Rev. Steven Davis's picture

Rev. Steven Davis

image

Why We Gather - September 11 2011 sermon

 

Therefore, my friends, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that He opened for us through the curtain (that is, through His flesh), and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for He Who has promised is faithful. And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching. (Hebrews 10:19-25)
 
     I see them all the time. It doesn't seem to matter what time of year it is: summer, winter, spring or fall. It doesn't seem to matter what the temperature is: -30 or +30. It doesn't seem to matter what the conditions are: rain, snow, wind or sun. None of that seems to make any difference at all, because I still see them: in a driveway, usually on roller blades, with a hockey stick in hand and a net set up and a tennis ball at their feet. Kids all alone, shooting the tennis ball over and over again into that gaping, empty net. I see them all the time. And I get it. I used to be one of those kids too. In a way, it was great. I mean, when you're all alone with an empty net in front of you, it's pretty easy to score. When there's no goalie to make the saves and no defencemen to try to stop you, scoring is pretty simple. Back in those days when I'd play hockey all by myself I'm quite convinced that I put enough of those tennis balls into the net to rival Phil Esposito or Guy Lafleur (or, for those more attuned to the modern game, Alex Ovechkin or Sidney Crosby.) The truth is that even Wayne Gretzky's 92 goal season was nothing compared to what I was able to do with that empty net! But, as I look back on it, for all the goals I scored into those empty nets, something important was missing. There was little sense of accomplishment; or, at the very least, there was a sense that something was missing and that more should have been happening. When I think about it, I have to face an ugly truth. I was never Phil Esposito. I might have had a hockey stick in my hands and a net to shoot at, but I wasn't really playing hockey. I was just playing with a hockey stick and a net. You see, to play hockey you need to have other players playing with you and even against you. Otherwise it's not playing hockey. It's just playing.
 
     “Why should I go to church? I can find God just as easily in the woods, or when I'm fishing, or when I'm looking at the clouds or when I gaze at a sunset.” I've heard those words so many times from so many people over the years. “I don't have to go to church to find God.” It's a perfectly valid statement. You don't have to go to church to find God. In fact, I'm perfectly willing to admit that sometimes going to church might even obscure your view of God a little bit. You see, the God we find in the woods or while we're fishing or while we're looking at clouds or gazing at the sunset is the perfect vision of God – that's God as we want God to be – nothing more and nothing less, asking of us only what we're already willing to give. The God we encounter in the church is a vision of God inevitably distilled and distorted through the attitudes and actions and words of God's undeniably imperfect people. The God we encounter in the church is a God whose power is sometimes blunted by seemingly endless and perhaps even meaningless rituals and traditions and whose love is often obscured by the church people who sometimes don't get along with each other very well. So why should you go to church when you can find God anywhere – because God is, of course, everywhere! 
 
     It's a good question. One of the fastest growing religious groups in our society today is the self-described “spiritual but not religious” group – a direct outgrowth of the question; one of the answers to the question. I'm spiritual but not religious because I have a relationship with God but I don't bother going to church. But what if the theory behind the concept is wrong? “I don't have to go to church to find God” is true – but it presupposes, doesn't it, that the point of going to church is to “find God.” A man once saw someone sitting on a park bench and said to him “brother, have you found God?” And the man on the bench replied, “Found Him? I didn't even know He was lost!” God's not lost, and we don't go to church to find God. I daresay that actually most people go to church not to find God but because God has found them. I suspect that few people with no faith at all simply show up in a church one day and say “convince me!” They show up in church because God has been gnawing at them, eating away at their souls and nibbling at the edges of their doubts until they finally notice and decide to respond in some way. So you don't come here to find God. But if you don't, then why bother? 
 
     You're here because church is not about “finding God.” It's about becoming a part of God's people; it's about being introduced to God's family – in all its diversity, with all its warts, with children who cry and scream, with old people who fade away and die and with some people who are often just trying to hold it all together. That's church. That's what you find. That's what God calls you to when God calls you to faith. You see, to be a Christian who finds God in the woods and never or rarely connects with the church is kind of like being a kid shooting a tennis ball into an empty net. The kid is playing, but he's not playing hockey, because playing hockey needs people and not just a person. Being a Christian isn't a solitary vocation. A couple of months ago in the magazine “Christianity Today” Timothy Gombis wrote that “a s individuals, we have been saved for life-giving relationships within Kingdom of God communities, not merely for privatized walks with Jesus. We become our true selves only in community, exercising our gifts and learning to receive the gifts of others.”
 
     If one takes the time to read the story of Jesus, one finds that Jesus did not call people to faith and then send them off on their own to do with that faith whatever they would choose to do. Jesus called disciples into communities - Jesus didn't create people to walk their own paths. Jesus called a people who would be His people and who would together bear witness to Him. In Matthew 18:20, Jesus stressed the importance of community with the words “For where two or three are gathered in My name, I am there among them.” What a curious statement at first glance. Was Jesus saying that He isn't with us always; that He's not with us when we're alone. Of course not, but what He is saying is that only in community is the Body of Christ really tangible. As individuals we're only our own bodies, but as Christians we're collectively the Body of Christ. That's supremely important to understanding why we gather.
 
     Today's passage from Hebrews offered us the instruction that we not neglect “to meet together,” and it explains why we shouldn't neglect “to meet together” and this goes a long way toward explaining why we come to church if it's not to “find God.” In the words of the author, we are “to provoke one another to love and good deeds” and we are to be about the business of “encouraging one another.” We cannot do these things if we aren't together, if we don't gather together, if we don't spend time together. The church is not the place where we find God – the church is the place where we encounter God's people. It's only in being with one another and working with one another and worshiping with one another and encouraging one another and provoking “one another to love and good deeds” that we are able to truly and fully live out our calling as disciples of Jesus Christ and as good stewards of all the gifts that our generous and merciful God gives us – the God we find in the woods and on the water and in the mountains and in the clouds and in the sunset and on the golf course and in all of those other wonderful places where God does touch our daily lives. But finding God isn't enough and experiencing God isn't enough. It's what we do together – it's the “love and good deeds” of God's people – that ultimately bear perhaps the strongest witness to the importance of God. I want Christian community  (genuine Christian community) to be the hallmark of the life of Central United Church. That means not just gathering for a couple of hours every Sunday but it means using our time together to encourage one another to move beyond this time of worship, outside the walls of this building and beyond just this collection of people and opening ourselves to the work God wants us to do. That's why we gather – because these are things we can do so much more effectively together than apart. It's said that during the debates on American independence in 1776, Benjamin Franklin said to the Continental Congress as he spoke in favour of a motion that would require all the members of the Congress to sign their names to the Declaration of Independence, “if we do not hang together we shall surely hang separately.” Together as God's people, great things can be accomplished by us; separately as individual people of God our work and our witness is less than it could and should be.
 
     Lillian Daniel is the Senior Minister of the First Congregational Church in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. In a recent devotional she wrote for the United Church of Christ, she said “Being privately spiritual but not religious just doesn't interest me. There is nothing challenging about having deep thoughts all by oneself. What is interesting is doing this work in community, where other people might call you on stuff, or heaven forbid, disagree with you. Where life with God gets rich and provocative is when you dig deeply into a tradition that you did not invent all for yourself.” Amen to that! In fact, it's a bit like playing hockey all by yourself. You might feel like Phil Esposito or Sidney Crosby for a little while, until you realize that Phil Esposito and Sidney Crosby are only Phil Esposito and Sidney Crosby because they had other people to play with. As the author of Hebrews said, “let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another ...” It's only by doing that that we even being to experience the height and depth and breadth of the faith God has so graciously given us.
 
Share this

Comments

waterfall's picture

waterfall

image

I absolutely love your sermon! ( I needed a kick in the pants) Thankyou.