You don’t have to look very far to find issues in and around Gaza dominating the news. But you also won’t miss that quite a few of our UK politicians are making noises about these things too. There is, of course, the recent by-election that George Galloway won in Rochdale. Not only was his campaign dominated by the issue but his acceptance speech landed hard on it and his swearing into parliament also made mention of it. The Speaker of the House of Commons got in hot water over an opposition day motion concerning Gaza in which MPs argued over the wording of a motion that will have zero impact whatsoever in practice. Perhaps in the most ridiculous intervention of all, Oldham borough council passed a motion calling for an Israeli ceasefire, which no doubt really made Benjamin Netanyahu sit up a take notice. Never mind what Joe Biden or Rishi Sunak have to say, Oldham council have spoken!

One local councillor in Chorley, echoing the views of many in the face of such comments, had this to say:

Many in my own local area have repeatedly asked, ‘what has a ceasefire in Gaza got to do with Rochdale?’ That isn’t to say the issue is unimportant or doesn’t matter, but it is to say that many people wish they would put even half the energy they are channelling into calls for ceasefires that can and will make zero difference to the matter at hand into making the local bus service work and improving amenities that they very much have the power to do.

It is so easy to get taken up with things we can do nothing about and focus on matters that we have very little power to affect. It is tempting to focus on such things because our righteous calls for whatever we have deemed righteous can be made earnestly without any danger of having to do anything about it because we all know neither Hamas nor the Israeli government have so much as heard of Grove Parish Council and nobody thinks they have the ear of any of the main actors. So, they can pass their righteous motions with impunity, knowing that it will achieve nothing and nobody will hold them accountable for whatever happens. It is the very epitome of virtue signalling.

But worse, this sort of thing runs the risk of spending all our time focusing on things we cannot effect at the expense of the very things we can effect. Someone more cynical than me might suggest all these calls from local councils for ceasefires in Gaza might be designed to take everyone’s attention off the very real failures – such as councils filing for bankruptcy, ailing local services and the degradation of their local areas – for which they are specifically responsible. Even if you are less cynical, it doesn’t change the fact that Oldham isn’t in Israel and most people and calls for a ceasefire in a war in which we are not involved does nothing about the council tax rates and the bin collections that people specifically elect their local councils to deal with.

I am minded to think the church can fall into this same sort of trap. We can fall into it in a number of ways. It is entirely possible for us to spend our time talking about things we can do absolutely nothing about whilst ignoring the things we can actually resolve. Some would have us attempt to resolve all the material needs of our town – which we are not in any credible possible to actually fix – and fail to meaningfully share the gospel and make disciples which is entirely within our means and, indeed, the very thing we exist to do. It is easy to get taken up with things that are really not what we are there to do.

If not that, we can end up getting very excited about things that might well be good but just not primary. I was talking with somebody today about how people frequently get excited about the wrong things. We can spend all our time running meeting felt needs and providing for people’s material needs and yet fail to do the very thing we exist to do; share the gospel and make disciples. Even when we think we are making disciples, we frequently get excited about the showy bits and not the things that, though less impressive and exciting-looking, are far more likely to bear fruit over the long haul. We like the big event, the room full of Muslims coming in to hear the debate, rather than the small and largely unseen work of meeting people privately, over many months, away from the big meetings and slowly telling them about Jesus.

You name it, we Christians can get side-tracked by it. We may spend our time railing against politicians in the pulpit. Others want to have a go at the mainstream media. Others still are centred on social justice issues. Some say we should be about all manner of things. But in the end, we exist as churches – we have been saved by the Lord Jesus – in order to proclaim his excellencies to a lost world. We are saved to serve; we are to share Christ with a dying world and be about the work of making disciples who make disciples. But so often we do the equivalent of calling for Israeli ceasefires as the Handforth Parish Council. We focus on what nobody has called us to do, that we have limited if any power to change, and do so at the expense of the very things we have been tasked with doing by the electorate (in our case, the only one who elects).

Rather than getting side-tracked by these things, we must focus our time and energy on the work Jesus has called us to do. We must focus on the work of making disciples. Let us not get distracted with other things that vie for our attention. Let’s not be found making loud noises about things that, whilst potentially important, are not ultimate nor within our power to effect. Let us, unlike so many local councils, actually be about the work we have been elected to do and leave the other things to the only persons with any power to do anything about them, which is almost certainly not us! Our tendency to be distracted, and willingness to focus our time and energy on almost anything else, is not for the good of the kingdom. Let us keep our focus where it should be, on the task we have been given to do and the things we are uniquely in a position effect.