Proper 21 :: Numbers 11: 4-6, 10-16, 24-29; Psalm
124; James
5: 13-20; Mark
9: 38-50
This is a homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given at St. John’s Church, Huntingdon,
Pennsylvania, on Sunday, September 27, 2015.
“EGOS
AND MINISTRY”
(Homily
texts: Numbers 11: 4-6, 10-16,24-29 & Mark 9: 38-50)
Let’s explore the matter of egos and
ministry, since, in our Old Testament reading from the Book of Numbers and our
gospel reading from Mark both touch on these important issues.
Egos and ministry.
These issues are important because
everyone has one (of each):
We each have an ego, that sense of
ourselves.
We each have been given a ministry
(or ministries) by God.
These two readings, Numbers and
Mark, are well suited to one another, for each one has to do with God’s
ministers who each thought that they alone were the “approved” avenues of God’s
ministry.
In the Book of Numbers reading,
someone notices that two men, Eldad and Medad, had not been present when the
Lord’s power had been given to the seventy others. A young man runs and tells Moses that these
two men are also prophesying, as the seventy had done. Notice that Moses asks the young man if he is
“jealous” of these two. Moses captures
the motivation for the young man’s report is succinctly.
Jealousy also seems to be at the
heart of Jesus’ disciples, as they tell the Lord that someone else is (successfully) casting
out demons in the Lord’s name, someone who is not “following us” (italics mine). We might surmise that jealousy also lies at
the heart of their complaining, for this unnamed person is successfully doing
just what they themselves were unable to do a short while earlier.
Egos and ministry.
Jealousy often arises out of an
unhealthy sense of ourselves. Put
another way, our egos get in the way of our suitability to successfully carry
out the ministries that God has in mind for us.
To see this principle illustrated,
let’s return to the gospel text for this morning and look again at what the
disciples say to Jesus: They complain
because the successful exorcist isn’t following them. Isn’t it telling that
they don’t say that the individual isn’t following the Lord?
Egos and ministry. Apparently the disciples have a pretty high
opinion of themselves. Or, perhaps more
accurately, we might say that they have an exaggerated opinion of themselves,
an ego that’s out-of-control.
Egos and ministry. Which is more important, our egos or the
ministries to which God assigns us? The
answer ought to be obvious.
To be a successful follower of the
Lord, our egos must be in a healthy state.
Our egos can’t be out-of-control.
There must be a healthy balance to our egos and our self-appraisal of
ourselves. Egos that are too high, or
too low, impede the Lord’s work. Egos
that aren’t sufficiently healthy will cause us to doubt the abilities God has
given us, abilities and gifts that are meant to be used in ministry in the
Lord’s name.
The truths we have just stated work
on the individual level. But they also
work on the corporate level, at the level of parishes or denominations.
A parish can have an unhealthy sense
of its own importance in the overall plan that God might have for a
community. To illustrate this point, we
might see evidence of a local church that thinks that it, alone, is entitled to
carry out a certain ministry. This
principle is also at work when a neighboring church decides to duplicate an already-existing
ministry, instead of joining in to support the first one.
At the denominational level, a
certain church might feel (or even openly declare) that it, alone, is the
preserver of truth. It might even think
that it, alone, is the one, true church.
Looking back into my own personal faith history, I can see that my
upbringing was, largely, in a church that regarded itself just that way. The unspoken conviction in the church of my
youth was that they, alone, had inherited God’s truth, and that everyone who
disagreed with their positions was wrong, quite simply.
Arrogance of this sort is harmful to
our suitability, at the individual and the corporate level, to being suitable
ministers of God’s purposes.
A final thought is in order, and it
takes the form of a warning.
- God will work through whomever He
chooses to work. There is no way that we
can limit His will. There is no way that
we can put God’s will “in a bottle”.
- If God cannot with work us, He will work around us, or He will work with someone else.
Egos and ministry. May we, by the inspiration and direction of
the Holy Spirit, put ministries before our egos, in order that we may
effectively work in bringing about God’s will in the world and among the people
whom He loves.
AMEN.
