Moses said … “… Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!”(Numbers 11:29)

Oh, but God has put the Spirit of the living God into every last person God has made; we are imbued with the breath of life, which is the Holy Spirit. It’s what the old story from Genesis means, in which the human being, the earthling, Adam was fashioned out of the earth itself, creature of creation, and brought to life by the breath of the Divine, binding our lives to God’s forever.

It is when we remember that connection, as close as our own breath, when we lean into it, when we listen for the whispers or the roar of the wind, the gales of the Holy Spirit and join our voices to them, that we prophesy.

And what will we prophesy? Prophecy, remember, is not fortune-telling. It is not about seeing into the future so much as it is gazing into the mind of God, and telling what you see. 

When Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit over and into his disciples, he said, “Peace. Peace be with you.” He spoke of forgiveness, of the terrible responsibility that we have for forgiving one another, of forgiving ourselves, rather than retaining our sins, as he has forgiven us of all of our betrayals; of reconciling ourselves to one another, as he returned to them even from the dead to speak peace into their fearful hearts; of loving one another, as God has loved us.

Is this what we prophesy among the people? Peace and penitence, forgiveness and reconciliation, the love of Jesus? Is this what we prophesy among all the people?

Or are we like Joshua, jealous of the spirit of others, hoarding our power, our privilege, our authority, our prophecy – which is not ours, for all that comes from God belongs to God? 

Even Joshua, who would become a leader of the people, had much to learn about the Spirit of the living God, who will not be subject to our direction or discretion or defined limits, but blows where she will. But Moses said to him, “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!”(Numbers 11:29)

Of course, Joshua’s jealousy also meant that he missed Eldad and Medad’s prophecy. He was so busy policing who could prophesy and where they could prophesy and how they could prophesy that he forgot to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit emanating from these two men who had as legitimate a claim on the voice of the Spirit as anyone else with breath.

The thing is, when we don’t listen to the voices that we have not authorized, or asked for, or that we have already dismissed, we miss the fullness of the Spirit. Worse, we reinforce a status quo that is as we have made it: unequal and unfair, racist, ableist, ageist, sexist, where some voices, however loud they get, are dismissed for disturbing our peace and quiet. But ignoring the inconvenient prophets will not bring about peace and penitence, forgiveness and reconciliation, the beloved community filled with the Spirit of God.

Medad and Eldad were not silenced. Peter, when the people grumbled and dismissed the disciples as drunk and deluded, said, “Nah, the bars aren’t even open for brunch yet!” They knew that they had their commission directly from the Holy Spirit. And I wonder what it was that Eldad and Medad were saying to the people in the camp, the ones getting on with their daily lives, prophesying in the midst of them while the elders and elite were pontificating from the outside.

• [the congregation was invited to prophesy at the prompting of the Spirit]

Do you notice that John’s version of Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit, happens not at the festival of weeks, fifty days after Easter, but on the evening of the Resurrection itself. The disciples are back in the same upper room where they had supper three days earlier, and they are afraid, because of all that has happened: the arrest, the injustice, the execution, the blood and the pain and the threats of persecution; and Jesus comes to them, and says, “Peace be with you.”

For John, the coming of the Holy Spirit is indivisible from the joy and the hope, the impossible astonishment and the healing of the Resurrection. It is new life. Just as the Spirit of God breathed life into the Adam at the beginning, so now the Spirit of the living God makes all things new, witness and evidence of the Resurrected life of Christ, and in Christ. For the powers of death are no match for the life of God. The doors, the barriers that we set up between us will not keep out the Spirit of God. There is no keeping the Holy Spirit in her place, because her place is everywhere. And this is good news for all of God’s people (and we are all God’s people). Amen.