Not Doing Ministry Like Uzzah

I’ve always been intrigued by the story of Uzzah and the ox cart.

If you aren’t familiar with the story, Uzzah was a guy helping carry the ark of the covenant back to it’s rightful home. But along the way the oxen stumbled and the ark began to teeter and threatened to fall to the ground. In order to steady the ark Uzzah reached out his hand and touched the ark. God immediately struck him dead. (See 2 Samuel 6:1-7 and 1 Chronicles 13:9-12)

For awhile this story really bothered me. I thought it seemed a bit cruel. But then I read RC Sproul’s phenomenal explanation of the text (here is a fair summary) and realized how non-scandalous grace had become in my heart. What shocked me now was not that Uzzah died but that I hadn’t been struck dead for my many indiscretions.

About a decade removed from my first struggles with this story I find myself engaging this passage as a pastor. And I realize how much I’m like Uzzah. I’ve got dirty and sinful hands and I touch holy things every week. I’ve got extensive training in how to properly handle these holy things and yet I can so often slip into the idea that God needs a little help keeping His treasures from teetering. And so I raise up my trembling (yet somehow also pride-fueled) hand and try to steady the wobbling effects of the sovereign activity of God.

And some how I’m not struck dead.

I’m such a fool, a treacherous fool, to think that God needs my help to keep his church from tumbling. He doesn’t need me. I could be blotted out from existence this very moment and after a few tears are shed and potato salad is consumed the world, the church, the mission of God would continue to march toward its climax. I’m not vital to this mission.

But yet here I am, just like Uzzah, touching the holy as if God needs a partner.

—

There’s another way of doing ministry. Another image found in Isaiah 6. It’s of the prophet who realizes his sinfulness and woeful inadequacies who is touched and transformed by the burning coal on the altar. It’s really the only way we can do ministry unlike Uzzah.

We are told in 1 Thessalonians 5:14 to “admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all”. That’s another way of saying steady those who are tumbling. Don’t let the treasures smash to the ground. Touch the holy.

How is this possible?

It’s only possible because of what Christ has done. He’s made it to where we unholy people can touch the holy. Because we aren’t fundamentally unholy people anymore. We are redeemed. We are transformed. We are washed. We are cleansed. And because of this we are called to steady the falling—not as if God needs our help, mind you, but because we’ve been reconciled in order to be reconcilers.

And so I can do ministry in such a way that I flirt with death. Ministry in my own strength. Ministry as an Uzzah. Or I can do ministry in such a way that is eternal. Ministry as one who has been redeemed. Ministry as an Isaiah—broken but utterly healed and transformed.

I’m done being an Uzzah.

—

Photo source: here