass beyond the borders of the Church, the place where we are confident of God’s action. Eldad and Medad are not in the right place when the spirit of prophecy is distributed, yet the spirit overflows and adds them to the number of the prophets. When the disciples in our Gospel today encounter the exorcist who is casting out demons in Jesus’ name without being one of their number, Jesus tells them not to stop him. "Whoever is not against us is for us" (Mk 9:40). The Spirit is overflowing, in other words, and we are not to stop it as it moves us out into the world.

God’s Spirit is among our community; God’s Spirit is lavishly and abundantly; God’s Spirit propels us outside into the world.