"We Didn't Start the Fire"

We Didn't Start the Fire

Numbers 11:24–30  |  Acts 2:1–21

Pentecost Sunday  •  May 24, 2026

This blog post was generated by AI based on the sermon manuscript and reviewed by Rev. Dr. Stephen M. Fearing. It is not the sermon manuscript itself and may differ from what was preached.

Every Pentecost, we tell the story of tongues of fire and rushing wind in an upper room in Jerusalem. It's a dramatic, world-shaking moment — and rightly so. But this year, a quieter story from the Book of Numbers deserves equal attention. It features two men most of us have never heard of: Eldad and Medad. They weren't in the right place at the right time. Or maybe — just maybe — they were in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. That question is the heart of this Pentecost.

The Tent, the Seventy, and the Two Who Wandered In

The Israelites are worn out. They've been wandering in the desert, living on manna — and the manna is getting old. The complaints are piling up on Moses' desk. So Moses takes his frustrations directly to God, and God provides a plan: gather seventy elders at the Tent of Meeting, and some of the Spirit given to Moses will be shared among them. These commissioned leaders will help shoulder the weight of guiding an entire people through the wilderness.

For the ancient Israelites, God's Spirit was not a vague or purely internal experience. It was tangible — something you could see and feel and be astonished by. Moses' encounters with God left him literally radiant, charged up like those glow-in-the-dark stars you put on a child's ceiling. The Spirit could be transferred, shared, distributed. And so the ceremony at the Tent of Meeting was a genuine and meaningful rite of commissioning. Decent and in order, as Presbyterians are fond of saying.

But the Spirit had other ideas. Eldad and Medad — two men wandering nearby, maybe talking about nothing more profound than a new way to cook manna — suddenly and inexplicably caught fire. They hadn't been inside the tent. They hadn't gone through the process. And yet there they were, prophesying in the camp, pitching in to lead, showing up where they were needed.

"Stop Them" — The Church's Most Persistent Reflex

It didn't take long for someone to tattle. And Joshua, Moses' right-hand man, delivered his verdict in just two words: stop them.

"Stop them." Two words. Just like that, Joshua becomes the first recorded church moderator to call a point of order.

It's easy to laugh at Joshua — but it's worth sitting with the discomfort of how familiar that impulse really is. Across centuries and continents, the church has perfected the art of saying "stop them" in polished, procedural language. When women sensed the Spirit calling them to preach, the response was theological gatekeeping — and in many corners of global Christianity, that argument hasn't ended. When Black men and women sought to lead, to vote, to inhabit the public life their gifts and citizenship entitled them to, systems were built — poll taxes, gerrymandered maps, literacy tests — that dressed exclusion in the language of order and standards. When LGBTQIA+ siblings said we too have been called, the church's answer was often another committee, another discernment process, another layer of scrutiny that somehow never applied with equal rigor to those who already held power.

The architecture of "stop them" is rarely loud. It is usually polite, procedural, and convinced of its own righteousness. Just like Joshua.

The Fire Was Never Ours to Manage

Here is what Moses understood that Joshua had not yet learned: you cannot manage the Spirit of God. You can build the most carefully designed tent, follow the most thoughtful procedure, commission the most qualified seventy people — and the Spirit will still find Eldad and Medad out in the camp and set them ablaze anyway.

Moses doesn't lecture Joshua. He simply asks a question that cuts to the heart of it: "Are you jealous for my sake?" It's a gentle but firm invitation to check the ego at the door. This was never about Moses or Joshua. And then he offers one of the most expansive statements in all of scripture:

"Would that all the Lord's people were prophets — and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!"

Not just the seventy. Not just the qualified. Not just the ones who showed up to the right tent at the right time. All of them. With all their messes and gifts, their grief and hunger, their broken tents and mediocre manna recipes — Moses looked at all of it and said: I wish the Spirit would land on every single one of them.

We Didn't Start It — and We Can't Put It Out

Pentecost has a way of tempting us into self-congratulation — as if the flame is burning because we have faithfully tended it. But the fire predates us. It was burning in the desert before Moses arrived, in the upper room before the disciples gathered, in every generation of Eldads and Medads who were told not them, not here, not now — and who prophesied anyway.

This is not a call to abandon structure. The Tent of Meeting was a good idea. Orderly processes of formation and commissioning are good ideas. Structure serves community. But structure that stops asking why it exists — that begins protecting its own perpetuation more than the flourishing of the people it was built to serve — stops being a tent of meeting and becomes a wall of exclusion. And walls, as it turns out, are notoriously bad conductors of the Holy Spirit.

If we didn't start the fire, we were never meant to contain it either. The Spirit is a gift. And recipients of a gift this extravagant are called to do one thing above all else: give it away.

A Litany of "Would Thats" for Pentecost

So this Pentecost, in the spirit of Moses — who, when confronted with the possibility of the Spirit spilling beyond the expected borders, threw open his arms and said yes, let it be so — we offer our own "would thats" for this church and this world:

Would that all of us worked harder to ensure that every person in this country has equal, unencumbered access to the ballot box. A democracy that makes some voices louder by making others quieter is not decent, not orderly, and not of God.

Would that all of us built a world where no one chooses between a prescription and a meal, and where "I can't afford to see a doctor" belongs only to history books.

Would that all of us stopped calling young people the "future of the church" and older saints the "past," and saw what is actually true: that we are all, together, the present church — and God has need of every single one of us, right now.

Would that all of us treated the immigrant, the refugee, the foreigner in the camp with the same dignity we would want extended to our own children — because the Israelites were once foreigners too, and they were told not to forget it.

Would that all of us learned to be a little more Moses and a little less Joshua — a little less anxious about who's inside the tent and a little more astonished that the Spirit keeps showing up outside of it.

The fire was burning before we arrived. It will be burning long after we're gone. Our job, this Pentecost and every day after, is simply not to stand in its way.

In the name of God the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer — Amen.

Questions for Reflection

1. When have you experienced the Spirit showing up somewhere — or in someone — you didn't expect? What was your first reaction?
2. Where in your own life do you recognize the voice of Joshua — the impulse to say "stop them," even in polite or procedural language? What might Moses say to you in that moment?
3. Moses says the problem isn't the process itself, but what happens when structure stops serving people and starts serving itself. Where do you see that happening in the church, or in your community?
4. The sermon ends with a series of "would thats." Which one lands most personally for you — and what is one concrete step you could take in response?
5. What would it look like, in your daily life, to be a "vessel" for the Spirit rather than a gatekeeper of it?