Let me lay out my approach for you this morning. I
have a question I want to answer – the question in the sermon title, to which I
will suggest some beginning answers. Finally, we come to the texts we read and
listen to them in light of this basic question. So, let’s start with the
question: What are we doing here, anyway?
Many years ago in India, a man named Waskom Pickett
researched this question among Indian Christians. He asked them why they had
become Christians and joined the church. He found that some of them became
Christians for social reasons – they were looking for friends and for marriage
partners, and they joined the church as part of their search. Some of them
became Christians for economic reasons – they knew that the church would help
them find a job and other economic help. Some of them became Christians for
spiritual reasons – they were looking for the truth about God and life, and
they found that truth in Christian faith and in the church.
Curiously, the reason that people gave for becoming
a Christian had little to do with how serious and sincere their faith was.
Whatever reason they had for coming to Christian faith, those who gave themselves
completely to Christ and the church grew in their faith to real maturity.
Social – Economic – Spiritual
We live in a different time than Waskom Pickett
did. He was studying a surge of Indians coming to Christian faith in the 1930s.
We live in a place and time when people are drifting away from church.
Sociologists studying patterns of church attendance have a name for such people
– they are “the dones”. A recent article in Christianity Today noted
that Baby Boomers and Generation X are leaving the church faster than any other
group. That means that people between ages 40 and 75 are wondering why they
should keep attending church. They are just “done”.
This state of affairs leads us to ask why people
are leaving, the reverse of Pickett’s question (why people are coming). We have
time today only to consider the question of why people come to church. The same
basic answers apply today as were true in Pickett’s day. Some come for help.
They are in economic or social or some other kind of trouble, and they come to
the church. Some come for friends. They find a group of people who help them
feel at home. Some come for spiritual reasons. They believe that Jesus is the
Son of God and that worshipping God means praying in a church.
We could reword these responses like this: People
come to church for friendship, for help, and for worship. To put it more
simply, these responses boil down to two basic responses. The first is that we
need community – we need other people, and the congregation is a good place to
find other people. The second is that we need God, and the church is a good
place to find God.
Worship and Community
You notice of course that the church is not the
only place that we find God or that we find other people. If all you need is
other people, any voluntary association will do, from curling in the winter to
playing chess in a chess club. I like chess, and I have found friendship in
Zimbabwe, Australia, and Indiana by going to the local club to play with other
people who like chess.
Similarly, if all you need is God, you can worship
God in many places, not just in church. This is what’s behind the feeling that some
people have. They say, “I don’t need to go to church to worship God. I can
worship God in my living room with an online church or spending time out in
nature.”
It is true that we can worship God in many
different places. I remember a dark night I spent lost in the woods of
Pennsylvania about 53 years ago – May 28, 1969. I remember the date well! I
remember watching the light growing as dawn came. I started walking towards the
light and found myself in a cathedral-like setting with the sun glowing through
the leaves and branches around me, lighting up the grass and undergrowth around
me. It was incredibly beautiful, and after a night of fear and darkness, I
experienced God’s presence in a wonderful way. You better believe it: You can
worship God in nature!
So, if you can find friendship in a curling club
and worship God in your living room, what do we need church for?
A Worshipping Community
Go back to the three elements I suggested we find
in church: friendship, help when we’re in trouble, and a place to worship God.
Church is the one place on earth where we find all three brought together. We
need all three. If all we need is help when we’re in trouble, government can provide
a program for that. If all we need is friendship when we’re lonely, clubs are
good for finding friends. If all we need is worship, we can worship God
anywhere.
The truth is we need all three – friendship and
help and worship. Consider worship: Solitary worship is good and necessary, but
it is what it sounds like: Solitary. We need to worship with God’s people. Compare
solitary worship to another shared experience in our culture: Hockey. If you’re
a Jets fan, you can enjoy watching a Jets game in your own living room – at
least when they win. But how much better is it to watch it in your living room
with three or four good friends, especially if they’re playing the Leafs and
one of your friends is a Leafs fan. How much better is it to watch the game
with 10,000 other fans in the MTS Centre. The shared experience really is
better than the solitary experience.
Similarly, you can have a real experience of God’s
presence when you are alone. I hope you do. Such experiences are really
important. But how much better is it to come together with a care group and
pray together over the needs and concerns of our lives. Even better is to
gather together with the whole congregation. The big gatherings of such events
as Mennonite World Conference are cream on the top of a wonderful dessert.
To expand the food metaphor, we need the full meal
of friendship and help and worship, mixed together in an ongoing buffet for our
spiritual and emotional and mental nourishment. We need to worship God
together, to meet God together, to be filled with God’s Holy Spirit as the
community of God’s People.
When I think of my own life experience, I think of
all of these kinds of experiences. I enjoy going out for breakfast with good
Christian brothers who support me when I am discouraged. I have benefitted by
praying with my brothers and sisters in a care group. I have found help from my
small group when trying to decide what the next step should be in life’s
journey. I have been swept up in a throng of people praying and worshipping God
together. Help, friendship, and worship go together to nourish me in my whole
life.
Believing and Belonging
Another way of thinking of this subject is to
consider the idea of believing and belonging in church life. Sometimes, we
insist that everyone believes the whole Christian message in order to become
part of the church. We think that believing the truth leads to belonging in the
church, so we ask people to affirm that they believe what we believe. That’s
why we have membership classes and instruct people in what they should believe.
What I have been saying this morning suggests
another path that many have discovered. Often, belonging leads to believing.
Someone finds friendship or help in the church, and as they belong to the
group, they start to believe what the church teaches.
I suggest that both paths are acceptable. C.S.
Lewis is an example of someone who came to the church by believing before he
could belong. He was an atheist who gradually came to the realization that God
exists, and then that Jesus is the Son of God. This growing belief led him to
the church. But the more common path is that friendships and belonging create a
space in which we can explore and adopt Christian faith as our own. That is
what Waskom Pickett found in his study of Indian Christians a hundred years
ago, and that is true today for most Canadians and Americans.
Excursus: We don’t have
our usual growing deeper class today because of the long weekend. Here are four
questions that you can use for your own process of going deeper as you reflect
on the morning sermon:
1) Why do you come to church? (Everyone’s reason is a little different)
2) What would you miss if you didn’t have church? (Some say, “Nothing”,
which leads to the next question – and which is a problem we should take
seriously)
3) What could we/should we do in church that would make our worship more
meaningful?
4) How would you invite a friend to join you in church?
Finally, Our Texts!
We can think of these three elements as a set of
concentric circles: Help and Friendship in the two outer circles, and Worship in
the centre circle. Like a bullseye. However we come to it, worship is at the
centre of our experience as God’s people. The texts we read describe that
centre.
Psalm 67 describes worship that is rooted in the
gifts God gives us, gifts of salvation from our enemies, justice for our lives,
and provision of food for daily lives. We thank God in our worship for God’s
good gifts of life, food, and friends.
It is a useful exercise to write down or make a
list of all that God has given us. For good harvests (we pray for them this
year!) to a job worth working at, for family and friends who gather round us,
for life and freedom in our society, we worship and praise God. The Psalm
doesn’t make this connection, but such lists lead me also to repentance. When
we misuse God’s good gifts, we repent and say sorry. We repent and recognize
our need to change and live the way that God wants us to live.
Revelation 21 and 22 present a picture of the end
of time, the goal of all our living. This goal shapes the way we live now,
showing us what is really true and how we should shape our lives today. The
picture is of a city, showing us that ultimate reality is social, lived with
other people. The city has no church building, because the church building is
meant to point to God. That’s why some churches have a spire – to point towards
God. But God is there in fullness. We can see God and need no building to
remind us of God. In the same way, God is the light of the city, so that other
sources of light are no longer needed.
To put it another way, God is the centre and source
of life. All creatures, indeed, all creation praise and worship God perfectly
and fully. All that makes life bitter and difficult in this life is erased. The
river of life and the tree of life are there – symbols to show us that this is
a place of full and perfect life and joy.
Revelations uses images to paint a picture of
perfection. If we try to work out exactly what we will be doing in this place
of perfection, we miss the point. It is beyond our ability to understand what
it looks and feels like. All we can say is that it is perfect joy and delight,
and that God is at the centre. We worship God now because our lives are moving
towards the perfection of God’s eternity.
Conclusion
It’s time to wrap this up. Have you ever been in a
worship service that you come out saying, “A foretaste of Heaven!” That doesn’t
mean that Heaven will be one long sermon or an endless choir – Heaven forbid!
It does mean that at the centre of reality is a perfection of joy and goodness
that we can approach best together.
You never know when God will come to you most
clearly. Perhaps it is in a solitary moment, as I experienced walking through
the woods at dawn. Perhaps it is in a gathered moment. I remember August 1992.
It was the gathering of the church in Zimbabwe for our general conference. We
were moving from Zimbabwe to the USA, and I knew I would probably never live in
Africa again. I was leaving my birthplace behind. In a sense, I was leaving my
heart behind, and I was grieving. I found it hard to leave my home and move to
North America, and I didn’t know how to process that sadness. That night the
conference met for worship, and a preacher named Shadrack Maloka started
preaching. I don’t remember what he said, but I do remember him suddenly
starting to sing, “Mayenziwe intando yakho.” The words of Jesus as he went to
the cross and also words from the Lord’s Prayer, “Your will be done.” As a
thousand voices around me sang, I wept and found the strength also to say,
“Your will be done.”
Leaving home was hard, but it was also good.
Worship and fellowship helped me to integrate my life and put things together.
Why do we go to church? To put our lives together with our friends and through
worship and praise of the God who is at the centre of everything.
Steinbach Mennonite Church
22 May 2022
Scriptures
Psalm 67
1 May God be
gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us, 2 that
your way may be known upon earth, your saving power among all nations.
3 Let the peoples
praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you. 4 Let
the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you judge the peoples with equity and
guide the nations upon earth. 5 Let the peoples praise
you, O God; let all the peoples praise you.
6 The earth has
yielded its increase; God, our God, has blessed us. 7 May
God continue to bless us; let all the ends of the earth revere him.
Revelation
21:10
10 And in the
spirit he carried me away to
a great, high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of
heaven from God.
Revelation
21:22-22:5
22 I saw no temple
in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. 23 And
the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its
light, and its lamp is the Lamb. 24 The nations
will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into
it. 25 Its gates will never be shut by day—and
there will be no night there. 26 People will bring
into it the glory and the honor of the nations. 27 But
nothing unclean will enter it, nor anyone who practices abomination or
falsehood, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.
22 Then the
angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing
from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 through
the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree
of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month,
and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. 3 Nothing
accursed will be found there anymore. But the throne of God and of the Lamb
will be in it, and his servants will worship him; 4 they
will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. 5 And
there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord
God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.
