Brief synopsis of the readings: Our first reading comes from the book of Numbers, the 4th book of the Old Testament. During their journey from slavery to the Promised Land (the time they are wandering in the wilderness) God instructs Moses to choose seventy to be elders, leaders of the community. Moses does this and God intends to take some of the spirit from Moses and transfer it to the seventy (ie, give some of the responsibility for leading the community). Moses did as he was told, gathering the seventy in a tent. The spirit rested upon them and the prophesied. But there were two not included in the tent: Eldad and Medad. They were back in camp but they also began to prophecy. Alarmed, Joshua (a disciple of Moses) told Moses about this and demanded that Moses stop them. Moses replied: “Are you jealous on my account? If only the whole people of the Lord were prophets, and the Lord gave his Spirit to them all!” Mark’s Gospel continues this theme. It begins when John tells Jesus that there are those who cast out devils in Jesus’ name without being “one of us.” John is appalled and expects Jesus to tell them to stop. Instead Jesus tells John that anyone who performs a miracle in his (Jesus’) name is “one of us.” Jesus then tells John that anyone who has something that causes him to sin should get rid of that thing. “If your eye should cause you to sin, tear it out: it is better for you to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell where their worm does not die nor their fire go out.”

These aren’t the easiest readings to hear but I have to confess I have an excellent memory of at least the first reading.

When I was a seminarian at Catholic University I elected to take a class in preaching from the Methodist seminary. I felt they gave more importance to preaching than a Catholic seminary. I was right.

It was my turn to preach in September of that semester. I was given the opportunity to preach on anything in the Bible that interested me, but as a Catholic I wasn’t used to this. Our lectionary proscribed readings for each Sunday and I elected to preach on the first reading of the Sunday before my assignment.

The first reading was today’s first reading from Numbers and I was horrified. I saw this as an obscure passage that would offer me nothing in a class where everyone was better than me.

But the more I read, studied, and prayed on this reading, the more it spoke to me. Eldad and Medad appear only here and nowhere else in Scripture and we know nothing about them except what we read here. So who were they?

Well they weren’t the seventy elders that Moses chose. The seventy were in the tent, awaiting God’s blessing. Why weren’t Eldad and Medad chosen? We don’t know. But we do know that when God instructed Moses to choose the seventy, most of us assume that God will give his spirit only to the ones Moses chooses.

Yeah, not so much. By spreading the spirit on the seventy that Moses chose and the two that God chose, God tells us that God has little respect for the limits we draw.

My favorite character in this story is Joshua, only because I have met dozens of Joshuas in my life. He’s not a bad guy but he keeps a scorecard on who he thinks God favors and assumes that God keeps the same scorecard.

When God tasks Moses with choosing seventy elders, Joshua (and let’s face it, many of us) assumed that was it. He fully believed that God’s will limited itself to the seventy. Except God chooses others, more than the seventy. None of the seventy are excluded or penalized by God’s choice but Joshua is roiled by the idea that the authority of the seventy is decreased by the fact that there are now seventy two instead of seventy.

Scripture brims with lessons we don’t like but, perversely, this is my favorite: God does not respect our exclusions. God doesn’t ignore the people we ignore, God doesn’t marginalize the people we marginalize, and God doesn’t hate the people we hate.

Now to be fair Joshua and Moses didn’t hate the people Moses didn’t choose, but I think there’s a point to be made here. Joshua was a close ally to Moses and expected his stock to rise as Moses’ stock rose. His horror at finding Eldad’s and Medad’s inclusion meant as their stock rose, his stock was diluted. His exclusivity declined.

Joshua’s anger was self centered. And to be fair we all understand this. What if you paid extra for access to meet a favorite candidate (or politician or artist or movie star) only to find that others who didn’t pay extra had the same access? Is it anger or jealousy? Does your access decrease because others’ increase? Frankly it does.

There’s a point where this matters in relationships between us. If I want to meet my idol, and I’m willing to pay extra for better access, I don’t want to compete with others who didn’t. I don’t want someone to wink at me because I did more for the access he got for free.

But if I want to be included in the Kingdom of God, there is no limited access. It’s not a zero sum game. God’s love is infinite and my access does not decrease because someone else’s increases. Whatever sacrifices I made to get there are not diminished because someone else is there without making similiar sacrifices.

Ambition has no place in the Kingdom of God. If I can understand the motives of Joshua in Numbers, I have to confess that I can’t understand the anger in the Gospel. Last week I spoke about the difference between Discipleship 1.0 and Discipleship 2.0 and how that relates to direct access to Jesus.

John, one of Jesus’ disciples, expresses anger that others are doing good things in Jesus’ name without John’s permission. It’s almost as if John expects that Jesus has copyrighted healing. He didn’t. We all know that healing the sick, expelling demons, and driving out evil spirits is something that benefits everyone.

The followers of Jesus arrive on different paths. Some of them hear Jesus and decide to follow him. But perhaps others arrive as disciples by understanding that they have the power to heal illness and palliate suffering. Through this experience they (and those they heal) come to believe that their power comes to them through someone greater than them, someone who has come to redeem the world.

As disciples that’s hard to hear. We all want to think of ourselves as the inner circle, the “best of the best.” No matter what we believe about the infinity of God’s Kingdom we hope for exclusionary status. It’s hard for us to fully believe that there is no hierarchy to salvation.

As Catholics we have come to this the hard way. Before the 1960s we believed that we held all of God’s power to redeem. We believed that the only path to salvation was through the sacramental power of the Catholic Church. Protestants, lovely as they were, had a much harder path to Heaven and most of them wouldn’t make it. There’s an old joke that someone dies and goes to Heaven. As Peter gives this person a tour he explains that “the Lutherans are here, the Jews are over there, and the Baptists are just around this corner. There is another group way over there, but when we get near them keep your voice down. That’s the Catholics and they think they are the only ones here.”

Fortunately most of us knew wonderful, kind, and generous non Catholics and didn’t really believe they were condemned. But others did and much of the “evangelization strategy” demanded that “we” tell “them” that ours was the only path.

But here’s where the Gospel takes a troubling turn. Jesus speaks in incredibly harsh terms about those who lead others into sin. Using the metaphor of the human body Jesus talks about those who lead others (“these little ones”). Jesus tells his audience that any part of you that leads you into sin should be cut off and discarded. Even casual Christians with little Scriptural literacy know about these versus: And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. Better for you to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into Gehenna [Hell].

But what does this passage mean and how does it fit into the Gospel? I have to confess a certain puzzlement myself. Unfortunately these passages have been taken out of context and interpreted literally. For many of us our eyes cause us great conflict: our love and devotion to our spouses do not deliver us from a “wandering eye.” Will this “wandering eye” cost us? I certainly hope not.

But even more than that, the phrase Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were put around his neck and he were thrown into the sea is even more troubling. Is Jesus hearkening back to last week’s reading where he embraces children? Virtually all of us remember times we’ve told things to children (in good faith) that turned out to be false. Are these moments going to come back to haunt us?

I hope not.

I hope Jesus gives us the benefit of looking into our hearts. I pray Jesus encourages us to empower the “better angels of our nature” and he wants us to pay more attention to those actions that include others rather than exclude.

It’s in our nature to pay more attention to those things that scare us than those things that affirm us. I wish it were different, but that’s what we have.

Perhaps, just perhaps, Jesus speaks of “these little ones” in terms of the ones we influence. In our lives most of us have people we teach, encourage, or influence. They are our children, our spouses, our coworkers, and our friends. They are anyone who takes seriously what we tell them. Do we speak to them in terms of inclusion or exclusion? Do we give them hope or fear? Do we make their lives more hopeful or more fearful?

I like to think that Jesus is speaking to us about the message we share with them. I think we lead others into sin not so much when we encourage them to sin as when we encourage them to be exclusionary or amplify their fear. When we tell them that they should exclude those people or situations we don’t understand because it will mean less for the rest of us.

I like to think that Jesus is telling us to listen not only to Moses but also to Eldad and Medad.