Much has been written about religious affiliation since the publication of the UK 2021 census results. There are many ways to interpret the numbers. For what it is worth, I think the numbers support what we know to be true, with an interesting overlay. Is it not the case that this time, at last, more people have been honest about what they really think? Instead of ticking a box claiming to be notionally Christian, honesty has taken over. Humbling as it is for Christians to admit it, we are not as important in the scheme of things as we may have liked to think before. Or, not as important to our peers anyway.
Last weekend we remembered a former census. Mary and Joseph had to travel to Bethlehem to register because that was the rule. You went back to the home of your ancestors to be counted. Away from the place in which they now lived, Mary and Joseph needed a place to stay where the heavily pregnant Mary could be comfortable. Jesus, therefore, was born in a manager in a stable in the city of David and would count as being descended from the great King David.
Prophesy was fulfilled in that humble birth but now, I suspect, most people think of Jesus as what he grew to become, not where he came from. So then in 2021, people have recorded what they have become, and not where they came from, notionally, as I venture to suggest had been the case in past censuses. Later, Jesus died and for many of his peers, was not important.
All that is to view what matters through the eyes of a world busy with living today. As we look forward to 2023 and wonder what it holds, let us remind ourselves that there is more to living than the here and now.
Saint Paul wrote in Philippians 2:5-11 that Jesus humbled himself temporarily to later to rise to far greater glory than his Davidic line of descent may have entitled him to. Caroline Noel put it, in verse 2 of the hymn alluding to this passage, that he was ‘humbled for a season’, but concluded in verse 5, that he will return again as King of Glory bearing on his brow the ‘wreathes of empire’.
Those wreathes take many forms, frequently involving the humbling of self-important people. The 2021 census results are one such and yes, while we may feel humbled, we religious people, to use the census term, know what matters – and what matters is not the temporary numbers game, however you cut those numbers.
Go forward in faith and a happy New Year to you all.
Prayer
Loving God, you know me, who I am and what I am. I know that you value my life and I pray that nothing may be more important to me than that knowledge and the service of you that flows from it. Amen.