When Things are Messy (Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost)

Sermon Reflections

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When I was in college, I got hooked on watching the original TV series, “The A Team.”  It was a series about a bunch of Vietnam era vets (who were young guys back then), who were wrongly accused of a crime they didn’t commit, and locked in the brig.  But they promptly escaped, and came together as a bunch of modern Robin Hoods who helped people who seemed beyond help.

Their exploits always involved elaborate disguises, ingenious contraptions built by Mr. T, and sometimes a fair amount of luck.  The audience was never sure how it was all going to come together, but in the end, the plan always worked.  And at the end of every episode, Hannibal, the leader of the group, would smile – with a cigar in his mouth – and say, “I love it when a plan comes together!”

And I love it when a plan comes together, too!  It’s a great feeling when people have worked together, overcome great obstacles and put their resources together for a common mission.  It’s just great when a plan comes together.

But this morning’s first reading from Numbers is NOTHING like a plan coming together!  In fact, it’s a total mess from start to finish.

Today’s story begins not long after God had freed the people of Israel from bondage in Egypt.  They crossed the Red Sea, and felt triumphant over their enemies!  But almost immediately, the complaining began.  They were free, but they had no food!  So God gave them manna, and the crisis was averted.

But now, not long afterwards, they’re tired of this manna!  They remembered all the foods they ate in Egypt, and things started to get ugly.  “The rabble”, the writer says, “had a strong craving.”  The Lord was angry.  And Moses, he was “displeased”…

Everybody was upset with everybody else.  They were in the middle of the desert with limited food, literally no road map, and nobody even seemed to have a plan for moving forward.

So in the midst of this mess, God tells Moses what sounds like the beginning of a plan!  Gather 70 “elders” (that is, people who were respected and would be listened to) and bring them to the tent of meeting.  Moses tells the people what God said, and everybody seems to think this is a good start to fixing the mess.

But then, things get messier:

  • Two guys, Eldad and Medad, apparently didn’t show up at the meeting – the ONE and only meeting they had to go to…(they didn’t even need to do any prep for it…!)
  • When God puts some of his Spirit on the 70, he includes Eldad and Medad, even though they weren’t cooperating with the program; but this gets everybody in the camp upset so they come running to Moses to complain…
  • Then, Joshua insists that Moses put an end to this, because this is NOT how the plan is supposed to work…

And as the story ends, everything is as much of a mess – if not even more of a mess – than it was at the start!  This is nothing like a plan coming together.

I mean, why even remember this mess in the Bible anyway?  Except that maybe, the messiness is the point.  I love it when a plan comes together.  I want to stick to the plan.  I want others to stick to the plan.  And often, I even expect God to cooperate with my plans!

But this story is a mess!  Yet maybe the messiness is the point.  Maybe the point of this story is that:

  • The mess is sometimes a necessary part of how God gets us from where we are to where God wants us to be … I mean, God could have simply magically transported the Israelites from Egypt to the promised land; but the journey they were taking helped them to learn how to live once they reached the promised land; to grow in community with each other; and to live into and develop their relationship with God; and sometimes, that journey was necessarily messy…
  • God works even though human messes – this was not the first mess the people of Israel found themselves in.  And it wasn’t the last.  But in every mess, God was at work helping them through it and guiding them into new ways of living.  And maybe one of the important lessons they learned was to look for God in the midst of the messes of their lives, not just when their plans seemed to be coming together…
  • Even people who can’t get with the program are still included and still have a part to play – honestly, we don’t know why Eldad and Medad didn’t show up.  Did they just flake out?  Or didn’t they think it was that important to show up?  It didn’t matter to God – God could and would still work through them, even if they weren’t entirely cooperating and even if other people didn’t think it was appropriate…

And I think stories like this are really important right now for us, because so much of life seems messy.  Like the ancient Israelites, we’re moving from a time and place where we knew how things worked to a new post-Covid world.  And sometimes, it’s messy.

Often, I find myself wishing I had a clearer plan and a roadmap for the future.  Maybe you’ve wished for that, too.  But perhaps stories like this remind us that, even when things are messy, it’s still true for us that:

  • The messes may be part of how God moves us from where we were to where we need to be… I often resist change in my life, because I DON’T like the messiness that comes with figuring out new ways of doing things.  But sometimes, like a home renovation project, there’s just no way to get to the new without a big mess!  And it’s true for me that some of the things I’m doing differently now I wouldn’t have even been willing to try if things hadn’t stopped and forced me to try a different way.  And that’s true even when I knew before this started that some things needed to change. So maybe one of the main messages in this story is that instead of trying to avoid messiness in life, we should instead be willing to live with the mess for a while when that mess is necessary to get us to where God is calling us to be…
  • God is always at work, even and especially, in the midst of our messes… I really would like God to make thing neat and clear for me.  But it’s also been the case that I’ve been open to seeing God at work in ways that I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t been forced to look for signs of God’s guidance in the midst of the mess; there are a bunch of things that I’m regularly doing now that I probably wouldn’t have been willing to try, except for the fact that I had to because of the mess (like our Zoom book discussion …)
  • God always has a place for us, even when we feel like we haven’t been able to get with the program, or even have a clue what the program is supposed to be…Maybe Eldad and Medad didn’t get with the program because they really didn’t feel like they were that important, or that God really needed them all that much.  And sometimes, when things are messy in our lives, we feel disconnected, ignored or anxious (or all three!).  I feel like a lot of the social and political stress and anxiety right now often stems from people feeling disconnected, left out or anxious about all the changes going on around us.  It’s often essential to acknowledge that those feelings are real… But maybe one of the lessons of this story is that God promises that there will be a future for us – and that we’ll all be included in it – even when we feel like we’re out of control or on the periphery of what’s going on in the world around us …

I love it when a plan comes together. But today’s readings remind us that sometimes a mess is the necessary prelude to things coming together.  Today’s readings promise us that God is always at work in the mess, even the messes of our own making.  And today’s readings call us, even when we’re feeling like we’re on the periphery, to look for how God is working in each of our lives to move us all from where we are to where God wants us to be.

Amen.