Vital Mutants

October 1, 2006 Text: Mark 9:38-50

In institutions there is a tendency to favor structure over vitality. Even though, as in the body, it is the vitality of the parts that strengthens and preserves the whole. Our living, energetic cells, constantly moving and making, keep us intact and sturdy. The structure of an institution is a myth. Without vitality, there is no structure. Without vitality, structure is death, like a snail shell without the snail, a skeleton without breath.

I’m talking here about the church. Not this church in particular but the wider Christian church. The church is an institution, and it seems in constant battle about its bones and its boundaries. How is it defined, what are its fundamentals, what is central, who is in and who is excommunicated, who has the power to decide and who has the power to change things. God created the church, our theology says, but then we act as if God moved to Florida, like an absentee landlord, and left us alone in charge of the property.

And when we are alone, we build institutions. Not because we are perverse, but because there is no way we can run things unless we are organized. Any group larger than a couple of handfuls of people develops a bureaucracy. With officers and rules of authority and specialization.

The Bible is peppered with stories of the beginning of the church. The Bible is the story of people’s discovery of and relationship to God, but it is the story mostly of groups of people.

Both the first reading and the gospel reading today tell of moments of transition. One in the growth of Israel and the other in the growth of Christianity. The question is: If the church is to expand, who can speak for it? It is like the transition that happens in an entrepreneurial venture. Somebody has a vision and gets things going. A small group forms. In the early days there is little to organize. Everyone does everything, there are few specialists or experts, there are no traditions to honor. The people involved are not necessarily the best in their fields and are not necessarily smart or skillful. They are the people who are available and eager, a lot like the disciples of Jesus, who in Mark are clueless but persistent.

Moses was the leader of Israel. He made all the decisions. When things went well, Moses got the credit. When things went badly, he got the grief. As in today’s event in the desert. You brought us out here, says the Israelites—who, remember, Moses led out of slavery—you brought us here to eat nothing but manna. We hate manna. Remember how great it was in Egypt? Slaves or no, we got fresh fish for nothing, fresh vegetables, fruits, garlic. Give us meat to eat!

Moses sees this is a crisis not of provisioning but of organization. I’ve had enough, he tells God. I cannot do this by myself. I am not able to carry this people all alone, for they are too heavy for me. If this is the way it is going to be, I’m out of here. Fire me before I quit.

But God sees that Moses needs some organizational help. Time for a little bureaucracy. Time for a little hierarchy. And God takes some of Moses authority and spreads it around. God “took some of the spirit [of Moses},” it says, “and put it on” seventy middle-managers,.

The middle managers, which by our time in the church means bishops and pastors and deacons, exist to preserve order. In particular, to preserve the orderly transmission of the message. The message of Jesus, in the case of the church. The word “ordination” comes from the word “to order.” Ordination does not convey special powers. Ordained ministers agree to maintain orderly theology. To keep the message as free from noise as possible. They are the fiber optics of the church, one way of connecting people to Jesus.

In the psalm today are beautiful verses telling how “one day tells its tale to another” and thus their message is carried to the whole world. The institution of the clergy is supposed to do the same sort of thing, each telling the ones following who in turn tell the ones after them. It is like DNA, passed on from one cell to another, creating beings in perfect copy.

But it doesn’t work. Not in biology or in the church. It doesn’t work not because the copy mechanism is imperfect. It doesn’t work because a perfect copy is not the right thing. Neither the church nor a species can survive if it remains unchanged over time. The environment changes and creatures change with it.

In biology, mutation introduces change, new and unpredicted elements. It’s part of the system.

In the church, also, a kind of mutation introduces change. People on the outside: prophets, iconoclasts, heretics, the unschooled, seers and mystics, doubters and skeptics, contrarians. When the seventy gathered with Moses, two were left out: Eldad and Medad. The others protested; Eldad and Medad were speaking without authorization. Joshua calls out in alarm: Moses, stop them. But Moses will not. He knows that they are necessary to the survival of Israel.

The disciples of Jesus complain in the same way. Teacher, someone was healing people in your name, but he was not one of us. We tried to stop him. But Jesus tells his disciples: Let them be.

The seamless transmission of doctrine and story from one generation to the next provides continuity that keeps the message alive. But the seamlessness of it makes it hard for God to get a word in edgewise. How can God affect the church when each generation is a perfect copy of the previous one? Those in the institution of the church have to be careful to listen for the voice of God in those who seem to be out of it.

No one knows in advance which mutations will be helpful and which not. Martin Luther was named a heretic and a contract put out on him. He survived, and his words and actions re-formed the church. He had a big impact, we can see, 500 years later.

Not every change is so radical. Who are the carriers of beneficial mutations now? Who is the Eldad or Medad of this day? Who is healing without authority? Whose words is God using to re-form our church now? Are they coming from the academy, the street, from the left or the right, from some Lutheran somewhere in Minnesota or some post-Christian poet? Are they coming from someone here in this gathering today?

The church is not the orderly parts of it. Not the seventy elders and the twelve disciples and the Synods and Assemblies and clergy. They are the staff, for convenience and order. The church is the body of Christ. Formed and re-formed everyday by the life and energy and wonder of all who gather. Formed and re-formed by you.