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I can’t help but imagine what the twelve disciples must have thought and felt at this point in the journey. They had left everything behind to follow this wandering, parable teaching, miracle working preacher who was proclaiming by everything he said and did that the Kingdom of God was at hand. They themselves had even healed the sick and cast out demons. They had traveled a long way in their three years together. But something changed just a month or so earlier after Peter confessed that Jesus was indeed the Messiah. Jesus stopped wandering from village to village and started off directly towards Jerusalem. The healings became fewer and far between. He taught less except to tell them they needed to be like children if they wanted to be in the Kingdom of God and that humbly serving one another is what would make a person great in the Kingdom. Mostly, when Jesus did break the silence, it was to say that in Jerusalem the authorities would mock him and put him to death.
The day came when they finally arrived in Jerusalem. Mark said the crowd following Jesus was greatly afraid. No one knew what to expect…and then it started. Jesus sent two of the disciples to get him a donkey (the most impressive and regal of all steeds) and he rode it into town just like a king would. (It was also likely that Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, was coming into Jerusalem about the same time mounted on a warhorse and surrounded by a legion of soldiers.) No war started. No armies of angels came. Jesus just went to the temple and looked around. As it was late, they left Jerusalem and went to Bethany to spend the night.
The next day they returned to the temple and Jesus cursed a fig tree for appearing to be fruit bearing when it wasn’t. Jesus got angry and ran the money changers and livestock vendors out of the table. This angered the powers that be and they started looking for a way to kill. Again, Jesus and his motley crowd left Jerusalem for the night.
The next day on the way back to Jerusalem the disciples noticed that the fig tree Jesus had cursed was withered. He told them to believe in God and they could command mountains to move…but make sure you forgive everyone you need to forgive before you pray or your heavenly Father won’t forgive you. Jesus spent the day successfully debating the religious authorities. Then they sat down in front of the temple treasury to watch the people give. Amid a charade of rich people throwing in large donations that cost them nothing, a widow put in her last two cents. Jesus made note of her gift and they got up and left again.
Coming out of the temple, one of the disciples looked back and taking note of this wonderful old building he said to Jesus, “Look Teacher, what massive stones and what magnificent buildings!” like any of us would do upon seeing a beautiful old church or one of those new Christian worship centers complete with a gymnasium and a coffee shop in the lobby. Unimpressed, Jesus replied in a rather peculiar way as if he hadn’t even heard the disciple saying, “Do you see these great buildings?” It was as if there was something the disciple was supposed to understand, but weren’t getting it. “Not one stone will be left here upon another; every one will be thrown down!”
Well, that shut everybody up for a couple of hours; until after they climbed the Mount of Olives and sat and stared across the valley of tombs towards the temple. It seemed Jesus during those last days and hours rather preferred to sit and stare at things, rather than to be a man of action. The silence finally ended when the four senior elders asked Jesus, “When will all this happen? Will there be a sign to look for?” I think they are really wanting to ask, “What are you sitting around watching and waiting for? What sign are you looking for? When is the show going to start? Messiah, when are you going to take your throne and commence your reign?”. Jesus gave his classic reply, “Beware that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name saying, ‘I am’ and they will lead many astray.”
If I were one of the disciples at that moment, I believe the irony of the moment would have been a little too much. I would have had to say to him, “it seems that is exactly what you, Jesus of Nazareth, have done with us and here we have left everything behind to follow you. How foolish could we be?” That disillusion would have gotten even worse after Jesus was crucified. Was he himself really the one who was just leading them astray?
“Beware that no one leads you astray.” What an ironic thing to say at that moment. You would think he would say something like, “The sky will catch fire. An army of angels will cleanse the city. The dead in these tombs will rise and then we will go down and I will take my place as Messiah and establish the Kingdom.” No, he basically says, “It’s going to be a while, there will be disasters and wars, they will suffer on his account but the Holy Spirit will be with them, political beasts are going to do heinous things, imposters will come in his name. No one knows when the end will be. Just don’t let yourselves be led astray by people who claim they can do the things that only I can do. Keep awake.” I have to ask: why, at that moment, didn’t the disciples just walk away? It seems Jesus is riding his pony on a boat out on the sea or something. Why didn’t they just walk away saying, “Done!”?
A related question for us today would be why, in a culture where less than ten percent of the population regularly goes to church. It was 67% just after WWII. There’s a trend here and why aren’t we, you and I, following it? Here’s some recent numbers. In 2001 77.1% of the population checked the Christian box on the census. In 2011 it went down to 67.3% and in 2021 53.3% and just less than 20% of those still participate. I suspect that in 3031 the percentage will be in the low 30%. It is likely the decline correlates to the death by old age rate among the general population. The older generation is dying and the church along with it. The younger crowd doesn’t want anything to do with organized religion of any kind. In the midst of that, the percentage of those with no religious affiliation has crept over the 30% mark and is growing fast and most of these are people who have left the church in the last 20 years. Dones become nones.
Here’s something else to think about – ministers leaving the ministry. In 2022 roughly 42% of ministers said were thinking about leaving the ministry. Stress, loneliness, and political division were the three highest cited reasons. It may be comforting to know that only 1% of ministers per year actually leave the ministry (Lifeway Research). But not comforting and this may be hearsay, in the Presbyterian Church in Canada last May only three of the people who graduated from our three seminaries were looking to go into pastoral ministry. All the while there’s a huge shortage of clergy as so many churches are too small to afford a minister.
And about churches getting small, prior to Covid the national average of church closures was one per week. I can guarantee you that the reason for those closures had little to nothing to do with people throwing their hands in the air and saying we don’t believe anymore. If churches were businesses those small churches would have been closed decades ago. The question to ask is not why they are closing. That answer is obvious; old age. The question to ask is why small churches persist for so long. Why do people such as yourselves persist in coming back week after week?
Back to the Disciples, they didn’t walk away but rather stayed for everything that came next except for when Jesus got arrested. They stayed because they had been with Jesus through so much and had seen him do things only God could and they had done some of these healings and exorcisms themselves. They didn’t know what nor when the final coming of the Kingdom would be but they knew Jesus was for real and so they stayed. It wasn’t just a matter of personal belief.
Looking at ministers again. Why do ministers not leave the ministry even though they think about it? We know we’re called. We’ve been around long enough to know the real hope that God really does work all things to the good for those who love him and that the things we go through aren’t for naught. God uses them to shape our character to be more like Jesus and so we endure. Though this is a lonely job, we know we are not alone. We sense God’s presence and hear the still small voice. If something happens to hurt us, well for me, I know there are shoulders among my colleagues and in each of these congregations that I can and have cried on. If I’m feeling lonely and getting down on myself, I just start making pastoral phone calls and have a laugh and catch up. Moreover, there have just been too many things happen in my life that I can point to and say, “God did that.” I know that Jesus is real and what he’s doing in this world through the presence and power of the Holy Spirit until he comes is real. Satan tries to shake me on that but to no avail.
So, how about you folks? When everybody around you has all but walked away from Jesus and the church, why are you still here? I think it’s because you know your Jesus. He’s made his presence, his love, his hope real to you. In a way unique to each of you, you also feel called. The church is going through a down period now, a period of transformation. It’s like Jesus has said, “There’s not a church building here that’s not going to be left empty.” That very well may be the case. Who knows? The one thing I know for certain, is he is still with us. But I also sense that the future of the church lies not in how well we do things inside the church that the church has always done. We need to do those things out there. Now more than ever we have to focus on how we go about reflecting Jesus to our neighbours, families, and out in the community. We love each other deeply inside these walls. We need to do the same outside these walls as best we can all the while inviting people to come. Amen.
