Doing Church 1 - Gather (Hebrews 10:23-25)

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Why does it make sense for us to ‘go to church?’ Why is it a logical human thing to do? 

Whether you are a Christian, or not yet; whether you feel like maybe you used to be but you're not so sure anymore; whether you believe that humanity evolved from primordial forms or that humanity was shaped intentionally in the image of God by God... I think we can agree on a few things: that humans are people of time, humans are people of place, and humans are people of people.  

First, we are people of time. It has been joked that time is God's way of keeping everything from happening at once, but it doesn't always work. We live in time as one of the dimensions through which we move. Time, from a human perspective, should be simple. It should be logical. It should move mostly at the same perceived pace in the same direction. But sometimes, as humans, we make sense best of time not as an eternity stretching out from point A to point B and beyond, but when we address it in cycles and in rhythms.  

We build rhythms into our music: 1234 1234 1234. We breathe rhythms every day with the sunrise and the sunset, and every year with winter, spring, summer, autumn. We are bound by rhythms in our bodies: waking, working, sleeping—hungering and eating and hungering again.  

And we are blessed by rhythms in our spirits.  

This has always been true of humanity. After Noah's flood had receded and people were back on dry ground, beginning to live their lives again, God made a promise. He created a covenant with humanity and part of that covenant was: 

As long as the earth endures,[cycles of] seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, will never cease. (Genesis 8:22) 

That rhythm of time is part of God's promise to us.  

Even further back to the garden of Eden: 

Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because on that day He rested from all the work of creation that He had accomplished. (Genesis 2: 3) 

Later in God's story with His people Israel, when Moses shared the ten commandments, that foundational law, God said to His people: 

Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labour and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. (Exodus 20:8-10) 

In the New Testament, Jesus taught about Sabbath: 

Then Jesus declared, “The Sabbath was made for the human, not a person for the Sabbath...”  (Mark 2:27) 

This rhythm of days is made for us, and we for it. The rhythm of days is God's gift to us. One day out of seven to rest. And not just to put our feet up, not just to procrastinate until Monday; this day of rest is time to remind ourselves of where we came from. Time to focus on God. Time to invest in our faith and our relationship with Him so that when we take up our work again, we do so having God's presence fresh in our minds. 

Very early in the church after the New Testament writings had been completed, another document was written, containing guidelines and instructions for churches: 

Every Lord's day (every Sunday), gather yourselves together. Break bread, give thanksgiving after having confessed so that your thanks-giving may be pure.  (Didache, Chapter 14) 

This is in our DNA: taking one day in seven to focus on God, and to rest. Sabbath rhythm is a chance for us to pause. To come together. To remember. To share. To confess. To forgive to be forgiven... Until next time.  

When we sit in church, we sit still in time—with no fast forward, no pausing the preacher in mid-sentence so you can go to the fridge.  

We sit still in this space where there are no ads. No politics. There is simply the Church, focusing on the One who gave us life together.   

We are made for the rhythm of Sabbath rest and for Sabbath worship, so that when we begin again we begin well.  

We go to church because we are people of time.  

Second, we go to church because we are people of place.  

Humans have always had sacred spaces set apart for encountering what we cannot see or touch, but that we know is there. In the prehistory and ancient worlds, those sacred spaces were hill tops and temples. You knew it was a temple, because when you went in, you found there the image of a god.  

Just like Eden’s garden, which is recognized pretty much universally by theologians and scholars as being a temple—a forerunner of the Temple in Jerusalem—which itself foreshadowed the eternal reality of all creation as a temple: a place occupied and ruled by the image-bearers (that's us) of Yahweh God.  

A sacred place is a place where I'm not in charge. It's a place that I can't change to suit my personality. That I can't design and decorate with my preferences. Yes, I have encountered God on the beach and in my car and (no word of a lie) Value Village. God will meet us anywhere. But, Church, we are called out. We are called to make the effort to come and meet Him together in places we set apart for those encounters.  

I love this story: 

There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a blazing fire from within a bush. Moses saw the bush ablaze with fire, but it was not consumed. So Moses thought, “I must go over and see this marvellous sight. Why is the bush not burning up?” When the LORD saw that he had gone over to look, God called out to him from within the bush, “Moses, Moses!” “Here I am,” he answered. “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” (Exodus 3:2-4) 

I love this story: Moses' first real encounter with Yahweh God, that kicked off so much of what happened next. Moses saw a shrub that was burning, but not being consumed by the fire. It sparked his curiosity and he came to see. As he came close to the burning bush, he heard God say to him, “Moses, take off your shoes. You are on holy ground.” This was a sacred space that God had carved out, in which He could meet with Moses. It may be that taking off your shoes in the presence of the King was just a culturally appropriate gesture of respect. But I can't help noticing that the net effect of Moses taking off his shoes while he was standing on holy ground is that it brought him in direct contact with that holy ground. Nothing between him and God's sacred space. And when he put his shoes back on, he would have carried some of that dust with him back into his work.  

The Church has always met in sacred spaces. We go to church because we are people of place.  

Third, we are people of people.  

Let’s look again at a story we read a few weeks ago... the story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus.  

It was the very day of Jesus’ resurrection, and these folks had left Jerusalem, heading back towards their home. They were disciples of Jesus, and He was dead. They were confused. They didn't know what was going on. They needed to go home.  

Jesus met them on the road as they were heading away from Jerusalem. He met them on the road and He walked with them away from Jerusalem. But when they realized whose presence they had been in, when they realized the meaning of the things that He had been telling them, what did they do? They turned around and they went back to Jerusalem. I wonder if it's not the case that Jesus chose to spend that day that way, going out of His way to walk down that road with those two people on that day, simply because they were the ones who had left. Everybody else was where they were supposed to be. Everybody else was, yeah, confused and scared and scratching their heads and wondering what on earth do we do next? But they were together. These two had gone off on their own and I would argue that, just as Jesus teaches in the parable of the good shepherd: 

...if one of them goes astray, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go out to search for the one that is lost? (Matthew 18:12) 

Jesus came looking for them so they would know that they needed to return.  

We need each other. Going back again to the garden of Eden:  

The Lord God said, “It is not good for the human to be alone. I will make a helper (partner, rescuer) suitable for him.”  (Genesis 2:18)

 We need each other—encouraging, correcting, reconciling. We need each other—praying for healing, celebrating, grieving. We need each other—to help tell the difference between truth and deception. We need each other to remind us of Whose we are. Of who we are, and of where we are invited to go. 

We go to church because we are people of time, because we are people of place and because we are people of His people.  

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In Hebrews 10, we read the words:  

Let us not neglect or abandon meeting together, as some have made, a habit of doing.

I'm glad the writer used the word ‘habit.’ A habit is something that is not the default, but is something that we either choose to do or that we have fallen into doing and that has stuck. 

Breathing is not a habit. Smoking is a habit.  

The author of Hebrews reminds us that gathering together is not a habit—it's a part of who we are. We are God’s people, "called out from our homes into some public place" in the name of Christ.

The writer reminds us that staying away is a habit. It may be something that we choose to do. It may be something that is thrust upon us in times of necessity. But it is a habit—an aberration from our expected behaviour.  

Staying away is a habit that we need to challenge in ourselves, making sure we know why we're doing it, and being willing to admit it when those reasons aren't good enough.  

We need to regularly gather ourselves to where the Church is. If we know someone who is part of our church family is unable to gather, then those of us who have that mobility have the responsibility of gathering ourselves to the nursing home. To the hospital room.

To the place where the Church is. 

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