Housekeepers, miners and nobodies
George
MacDonald’s character, Curdie, came to the king’s house because the
princess had told him to report to her there. At the door he met the
officious housekeeper (who seemed to swell and fill the door) who
rebuked him for his comings and goings and the fact that he (as she saw
it) made a mess of things while he was there. "Don’t you know this is my
house?" she barked. Curdie politely replied that he didn’t know that
because he thought it was the king’s house. She responded, he
responded, she called him insolent and oozing pride asked the poor
ignoramus, "Don’t you see by my dress that I am in the king’s service?"
Curdie, a young miner, wanted to know, "And am I not one of his
miners?"
"Ah,
that goes for nothing," she snapped. "I am one of his household. You
are an out-of-doors labourer. You are a nobody. You carry a pickaxe. I
carry the keys at my waist. See!"
But Curdie checkmated her with, "But you must not call one a nobody to whom the king has spoken."
This
is a hard lesson for us to learn. You understand that it isn’t that
we’re all to function in the same place of authority with the same
responsibilities. There are those that have been given authority over us
and though often we don’t like that, there’s no community living
without accepting the truth of it. Still, it’s a hard lesson to learn
because we tend to be prideful and if we’ve haven’t been given the most
sought after job, the one that attracts the attention and gets the big
money, we’re inclined to whimper (and other things) a lot. Well, why
not? We should be treated with respect and when we are stuck in a lower
level position our "person-hood" is scorned and we can’t stand for that,
can we?
The
sad thing is that some of us get the place we think we deserve and it
doesn’t make us better. Like the officious housekeeper we balloon up and
fill the doorways of life and are only content when we think we’ve
surpassed the other peasants way below us. In that spirit it doesn’t
matter to us, for example, that others would be better as rich people
than we would be if we were made rich. It only matters that we are or
get to be wealthy or prominent or acclaimed.
Apparently
Curdie had no trouble with any of that. He had a pure heart and was
perfectly content to be the king’s miner. He didn’t need to have the
keys to buildings hanging at his belt, didn’t need to minister to vast
congregations, didn’t need to drive a big fancy car or be the belle of
anyone’s ball. He was more than at peace within himself. He rejoiced in the dignity of being one that the king had spoken to and needed nothing more.
You
see this illustrated in reverse in Number 16 where the rebels weren’t
as wise or as pure in heart as Curdie. Korah, Dathan and Abiram attacked
Moses and Aaron because those two exercised authority over the assembly
at large and restricted the priesthood to Aaron’s family. The rebels
said that these two took too much on themselves because all the people
of God are holy and they wanted to exercise the priesthood (16:1-4,10).
Moses reminded them that this was God’s restriction but he goes on to
remind these Levites that God had spoken to them and given them their
own ministry (16:10). And that was where the problem was rooted. The
leading rebels didn’t think their ministry was glorious enough—they
wanted more. They thought they were being cheated, you see. They thought
that having the priesthood keys at their belt would give them the
dignity and recognition they deserved. Had they believed what Curdie
knew, that no one to whom the King has spoken is "a nobody," they would
not have despised the privileged place God had given to them. Though
Curdie was a miner with a pickaxe in his hand he knew full well and with
joyful contentment that he was one of the king’s servants and in this
knowledge he glorified his ministry.
You
understand it wasn’t simply that Korah and company were despising their
position, they were exalting themselves (compare Romans 12:3-8) and
thought they were being robbed. And they weren’t opposing Moses alone;
they were opposing God (Numbers 16:11)!
It wasn’t a question about what God
wanted. It was all about what these Levites wanted! It wasn’t an
information problem; it was a heart problem. "I deserve and want more!"
Poor
souls. They talked as though they were suffering like the colonies in
their most awful moments when France and Spain and Portugal and Britain
were at their plundering worst. They talked as though they were
Afro-Americans that were humiliated and robbed all those years under
White supremacy in the USA. or they were Irish during the
centuries when England plundered and bullied them. Doesn’t it make you
want to throw up sometimes when people (ourselves included?) blessed to
the skies whine on and on about wanting more. And those, Like Korah,
Dathan and Abiram who take the lead in furthering a heart problem among
the people of God have something to answer for as the entire Numbers 16
chapter shows.
[It occurs to me that this is a great chapter to use to defend the status quo. It’s a good chapter to use to keep people "in their place". Hmmm. That’d be another heart problem, wouldn’t it?].