Miriam’s Infection

Num 12:10-13:8         11/11/2017

Miriam and Aaron challenged Moses’ authority. As a result, God descended to the Tent of Meeting and rebuked them. He chastised Miriam with an infection from which she was healed seven days later at Moses’ intercession.

“Does God speak through Moses alone?” Miriam and Aaron asked the wrong question.

Miriam is the woman who, as a little girl, saved Moses by putting him into a basket. She floated him to the house of Pharaoh. Without her, he might have died. Aaron was the voice of Moses when Moses feared speaking before Pharaoh. They had both played instrumental roles in his life, and in his leadership of the people.

Leadership in the Authentic Community: Called, chosen, ordained.

God chose Moses.

With all of his failures, with all his well-documented faults, with all of his reluctance and misunderstandings…God chose Moses. He was the leader.

This distinction between my personal relationship with Jesus and the relationship between God and the Authentic Community is artificially imposed. God’s purpose is in both.

I have, you have, each of us has unmediated access to the God who dwells in us; in whom we live and move and have our being. In this respect, He is closer to us than we are to ourselves.

But community is more than a collection of Christian atoms. The community is organic and ordered for God’s purpose. He calls, He ordains, He predestines for particular roles within the body of believers. And, the community requires a leader.

That God speaks to me doesn’t make me leader, doesn’t make me rabbi, or pastor, or bishop or pope. My peace is in knowing how I fit.

My anxiety is in trying to force everything to fit around me.

“No one takes this honor upon himself but only when called by God, just as Aaron was” Heb 5:4