The Journal of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America January-March 2018 - 11

Peace BreakFasTs
Moses was dealing with a challenge that people in ministry
understand to be common to our calling-the challenge that
comes from knowing that we face challenges that are larger
than our resources.
In numbers 11:25 we read that "the lord...took some
of the spirit that was on him [Moses] and put it on the seventy
elders, and when the spirit rested upon them, they prophesied..." But two men-named eldad and Medad-were not
with the other elders who joined Moses outside their encampment to meet God.
nevertheless, eldad and Medad prophesied in the camp.
When their activity was reported to Moses by an unnamed
fellow, Joshua urged Moses to order eldad and Medad to stop
their prophetic speaking, which prompted Moses to speak the
words we find at Numbers 11:29: "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!"
In the familiar lesson from Acts 2, we read how what Moses
talked about happened to the first followers of Jesus. After the
Galilean followers of Jesus began to inexplicably speak the
native languages of people from other places, peter explained
that the Galileans were not drunk, but that God's Spirit was
on display:
no, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: "In the
last days it will be," God declares, "that I will pour out my
Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall
prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old
men shall dream dreams. even upon my slaves, both men and
women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall
prophesy."(Acts 2:16-18)

insight and courage.
Whenever traditional people like Joshua become set in
their (our) ways, count on God's Spirit to work through other
people to do new things for love and justice. yes, God sent
young people, lesbians and gay men, bisexual, transgender and
queer people-people who have been considered "outside the
mainstream" of religious thought and practice-to do the love
and justice work we see being done in the Black lives Matter
movement and to challenge congregations and larger religious
bodies about the intersectionality of oppression in new ways.
yes, God is inspiring more women and girls and men and
boys to throw off longstanding notions of male privilege about
who should be leaders-in religious efforts and otherwise. God
is doing this love and justice in these new ways because the
holy Spirit is free!
Many people are like Joshua, who was so caught up in
traditional notions of authority and power that he couldn't
understand how God always works. The holy Spirit isn't
bound to follow our notions of rank and privilege. The holy
Spirit isn't bound by our notions of budget, our forecasts or
our sense of priorities.
We are God's sails, and the Spirit is God's wind. our challenge is to live in the power of the holy Spirit. We do not and
cannot tell God's wind when to blow. We do not and cannot
control how God's wind will blow. We have no idea where God's
Please see "Prophetic Hope" on page 12.

Photo courtesy of Wendell Griffen

here's the point! The Spirit of God is free to operate according to God's agenda without our permission. What Joshua
did not understand in numbers and what the observers did
not understand in Acts is that the Spirit of God is free.
The Spirit of God is free to work through people we have
not designated. The Spirit of God is free to empower people we
have not considered. God's Spirit has been poured out in the
world on men and women, young people and seniors, people
who have no social standing as well as people with social standing.
God's Spirit doesn't need a license from the government.
God's Spirit doesn't need us to vote a certain way. God's Spirit
works, in divine freedom, to do for God through people what
must be done so that God's purposes are achieved in God's world.
however, some of us, like Joshua, are captives of our
thinking about how things are supposed to work. Some of us
are accustomed to God's prophetic power being managed,
rationed, and assigned according to our plans, our procedures,
and our policies.
our challenge, beloved, is to accept that God's Spirit is free
to work in ways we never considered and do not understand.
God's Spirit is free to move where we never imagined movement would be possible. God's Spirit is free to call people we
haven't considered "religious" to speak and act with prophetic

Baptist Peacemaker

JAN-MAR 2018

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Journal of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America January-March 2018