I’m Not Their Mom
May 24, 2026 • Pentecost • Year A
Numbers 11:24-30 • Acts 2:1-21 • John 7:37-39
Just before the passage in today’s first reading, Moses had a major “I’m-not-their-mom” moment.
If you’ve never had one yourself, an I’m-not-their-mom moment is when someone expects a level of assistance, attention, empathy, or strength that you just don’t have the capacity to give. Maybe it’s one person who’s too demanding, or too many people for you to help individually. You’re not their mom.
According to the book of Numbers, Moses is leading about six hundred thousand Israelites through the wilderness. No sooner have they escaped enslavement than they start complaining about the food along the way. They wistfully remember the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, garlic, and fish they used to eat in Egypt. They’re sick of the manna God keeps sending them.
Tired of their complaints and demands, Moses takes this up with the Lord: “Did I conceive all this people?,” Moses asks. “Did I give birth to them . . . ?” Moses resents the Lord telling him, “‘Carry them in your bosom, as a nurse carries a sucking child.’” Moses is furious that he has to carry these six hundred thousand people to the Land of Promise like his personal baby.
Moses insists, “I am not able to carry all this people alone, for they are too heavy for me. If this is the way you are going to treat me, put me to death at once . . .”
To paraphrase Moses’s outburst, “I’m not their mom!! Just put me out of my misery now.”
***
The mom in me recognizes this as kind of a Moses meltdown. From that angle, it looks like Moses has mistaken a hard moment for the absolute end of the world.
But I also know what it’s like to have I’m-not-their-mom moments of my own. Moments when I just can’t provide or care for or carry everyone I’m expected to. (I have these moments even when I am their mom!)
The Lord responds to Moses’s I’m-not-their-mom moment by taking the spirit that rests on Moses and placing it on seventy elders. When the spirit rests on these seventy leaders, they prophesy.
In this context, “prophesying” doesn’t mean delivering well-wrought, articulate speeches, or describing possible futures the way later biblical prophets do. This kind of “prophesying” means entering a sort of ecstasy—even dancing and writhing while uttering inspired words that writing can’t possibly capture.
But, this sharing of the spirit doesn’t solve Moses’s problems. It seems that only sixty-eight of the registered elders showed up to the tent where Moses speaks with the Lord. Two stayed behind in the camp. But the spirit finds these two men there, and people see them prophesying too. A young man sees this rogue prophesying and runs to tell Moses what these men are up to. Moses’s assistant Joshua tells Moses to stop them.
So now, Moses has to deal with tattletales. Back to being their mom! Moses basically says, in exhausted exasperation I assume, “I wish everyone was a prophet! I wish the Lord would put the spirit on every single one of these people.”
Then he wouldn’t have to be their mom. They could all walk to the Land of Promise and eat the manna that the good Lord gave them without Moses having to feed and carry them—or listen to their whining.
***
Of course, Moses’s I’m-not-their-mom outburst depends on a certain view of moms. In Moses’s mind, moms do the feeding and the carrying of human beings who are at their neediest stages in life. But it turns out that all of us—even moms—hit limits in what we can provide and carry.
In my experience, even a steady life of faith doesn’t radically alter these limits. When I’m consistent with devotional habits, like noticing and feeling gratitude for the gifts I’ve received, or turning to God for help in my distress, I estimate that I increase my personal capacity to carry my burdens by about fifteen percent.
That does help.
But most of the time, I can’t provide or carry all I think I should.
Instead of changing the basic architecture of the human frame, God sometimes sends temporary surges and outpourings of spirit.
Earlier this month, I helped chaperone a school field trip to the Kings River. We floated five miles in about five hours—not a great pace. I think there were about sixty middle-schoolers. I was responsible for kids in just two boats. Even that was too much for me. I’m not a strong paddler, and I can barely steer a canoe.
Yet I watched and tried to play my small part as all the grownups stepped up with surges of generosity and strength. For five miraculous hours, it didn’t matter whose kid was whose. Snacks and sunscreen got to every kid, whether they had an actual parent there or not. The especially strong arms of a few moms and dads, and the handful of teachers up to their waists in water, kept everyone together and got them around the trickiest bends in the river.
If only it were like that all the time. Enough parents and teachers to go around. Enough strength to get everyone safely—even smilingly—to the concrete place they needed to go.
I don’t know why God sends moments—surges and outpourings of spirit—rather than really changing what we can bear. The seventy elders in today’s first reading prophesy once and never again.
An exhausted, exasperated Moses in today’s first reading wants the Lord to put the spirit on everyone. He wants us to see that each of us has a role in leading and accompanying one another to the land of promise. Moses can’t carry this burden alone. Seventy appointed elders might help, but not enough. Only the spirit, resting on each one of us, can get us there—even if it’s just for moments at a time.
~The Rev. Dr. Lora Walsh