Leadership is the process of moving one's community from grumbling to prophecying.

A sermon delivered in Christ Chapel on October 2, 2003, by the Rev. Dr. Paul Barton, assistant professor of Hispanic Studies

Numbers 11:4-6; 10-16; 24-29

Leadership and Grumbling

Where do you find yourself in the story of Moses and the grumbling Hebrews? I find myself at different times among the rabble and the people who grumble, and at other times like Moses, the leader who has to deal with the grumbling people, and then at other times like Joshua who wants to squelch the uncontrollable spread of the Spirit, and rarely like Eldad and Medad, the ones who receive the Spirit separately from the seventy elders.

Let me start with the grumblers. It is easy for me to identify with the grumblers, as it is for many of us I presume. Here is some of my grumbling from the recent past:

Did you know that I can't use my old parking space because it is being used by the construction crew? I went the entire summer without a parking space. Do you know how frustrating that can be?

Here is an email I sent to John Bennet Waters last Friday:
John Bennet,
I invite you to my office to enjoy the loud whirring of the crane's engine 15 feet from me. It is something you must experience for yourself.
Is there another space where I can work when the crane is in use?
Thanks and paz,
Paul

By the way, thank you John Bennet for the new office you provided me after my grumbling. It is great. It is one of the guest suites, so it has a kitchenette, a coffeemaker, a refrigerator and a bathroom.

Did anyone notice that the new signs in Spanish mispelled the Spanish word for chapel?
Titus, did you know that I am on four faculty committees, and the faculty handbook says that faculty should only be on two. And yesterday I got a letter asking me to serve on one more committee! Grumble, grumble, grumble.
There is much more serious grumbling that I do, but I won't share the really juicy ones in public.

A caveat about complaints and grumbling. Sometimes it is right to complain, when we have justification for it. So I distinguish between a complaint, which I see as a legitimate expression of discontent, and grumbling, which I see as focusing on the lack of something motivated by our desires and cravings. Of course the problem is we grumblers will always claim that we are not grumbling, but that we have legitimate complaints. No one will ever tell you he or she is murmuring or grumbling, but we will say that our complaint is completely reasonable.

Grumbling usually focuses on the lack of something, such as the lack of time, the lack of space, the lack of a better salary, the lack of respect, the lack of consideration. The Hebrews were grumbling because they had forgotten that God was providing for them with manna and so they felt a lack of variety of food.

Not manna again! I am sick and tired of eating this manna. We have been chewing and tasting the same food for an entire year. Can you imagine how hard it is to eat the same food for a year? I want meat!, said the carnivores. My children need something more nutritious than this bread from heaven, like the delicious food we ate when we were in Egypt, the succulent cucumbers, the savory vegetables, the fresh bread that we ate fresh from the ovens we used to bake bricks. Oh how we long to be back in Egypt, when we had plenty of delicious food of all kinds. Life was so much better back when we were slaves in Egypt.
Com'on Moses, do something for us. Go talk to God and tell him we can't take this manna anymore.

What the author has done is to use the incident of grumbling, of conflict between the people and Moses to define the character of Moses' leadership. The grumbling is a form of conflict which defines how Moses' leadership and the leadership of the community will be shaped.
At times I identify with the grumbling rabble, but at other times I identify with, or at least feel pity for Moses. In our roles as clergy and lay leaders in the church, we all experience the strains of leadership that Moses did in this passage. It's not easy being a leader of a rebellious group who does not appreciate you and your gifts.

Poor Moses, he was the charismatic leader who, with God's help, delivered the people from slavery only to lead them into an uncomfortable desert on their way to who-knows-where. Every week the people murmured and grumbled because they did not have water, or did not have food, or did not have more delicious food. To me, this story is about the evolution of leadership out of an instance of conflict.
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Here is my story of leadership and grumbling-slash-conflict. I graduated from my M.Div. program at the ripe age of 27. I was assigned to a Spanish-speaking church in Pharr, Texas. My bishop assigned me there because it was a church that had just undergone a split in its membership and they needed a mature 27-year-old to bring pastoral healing to a divided church. Well after the first-year honeymoon, I began to hear grumbling from among the older members of the church. The basic complaint among them was that I was not the typical pastor they were used to. I was not the traditional fire-and-brimstone preacher they were accustomed to hearing. I had also made too many changes too fast and this was unsettling to them. One of the elderly members, Mr. Rodrgiuez we will call him, was so angry with me that he "acted out." Every week, during the closing song before the benediction, he would get up from his seat in front and walk down the aisle and across the street to his car. He would then wait in the car for his wife. Mr. Rodriguez did this so that he would not shake my hand and greet me and to make a public display of his rejection of me.

During the same time this group of elderly members were making phone calls among themselves and saying to themselves, "we don't want manna from heaven, we want meat!"

Not having ever taken a course in leadership and conflict management during my seminary years, I was unaccustomed to people not liking me. I had thought that everyone liked me, until then. This was the first time I had experience public demonstrations of dissatisfaction, of people rejecting me. I could handle Mr. Rodriguez much better now that I did 14 years ago, when I took his rejection personally.

I think our students are fortunate that we do offer a course on conflict in the church. So you will be prepared when you meet Mr. Rodriguez in your church.

Moses' Leadership, and the Leadership of the Community Grows Out of Conflict

Moses is experiencing conflict on two levels. The outer conflict is between the people's complaining and their expectations of him to provide for him. The interior conflict is his own inner struggle to fulfill his role as a leader. Because of this disturbing incident, Moses goes to God and does a bit of grumbling himself. He unloads his frustrations to God. He tells God how hard it is to be a leader. He tells God, "I would rather be dead than continue being this people's leader!"

Poor Moses, like most leaders, is caught in the middle. He is caught between the expectations of his people and the expectations of God.

The people expect Moses to provide for them. This is a reasonable expectation. However, their desires well up inside as a fringe group accompanying the Hebrews, known as "the rabble," incite the rest of the Hebrews to desire more than they need -- to crave meat. Now they want comfort food. I can imagine their taste buds watering in their mouths as they dream night and day about the juices emerging from a prime rib and ribs, but not pork ribs of course. They want to take the easy way. And they want their leader to provide this for them. And if they don't get it, they are going to grumble. Isn't that what our leaders are for, to provide us with what we want, to bring home the meat for us? To do things the way we are used to doing? And if they don't do what we want them to do, well we will just look for a new leader.

So on the one hand Moses had the demands of the people and on the other hand he had the expectations of God -- to serve as a nursemaid for the people. Moses asks God, "Did I conceive all this people? Did I bring them forth that you should say to me, 'Carry them in your bosom, as a nurse carries the sucking child, to the land which you swore to give their fathers?' (v. 2) Moses alludes to another type of leadership here -- that of a nurturing woman who cares tenderly for her baby. This is a different side of leadership for Moses, and one that is apparently difficult for him.

It is not easy being a spiritual leader. You have the demands of the people, the demands of your conscience, and then the impossible to meet expectations from God staring you in the face constantly. How is one supposed to manage so many conflicting demands and expectations?

Moses did something that serves as an important example for us. When the burden of leadership became unbearable for him, he went to God and laid those burdens upon God.

Things begin to change when Moses turns to God to unburden himself. God helps unburden Moses of his leadership by instructing him to call seventy elders together. These seventy elders are to receive a portion of Moses' spirit so they can share in the leadership.

Here we have leadership that emanates from the one charismatic leader and is distributed away from the one charismatic leader to the other members of the community. Here we begin to see a different model of leadership, one that is spread out and shared by many.

For some reason, Austin Interfaith comes to mind at this point. The idea that leadership can be shared among many persons is helpful for those of us who have a need for control. It is not really necessary that one person be in charge of everything. This was also the advice that Jethro gave to Moses in Exodus 18.

This is a leadership that is distributed not by human means, but by divine means. The spirit of Moses is given to the other elders and they begin to prophecy. They have ecstatic utterances, demonstrating the presence of the Spirit in them as well.

Now this would have been a great ending of the story, except that some of this Spirit moved in unexpected places. It was acceptable for the seventy elders to prophecy, but not Eldad and Medad. They were not with the others in the tent, but remained in the camp. These two, who had been beyond the sacred tent, began to prophecy. Here now, Joshua, the favored one, the one expected to lead, is dismayed that these two are prophecying and asks permission from Moses to make them stop prophecying. Moses responds to Joshua, "Would that the entire people of God would prophecy!"

So we see the centripetal movement of power through the appointment of these seventy elders, and then the desire by Joshua to squelch the continuing spreading out of the spirit. Here is another typology of leadership -- of one who is disturbed when the Spirit transcends ritualized and established boundaries and rests on unexpected persons.

The Spirit Disperses Leadership Outward

The spreading of Moses' spirit among the seventy elders demonstrates a regularized form of distribution of power. We see this today in the form of ordination, which is highly regularized and formalized. However, the prophetic leadership displayed by Eldad and Medad demonstrates a form of power and authority that transcends our traditional views on leadership. Eldad and Medad did not participate in the ritual in the tent of meeting, yet they too received prophetic power. The Spirit surprised everyone and went beyond their expectations for leadership. Once again, Austin Interfaith comes to mind here. We have heard and seen stories of unimaginable leadership by persons we would not normally expect to see as leaders.

Some of us have seen non-ritualized power and leadership emanating from Dr. Nancy in Matamoros. Others of us have seen Spirit-led leadership from the Assembly of God pastors in Juarez. One of our responsibilities then, is to be open to the unexpected blowing of the Spirit upon ourselves and others, who might begin prophecying or doing other marvelous things. Eldad and Medad remind us that leadership does not always come from the center, sometimes it surprises us and comes from unexpected places and unexpected persons.

Conclusion

I said earlier that this passage is about grumbling and leadership. Leadership is defined most clearly when it is exercised in the midst of conflict. Leadership requires being able to deal well with conflict. But maybe the point isn't so much about grumbling and leadership as it is about prophecying and leadership. Moses says at the very end, "Would that everyone of the people of God might prophecy!" The passage starts with the real experiences of the people -- the grumbling and conflict that inevitably comes with leadership and the myraid of demands placed on leaders -- and ends with the ideal -- the distribution of leadership and power outward and Moses' utterance of hope. Moses is highlighting the ideal, that the people of God would be so filled with God's spirit that they would stop their grumbling, realize the gifts they have received from God, realize their charisms, and begin prophecying. Perhaps that's the challenge of our leadership, to help our communities move from grumbling to prophecying. Luther focuses on the priesthood of believer, but the author of this passage also reminds us of the prophethood of believers.

Perhaps the challenge for us is to move from being a grumbling community to a prophetic community. "Would that the entire people of God would prophecy!"