What Are We Doing Here, Anyway?

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.