Needed: Some Face Falling! – From the Daily Office – June 25, 2012

From the Book of Numbers:

Leaders of the congregation . . . confronted Moses. They assembled against Moses and against Aaron, and said to them, “You have gone too far! All the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the Lord is among them. So why then do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the Lord?” When Moses heard it, he fell on his face.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Numbers 16:2-4 – June 24, 2012)

Moses “fell on his face.” This is biblical language for expressing great despair and sadness, not the reaction to a leadership confrontation a modern person would expect. Anger? Yes. Hostility? Yes. Yelling and shouting and public protestation of one’s rightness? Yes. Falling prostrate on the ground in desperate sadness? Not so much. ~ It would appear that in the confrontation of Korah and his compatriots, Moses felt personal responsibility. He believe that what had gone wrong with the Hebrews was his fault. He seems to have believed that he himself had created an atmosphere which had led to less-than-perfect delegated administration and justice. ~ Unfortunately a leadership crisis in the Episcopal Church isn’t resulting in similar behavior from the church’s leadership. In recent months the two highest officials of the church (the Presiding Bishop and the President of the House of Deputies) have had a public squabble over when and how one or the other might communicate with other persons in the church (the cause of the dispute was a video the PB made and sent to members of the House of Deputies, apparently without a “heads-up” to the PHoD). More recently, proposals for the church’s budget for the coming triennium have raised concern among many church members. In response to the first criticisms, the Executive Council issued a statement which was wholey inadequate (in my opinion) and failed to take responsibility. Then the PB (apparently distancing herself from the Executive Council of which she is actually a member and the chair) has come out with her own budget proposal. Now one or more members of the council have their backs up, writing blogs and making statements about being stabbed in the back. In all of this, there hasn’t been a lot of “falling on one’s face” going on. ~ The incident described in the Book of Numbers was really all about Korah’s personal grievances, suitably disguised for public consumption. Moses could have fired right back at him. But Moses suspected that his own earlier mistakes might be the cause of Korah’s uprising, that it was his failure which had created a setting in which discontent could germinate and ultimately promote the Levite rebellion. So, in humility, Moses admits accountability. Might a little of Moses’ humility be a good idea for the current crop of spiritual leadership? ~ Several church members recently have written blogs analyzing the budget and the business of the up-coming General Convention. Would that the Episcopal Church’s bishops, Executive Council, Presiding Bishop, deputies to General Convention, et al. would read these and consider their own roll in creating the situation in which the church finds itself. But I’m afraid they are too busy pointing the finger at one another, blind-siding one another, accusing one another of stabs in the back, playing turf wars, and engaging in cat-fights and pissing-contests. ~ We could use a little less of that sort of thing and a lot more falling on faces!