I don’t know about you but I don’t like being disturbed.
I’m not sure if that’s a man thing - with us only being able to concentrate on one thing at a time - as the multi-tasking women keep telling us. But it’s a fact of life for me: I don’t like being disturbed, and I have to work hard to be civil when I am disturbed in the middle of something.
Doesn’t matter if it’s work or play. It’s the same thing. When I’m giving something my full attention, and something else cuts in, that’s when my stress levels start to rise.
You’d think Christmas would be a stressful time for ministers, and generally speaking you’d be right. After all – it is our busy time of year. As everyone keeps reminding us. Everyone.
But as a general rule, I don’t mind the busyness. If I can run hard in early December I get most of the services prepared and I can get on and enjoy myself like everyone else. What I do mind is the disturbances that stop me from getting on with things. And this Christmas there have been two of them.
Firstly my computer passed away in early December and I’ve been struggling along with a steam-powered laptop since then, sending email via two plastic cups and a piece of string
And then there’s been the small matter of the longest cold snap for about 30 years, and the added joy of having the kids around the house for an extra week’s cabin fever. I mean – holiday.
My equilibrium been disturbed! But I am not alone.
On this feast of the Epiphany, Matthew tells us that Herod and the whole of Jerusalem were disturbed and it was all because some exotic Eastern mystics called Magi drifted into Jerusalem trying to find the child who’d been born as the King of the Jews.
Is Matthew going a little over the top here? The whole of Jerusalem disturbed? Well, not necessarily. In the culture of the day, this was big news.
Life in Jerusalem was a complex balancing act, where individuals and groups made uneasy truces with one another to further their own ends while keeping some sort of equilibrium.
The Pharisees hated the Romans and Herod too, but he at least, as a Jew, was one of their own and it was his money which was building the new Temple in Jerusalem. They despised him and his ways, but they needed him.
The Romans hated the Pharisees, and didn’t have much time for Herod either. But they needed him as a go-between to soften the blow of Israel’s being ruled by a foreign, pagan power.
And Herod? Well – he only cared for himself and his own desires. He’d taken the throne by force and kept it by force, and he didn’t care who he killed along the way, even his own wife. For over 33 years he had overseen a bloody peace in Israel which had earned him the accolade: ‘friend and ally of Rome’.
But the title he took most pride in was the one granted him by the Roman Senate in his earlier years, the one for which he’d fought tooth and nail against his rivals: “The King of the Jews”.
So when these Magi turn up in his palace, taking his title on their lips and asking to see the child to whom it belonged, Herod was shaken to the core.
Because if this child were the Messiah – as he suspected, and the Biblical prophesies confirmed - then his own days were numbered. If God, to whom he’d only ever paid lip service, were at work in this infant king, then the people would flock to him, and his own heirs would never inherit the throne.
And this was the buzz throughout Jerusalem. The rumours spread like wildfire. A new king? What would that mean for Herod? What would that mean for Jerusalem? How would the Romans react to new leadership? It was like someone lobbed a brick into a millpond. Small wonder the place was disturbed.
The only folk who seem remotely calm in all of this are the Magi. Confused, maybe; and blissfully ignorant of the storm they’ve whipped up; but undeterred, because they’re wise enough to admit that in coming to Jerusalem they’ve made a mistake.
We need to be careful with the text at this point. If you look at verse 2 you’ll see that when they started out on the journey all they had to go on was a new star that had come up in the east. It didn’t lead them to Jerusalem – that was their own best guess, given the star’s meaning. And as it turned out, their own best guess was about nine miles out.
But with some help from the ancient prophesies, and a further sighting of the star, they travel on to Bethlehem. And it’s there – in that one-horse town far away from throne rooms and marbelled halls – that they find the new baby boy for whom these gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh were so carefully chosen.
I wonder if that’s when the wise men were disturbed. When they realised that something of a new order was happening in the world – an order which doesn’t triumph through might of arms, or wield power like a sword. But conquers through servanthood, submission and love.
TS Eliot’s poem “Journey of The Magi” certainly ends on that note.
Eliot writes as one of the Magi, describing their journey on the way to Bethlehem, and closes with these words:
All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we lead all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I have seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation....
No longer at ease. Disturbed.
I don’t like being disturbed, and neither do you, I guess.
But sometimes it’s exactly what we need.
Sometimes there’s a blessing in being disturbed.
There could have been a blessing for Herod. He could have done things another way. He could have used this visit from the Magi to salvage something from a ruined and dissolute life and become a part of God’s plan. He could have been blessed in his old age. But he chose not to be.
And there was a blessing for the Magi. They found what they were looking for in Christ, and though it meant the painful death of some old ways of being, it meant the birth of something new and better.
Sometimes there’s a blessing in being disturbed. I wonder if you’ve ever seen things that way.
How do you react when you find yourself disturbed by someone or something that challenges your way of viewing the world?
Do you cling on to old certainties and ways of thinking even if they’re flawed? Or do you open yourself up to the possibility that there might be a new way to see things that brings a blessing?
Some of the things I’m going to tell you now are going to disturb you and I wonder what your reaction will be.
In December, our former Presbytery Clerk gave a report to the Presbytery after he attended a conference with the Ministries Council. This is a flavour of what we heard that evening:
The Ministries Council are to report at this coming General Assembly a deficit in the region of 6.1 million pounds.
The General Secretary of the Ministries Council said that to balance the books, the church would have to reduce its wage bill by just over 100 posts on top of the 230 that had been promised in the Presbytery Plan agreements. This would reduce the number of paid posts from around 1230 to nearer 900 posts. Presbyteries will be forced to make difficult decisions in the light of this hard fact. (In other words, some congregations will have to face union, linkage or dissolution).
If the church carries on as it is today and does nothing to address this situation then in 5 years time the reserves will be down to cover 6 months costs and in 7 years time, they will be exhausted. That’s by 2017.
If income increases by 1.5% above inflation it gives us another 2 years. If we reduce the minister’s income by 1% per annum for the next 5 years it gives us a further year and if we reduce the number of charges and ministry posts by 1.5% per year it gives us another 3 years.
While you take that in, let me say this is not the worst case scenario, This allows for giving to remain at levels comparable to what they are today, and with a little rise in inflation over the next 10 years. We were told that much of the income of the church is based on givings from retired people and that those who are retired now are the ones on better pensions than those who may retire in the next 10 years. It really is that serious.
Disturbed?
Me too. This is what I’ve given my working life to.
So where’s the blessing?
Well as I’ve thought about it I’ve come to realise that maybe the blessing in all of this is the death of Christendom.
What do I mean by that?
Well in the early years of the church, people knew very clearly that being a Christian was a way of life. It wasn’t about being a member on a piece of paper somewhere – it was a costly decision to live your life in community with other believers. Worshipping together, eating together, praying together, serving together. That’s what it meant to be a Christian. You couldn’t belong to the community and not be involved in that way. There were no half measures. No hangers-on. It was a counter-cultural movement and one that was often persecuted because its people thought and acted differently from the rest of society,
And then in 312AD Constantine – the Roman Emperor - converted to Christianity, and suddenly it was both safe and popular to be a Christian, in name at least.
Believers didn’t have to meet secretly in homes any longer. Great churches and cathedrals sprang up across the known world. Power bases were constructed and defended. Resources plundered and hoarded. Christianity became the norm. If you were born in a particular country, you were, de facto, a Christian. It was the beginning of nominalism. Christianity by default rather than by choice or by practice.
Before you knew it, Christianity had stopped being a movement and had become an institution. An enterprise. This was Christendom, and more often than not its ends were spread as much by the sword as by the preaching of the gospel. Witness the crusades. Witness the inquisition. Witness the rabid persecution of minorities. All in the name of the Christ who preached love for enemies. And hardly anyone saw the irony.
Now thank God that good seed grew up alongside the bad, but the truth is that the needs and diktats of Christendom ruled life on our continent for the last 16 centuries.
But we are the generation who are living through its demise. Since the mid 19th century the institutions have been crumbling. The established churches are being pushed to the margins. You’ve seen it happen. We’re becoming peripheral all over again. And some of us are saying AMEN to that.
Because the Magi found God, not in the corridors of power, or the hallowed halls, or the Jerusalem Temple. They found God at the margins. And maybe we’ll find him there too. Maybe this disturbance will finally focus our minds on what it really means to be a man or woman who follows Jesus Christ.
It will feel like death, but Godwilling it can also be a birth.
But for that birth to happen, our denomination, and others like it, will have to ask some hard questions.
We'll have to ask questions about our buildings.
Why is it that nationally, in these disturbing times for the church, tiny congregations cling to their decaying buildings instead of clinging more tightly to the God in whose name those buildings were raised? The church existed and thrived for its first three centuries without buildings. The persecuted churches in China met in secret for decades, moving from home to home, and their numbers grew exponentially. Are we discovering in this time of disturbance that rather than being the place or worship, our buildings are actually the object of our worship?
We'll have to ask questions about our commitment to worship.
The Presbytery of Edinburgh carried out a survey in March of last year and measured church attendance across the city on one particular Sunday. 11,000 people attended Church of Scotland worship out of a population of 450,000. 2.5% The vast majority of church members weren’t there.
Why is it that on a typical Sunday in our own congregation – and in relative terms we’re doing well! – ¾ of our membership is nowhere to be seen week after week?
And we'll have to ask questions about our financial commitment to the church.
Why is it that a typical Presbyterian Church in America, with a membership of 100, can afford to staff three full-time church workers? Preacher, pastor and youth worker. They all have them. I've known that for a while, but two American colleagues have confirmed it in the past month. And over here we’re looking at losing 330 ministers! What does that say about our financial commitment to the church? Where does the difference lie? In the fact that the majority of our American brothers and sisters tithe - it's as simple as that. They can do more because they give more.
So bring on the end of Christendom, I say. If that means a sharpening of vision, a deepening of commitment, a refocusing of priorities, a stripping of the deadwood, then bring it on. Because something has to change. We can't go on like this for much longer.
May God bring us a blessing in this time of disturbance.
And may God bring us out of the crumbling palaces of Christendom and lead us, by a kindly star, the extra nine miles to Bethlehem.
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