Message from Tim

 

What really counts?

I hope you will all do your civic duty and take part in the census on Sunday. When Sue looked into our family tree the other year, census records were invaluable in terms of tracking people down. At least you can take part in this census without leaving home, unlike Joseph when Mary was expecting her baby. Still, that did mean that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, fulfilling ancient prophecies about where the Messiah would be born. God works in mysterious ways…

In ancient Israel, taking a census seems to have been a hazardous operation. According to Exodus 30:12-16, everyone counted in a census had to pay a half a shekel ransom to atone for their life. Although that just sounds like a really good way of raising revenue (you missed a trick there, Rishi!), the official reason was that this would avert the risk of plague. No one knows why taking a census was such a dangerous business, but when David took it upon himself to number Israel, the land was devastated by a plague (2 Samuel 24) – was he negligent in failing to levy the ransom money? It is not an easy passage to understand. Maybe the problem with taking a census was that God had said that Abraham’s descendants would be too many to count – he certainly seems to have been pleased when Solomon asked for wisdom and a discerning heart to enable him to govern a people who were too numerous to count or number (2 Kings 3:8).

On the other hand, the Book of Numbers gets its name from the opening command God gives Moses to take a census of the nation, which he duly does and arrives at what many people regard as the implausibly high total of 603,550 fighting men – when you factor in the women and children you could be looking at a total of 2 million people! Forty years later (Numbers 26), the census yields a total of 601,730 fighting men – but it looks like the tribe of Simeon suffered really badly in the four plagues that afflicted the nation, because their numbers are down by more than 37,000… All of which suggests that the saying about lies and statistics was as applicable in those days as it is now.

As pastor at Brighton Road, I sometimes ask myself how important it is to measure church attendance. Should I be counting the sheep? To what extent is church a numbers game? How encouraged should I be that we have hundreds of people connected to Brighton Road? How concerned should I be at the number of us who are elderly? How many people will return to church as restrictions lift? How much does any of this matter?

I was reminded the other day that God told Gideon to keep just 300 men from the army of 32,000 he raised to fight the Midianites, so it is clearly quality, not quantity which counts (Judges 7). And that observation might help us understand why, in Matthew’s version of the parable of the sower, the good seed produces crops of diminishing quantity – a hundred, sixty or just thirty-fold… Perhaps it is significant that thirty was the number in King David’s elite squad of fighting men. What really makes a difference is who you have working with you, not how many. Or again, I think of King Saul being puzzled as to why the Philistines were suddenly fleeing in every direction. Counting his own men, he found that just two – his son Jonathan and Jonathan’s armour bearer – were missing. Between the pair of them they instigated a rout of the Philistine army, because Jonathan believed that the Lord would work for them, and his armour bearer said he would be with him ‘heart and soul’ (1 Samuel 14:7).

So, it can’t be about the numbers. If it were, we would end up relying on our own measurable resources, rather than upon the immeasurable, unquantifiable grace and power of God. God chooses to work in partnership with us by channelling his grace and power through our lives. He looks for people who will respond to his call by saying, ‘Count me in.’

Is he calling you?