The God Who Gathers
Numbers 4:1-16 includes a list of items that a division of the tribe of Levi had to carry through the wilderness. You might be thinking, What could possibly be edifying about a list of packing instructions embedded in an account of an ancient near eastern census? to which I would answer, We're about to find out together.
What caught my attention in this passage the dire warning tucked in among this long list of items and prescriptive procedures is this dire warning in verse 15:
When Aaron and his sons have finished covering the sanctuary and all the furnishings of the sanctuary, as the camp sets out, after that the Kohathites shall come to carry these, but they must not touch the holy things, or they will die.
Consider the Kohathites’ task. They have to carry all the items of the tent of meeting through the wilderness, but here's the catch: They can neither touch nor look at what they're carrying.
In his translation and commentary of the Hebrew Bible, Robert Alter offers an apt description of the precarious responsibility entrusted to the Kohathites by saying, “[T]he transportation of the sanctuary from place to place, its disassembling and reassembling, was a moment of acute peril, for which our passage makes elaborate provision.”
I want to zoom out from this bit of perilous instruction, which, occurs as part of a census of the people of Israel. For context, Numbers begins with these words:
The Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the tent of meeting, on the first day of the second month, in the second year after they had come out of the land of Egypt, saying, “Take a census of the whole congregation of Israelites, in their clans, by ancestral houses, according to the number of names, every male individually, from twenty years old and up, everyone in Israel able to go to war. You and Aaron shall enroll them, company by company” (Numbers 1:1-3).
In Numbers 4, the census is underway, and instructions are given to the Levites, the tribe of the Israelite priesthood. Here, we're introduced to the Kohathites, who receive orders about their duties in the wilderness.
A good portion of Numbers (including this passage in Numbers 4) is devoted to detailing just how much value God’s places on gathering God’s people.
The assigned Old Testament text for the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost comes not from Numbers, but from Isaiah. This prophetic text shows God doing a version of the same work of gathering that he instructs Moses and Aaron to do in Numbers 1. The difference is that in Isaiah, God is gathering outsiders:
Do not let the foreigner joined to the Lord say,
“The Lord will surely separate me from his people,”
And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord…
God says through Isaiah,
7 these I will bring to my holy mountain
and make them joyful in my house of prayer...
8 Thus says the Lord God,
who gathers the outcasts of Israel:
I will gather others to them
besides those already gathered.
The Old Testament was written in Hebrew. It was later translated into Greek (called the Septuagint). The Greek translation was the version of Scriptures read or heard by many of the early Christians.
The Greek word used repeatedly in this passage that comes through in the English as "gather" is the word synagō (συνάγω). You can perhaps see the similarity to the English word synagogue—the noun is synagōgē (συναγωγή). God desires to gather foreigners to His holy mountain. The reference here is to Mount Sinai—the same mountain near which Moses and Aaron are instructed to gather the people of Israel in Numbers 1.
You may recall that this is the same mountain where God gives Moses the law in Exodus, where access to Mount Sinai is completely restricted. Only Moses can ascend the mountain. However, here in Isaiah, God not only intends to include outsiders the people of Israel, but also summon them to that holy mountain.
Back in Numbers 1 when Moses and Aaron obey God’s instruction, the same word is used,
Moses and Aaron took these men who had been designated by name, and on the first day of the second month they assembled (συνάγω) the whole congregation (συναγωγή) together (Numbers 1:17-18).
Both in Numbers and in Isaiah, we're presented with this picture of a God as gatherer. There are other instances we could point to in the Old Testament, from allowances made in the Law of Moses for foreigners to be included and cared for, to another well-known prophetic oracle from Isaiah 11:10-12:
In that day the heir to David’s throne
will be a banner of salvation to all the world.
The nations will rally to him,
and the land where he lives will be a glorious place.
In that day the Lord will reach out his hand a second time
to bring back the remnant of his people—
He will raise a flag among the nations
and assemble the exiles of Israel.
He will gather the scattered people of Judah
from the ends of the earth.
It shouldn't come as a surprise, then, that when Jesus appears on the scene in Mark's gospel, people flock to him. The same word is used in Mark 2:2:
“When [Jesus] returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. 2 So many gathered around that there was no longer room for them, not even in front of the door, and he was speaking the word to them” (Mark 2:1-2).
At the beginning of his public ministry, Jesus is doing what God tells Moses and Aaron do in the Sinai wilderness and what Isaiah prophesies God will do for the outcasts.
At the beginning of his ministry, Jesus is the one who "gathers the outcasts of Israel," and "gathers others to them besides those already gathered."
We serve a God who gathers. What does it look like to faithfully follow a gathering God?
Any attempt to sketch a faithful response must begin from this foundational truth:
Gathering people to each other and to himself is God's desire and activity. Instead of jumping to a list of "shoulds" and "oughts," we need to say clearly that gathering people together results from God's desire and activity before our own. Introverts among us can breathe sigh of relief. In Isaiah, God is the one doing the gathering. In Mark, people flock to Jesus because God's power is at work in him to heal.
Because gathering people is God's desire and activity—because God is a God of relationship—he invites you and I to participate. There’s an easy-to-miss irony about the effort to conduct a census in Numbers 1. The God who calls for the census is the same God who leads the people with a pillar of fire and a pillar of cloud. Presumably, God has all the information He needs before calling for a census, and yet, He enlists Moses and Aaron (and all of Israel) to participate.
How do we faithfully participate with a God who gathers? We could do worse than to take our cue from the Kohathites, whom God gathers so that they might carry the physical representation of God’s presence from place to place.
So these are the things from the Tabernacle that the Kohathites must carry (Numbers 4:15):
The word translated “carry” is the Greek word αἴρω, which means to “raise up, elevate, lift up,” or “to take upon oneself, to bear.”
For the Israelites in the Sinai wilderness, this is a sacred task, a weighty responsibility, literally. The Kohathites carry the objects of God's tangible presence around which the people gather. The items the Kohathites carry serve as a visual reminder that God is among the Israelites and has made them a people. Furthermore, these items have a practical purpose: they are used in the sacrificial system so that the people can live in right relationship with God.
What about when Jesus comes on the scene? What does the Kohathites’ task have to do with anything? I’m glad you asked.
In the NT, this task of participating in God's work of gathering takes shape in a strikingly similar way. Return to where we left off in Mark 2 a moment ago: people are gathering around Jesus, and Mark tells us,
While [Jesus] was preaching God’s word to them, 3 four men arrived carrying a paralyzed man on a mat (Mark 2:2-3).
The same verb that's used to describe the task of the Kohathites in the Septuagint in Numbers 4 is used in Mark 2 to describe what these four men do for their paralyzed friend. God is at work in Christ to gather people. Our role as participants in His work is to carry others to Jesus that they might experience healing. In Mark 2, Jesus does exactly that: he heals the paralytic.
Then he gives this instruction to the man he has healed:
“Stand up, pick up your mat, and go home!” (Mark 2:11)
The word for "pick up your mat" is the same verb, αἴρω, used in verse 3 when the man's friends are said to carry him to Jesus.
This episode in Mark 2 appears to set off a fascinating chain reaction in Mark's gospel.
After [Jesus and the disciples] had crossed the lake, they landed at Gennesaret. They brought the boat to shore and climbed out. The people recognized Jesus at once, and they ran throughout the whole area, carrying sick people on mats to wherever they heard he was (Mark 6:53-55).
All of a sudden, everybody is a Kohathite! Except instead of avoiding contact with the sacred articles they carry lest they die, those in need are carried toward healing!
The healing recorded in Mark 2 occurs in Capernaum, which is about 5 km from Gennesaret, where the action of Mark 6 takes place. There's no evidence for this, but consider the possibility that the paralytic we meet in Mark 2 leads the way from Capernaum to Gennesaret to bring sick people to Jesus on mats? This is the biblical version of couch to 5k.
One way of reading this sequence of events in Mark is that Jesus launches this man’s mat-carrying ministry.
Isaiah 56 also surfaces in Mark 6. In Isaiah, God says he'll gather the outcasts; in Mark, people in need from the villages, cities, and countryside are being carried to Jesus. the personification of God's holy mountain, for an encounter with the living God made flesh.
Another such encounter occurs on a different mount later in Mark's gospel. In Mark 15, Jesus has been sentenced to crucifixion. He endures all manner of verbal abuse and is made to carry his cross to Golgotha, where he'll be killed. The beatings Jesus endures have weakened him to the point that he's unable to lift the cross.
21 They compelled a passer-by, who was coming in from the country, to carry his cross; it was Simon of Cyrene, (the father of Alexander and Rufus.) 22 Then they brought Jesus to the place called Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull) (Mark 15:21-22).
When God says in Isaiah 56 "I will gather outcasts to my holy mountain," could it be that he's also pointing us to Golgotha, the hill upon which Jesus dies for our sake? It is up this hill that Simon the Cyrene, an outsider, plays the role of Kohathite, carrying the instrument of our redemption through the wilderness toward the holiest of mountains.
God is at work to gather people to himself. How do we faithfully participate? Carrying others to Jesus, yes. But what might this look like?
Perhaps our part looks like taking an inventory of the things we’re currently carrying and deciding which ones we should let drop so that we can participate in God’s activity.
Perhaps our part is to offer thanks to God for His goodness or provision or healing, and to respond to his invitation to tell your story that it might carry others to Jesus.
Perhaps you'd participate in God's activity to gather people to each other and to himself by committing to become part of a small group.
Perhaps you would discern your part as reaching out to build relationship with a neighbor, or inviting others to be a part of the life-giving community at Solid Rock church. (It’s worth pointing out that the paralytic is carried to Jesus by four friends, not just one.)
Perhaps faithful participation looks like carrying the burden of another, whether someone you know or, like Simon the Cyrene with Jesus, someone whom you've never met. For all Simon knew as a passerby, he was carrying the cross of a murderer or thief. (As a side note, Mark tells us parenthetically that Simon is the father of Alexander and Rufus, which implies that Mark's audience of the earliest followers of Jesus would know Simon's sons. What if the burdens you assist others in carrying could become part of your family's legacy?)
Perhaps faithful participation looks like intercessory prayer. The kind of prayer that carries the burdens of your loved ones, or of those you’ve never met, to Jesus.
Can you see yourself in this story? Are you ready to become a Kohathite?