Weekly HOMILY for October 1, 2006: Protocol of the Spirit

26th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B
Our Lady of Grace
October 1, 2006

Protocol of the Spirit
By (Rev. Msgr.) Nicholas P. Amato


The Soup Nazi

One of my favorite Seinfeld show is the one about the “Soup Nazi.” The Soup Nazi was a grim-faced immigrant chef with a thick Stalin-like moustache and an accent to match.

Well known throughout New York City for his delicious soups, he is also notorious for demanding that his customers observe his soup-ordering instructions to the letter.

To purchase soup customers are to line up in an orderly fashion, have their money at the ready, order their soup, then step to the left to pay their bill, receive their soup, and leave the restaurant promptly with the soup in hand.

Even the slightest deviation from the chef’s rigid protocol can result in a refusal of service.

“No soup for you!” That is what George Costanza hears when he dares to ask why the person ahead of him received bread and he did not: “You want bread? No soup for you!”

The point? Protocol, however arbitrary, is to be followed or the perpetrator suffers the consequences.

The episode points to a certain rigidity that all too often characterizes our own dealings with one another. Having developed a system or a habitual manner of doing things, we are reluctant to stray from our protocol.

We all have set ways of conducting business, certain rites as regards our relationships, specific ideas as to what is or is not polite, and who is or is not acceptable. We tend to be intolerant of others who dare to choose a different course of thought or action.


Moses and Joshua

Something of this impatience and intolerance is clearly evident in today’s first reading and Gospel.
In the Book of Numbers, we see Moses and the Israelites during their desert journey to Canaan. To this point Moses has been the mediator of God’s will for the Israelites.

God’s own Spirit is thought to rest upon Moses, giving authority to his teachings.

He was the institution whom the people had come to accept and through whom they experience God.

To their credit, the people are also willing to accept that some of the Spirit with which God had endowed Moses could be shared among the 70 elders who have gathered in the meeting tent at God’s command.

However, when two of the elders deviate from the plan and do not gather in the tent, Joshua objects when it appeared that God’s Spirit has come rest upon them as well.

While he does not use the Soup Nazi’s exact words, Joshua’s reaction seems to say “No Spirit for you!”

Joshua’s thinking is how could those who were not associated with Moses be spiritually endowed?


Jesus

In an effort to educate his disciples in the freedom of the Spirit to blow were it will, to inspire whom it may, and to empower whom it chooses, Jesus challenges them to venture beyond protocol and institution and to open themselves to God’s mysterious working.

Even someone the disciples regarded as “outside their group” can be acceptable to God and can be a vessel of the Spirit.

And by extension to us, even someone we may hold suspect or unorthodox, if that person is not against us, insists Jesus, that person can be an agent of the power and Spirit of God.


Application

So, that person at work or the individual in our social circle of friends whom we find suspect or a bit edgy may have something to say or contribute.

Arab, oriental, or Persian food may be foreign to our palate or look strange by our own standards, but may very good if we developed a taste for whatever is being served.

Or to recognize that Christians, Muslims and Jews are all children of Abraham and read and learn more about each other’s beliefs and our quest for peace for our children.


Conclusion

Jesus’ challenge to his own disciples – both then and now – is one of inclusiveness.

However, to meet this challenge, believers must be willing to surrender preconceived ideas and judgments to the sometimes untamed and unimaginable ways of God.

Too frequently those who are different, those who dissent, and those who march to the beat of a different drummer are ignored and rejected outright.

We need to make space for mavericks and outsiders, as long as they are not explicitly opponents of Jesus.

Imagine the power and possibilities for goodness in a community that could accept a Galileo, a Martin Luther, a John Wesley, a John Calvin, a Charlie Curran, or an Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza!

Rather than eliminate, excommunicate or censure the maverick, might not the church and our own circles of family and friends be better served if we were to truly heed Jesus’ insistence that “anyone who is not against us is with us”!