Today’s readings are linked by a couple common themes that are still well known to us today – fear of others and the related fear of scarcity.  Our reading from the Hebrew Scriptures and the Gospel both tell us about our own fears and how God sees our world very differently.

In our Gospel passage, the disciples come across someone casting out demons in the name of Jesus. They are scandalized that this is someone they do not know – someone who is not one of them. And they try to stop him ‘because he was not following us.’ But Jesus is not scandalized at all by this, and he tells them not to stop them. And he says something that I believe is revolutionary, even in our world today, “Whoever is not against us is for us.”

We usually think “Whoever is not for us is against us.” This is the way we approach others, the way we approach the world. And we have varying standards of what makes another ‘for us’, what line they have to meet in order for us to believe that they are not against us. But Jesus sees this in the opposite way entirely. He turns our way of being on its head – ‘Whoever is not against us is for us.’

In Numbers, we see a similar discussion between Moses and his protege, Joshua. The people of Israel have been in the desert for a long time, and they are tired of eating manna. They remember the variety of delicious food they had in Egypt, and they begin to complain.

God becomes angry, and so does Moses, and it’s Moses’ complaints that we read. He is exhausted and tired of leading these people who seem to not get it – who have forgotten so quickly the amazing miracle that God has done for them. He is angry at God for giving him these people to take care of. He says that he was not part of conceiving them, so why on earth should he have to care for them, especially alone?

God’s answer is to find seventy elders of the people. This work was not meant to be done alone. Just by telling him to find seventy elders, God reminds Moses that there are other good people, known as elders, as wise people, among Israel. He is not alone in leading and caring for them. So God says to bring them to a tent so that they can officially be commissioned to help Moses, so that he does not have to bear the burden of leadership alone. And God pours out God’s spirit on these men.

Shortly afterward, they hear that two other men are prophesying – men who did not come to the tent and were not officially among those who received God’s spirit at the tent. Joshua is scandalized and says the same thing as Jesus’s disciples – “Stop them!” But like Jesus, Moses is not scandalized by God’s Spirit being poured out on those who were not ‘official’.

Instead, he says that he wishes that all of God’s people were prophets, and that God’s Spirit would be on everyone!

For Joshua, God’s Spirit being given to seventy is a limit. To Moses, it is wonderful that seventy received God’s Spirit, but hopes for it to go even farther. Just like the disciples, Joshua is convinced that the power and spirit of God is limited.

Only a few verses before in Mark, the disciples are not able to cast out a demon, but this man they do not know is. He has power, and the fear is that there is only so much power to go around. If he has power, there is less power for them, and so they try to stop him.

And Joshua is concerned that the Spirit of God seems to be resting on others outside of the official seventy. He is worried that there are only so many people who could have the Spirit of God, and so these extra men are limiting the ones who rightly deserve the Spirit. But Moses sees it another way – would that God’s Spirit be on all of God’s people!”

At the end of the day, our fear of others is usually linked to our fear of scarcity. The word ‘scarce’ comes from an Old Norman word meaning ‘restricted in quantity.’ When we see through the lens of scarcity, we see everything as limited in quantity.

Brene Brown explores how much this thinking has taken over our culture in her book “Daring Greatly.” She quotes Lynne Twist saying,

‘For me, and for many of us, our first waking thought of the day is “I didn’t get enough sleep.” The next one is “I don’t have enough time.” Whether true or not, that thought of not enough occurs to us automatically before we even think to question or examine it..… Before we even sit up in bed, before our feet touch the floor, we’re already inadequate, already behind, already losing, already lacking something. And by the time we go to bed at night, our minds are racing with a litany of what we didn’t get, or didn’t get done, that day. We go to sleep burdened by those thoughts and wake up to that reverie of lack.…’

This is what inevitably happens when we see the world through a lens of scarcity. Because of this constant feeling of scarcity, we fear another becoming stronger because we believe that means we will become weaker. We fear that whatever others gain is something we, and those we love, lose, or at least miss. We are sure that opportunity given to another is an opportunity lost to me.

And this tendency grows in epic proportions. Black and white. Men and women. Straight and gay. Rich and poor. Christian and Muslim. This toxic mixture of fear and love over centuries has become wars and struggles deeper than anyone can even understand any longer, showing up in our news every day.

We believe in an economy that says that everything is limited, and there is not enough for all of us, so we approach others thinking “Whoever is not for us is against us.” Fear runs wild in our world because of it. At the root of so much uncontrollable greed and anger in our culture is fear, fear that tells us that we can never be safe enough from others, we can never have enough to be sure that we will be protected from disaster.

But this is not how it has to be. Throughout Scripture, we are told “Do not fear,” and “Do not be afraid.” Fear is the opposite of faith, and we learn over and over that God does not see the world as we do. Moses assures Joshua that he did not feel as though he had lost anything by others having the Spirit of God – he only wished that more did! And Jesus tells his disciples  not to stop someone doing good in his name – it is only good for them if that is the case.

What is the difference here?

Jesus knows that God’s power is not limited. Someone new having power does not mean the other disciples have less. It means that the kingdom is coming in more places, more quickly. And that is only a good thing. And Moses knows that God’s Spirit is not limited – it could be on all people, and how wonderful that would be!

Whoever is not against us is for us – we are given a complete reversal on how to see the world, and we as the people of God must face our world and culture and tell a different story.

I once heard Cory Booker, a senator from New Jersey, tell this story with beautiful words. He said, “If a family fails, it is a detriment to us all. If a child fails, we are all bereft of the genius of that kid if he were to grow up and be successful. If a person falls into drug addiction, we all hurt from that… If you empower someone to succeed, and that child becomes a biologist, an entrepreneur, it grows our economy, we all benefit.”

He goes on to wish that “we could bring our country to the understanding that when we all succeed, we all succeed more.” What would it be if we all saw the world in a way that another’s good was my good too?

As people of Christ, we must be the ones out there telling this story – showing the world a new way to see. God’s power is not limited. God’s Spirit is not limited. Love, grace, and truth are not limited. The joys of fellowship and belonging in the community of God are not limited. Dignity is not limited. Flourishing life is not limited.

We were all made for these things, and God did not make them in limited quantities, for only some to have. Our God who created the world created us to live fully, to have all we were created to need.

And it takes faith to see the world that way, because it is a different message than we are told. It takes faith to believe that there is enough, that there always will be enough. But it is the truth – because our God always has been, and always will be enough.