The attitude
of our society has changed where church attendance is concerned; and that’s no
news to anybody! In the 1960s, when I was growing up, churches were filled to
overflowing with worshipers on Sunday mornings. Many congregations even built
additional rooms for Sunday school use, because the existing facilities weren’t
adequate to house all the children. No church needed marketing strategies to
get people through the doors!
But times
have changed; and going to church isn’t as popular as it used to be. People
used to say that participating Sunday morning worship was as necessary as steak
and potatoes. Now, attending Sunday worship seems to be more like taking cod liver
oil. When people are asked whether they attend church, many now respond, “Oh,
I’m spiritual, but I’m not religious.” That usually means that they feel a
connection with something bigger than they are, but they don’t want to bother
with an organized church. It’s a very good thing to be spiritual and to feel a
connection with the divine! But here’s the problem with “spiritual but not
religious.” If you don’t know how to behave in response to that spiritual connection,
it’s just a warm, fuzzy feeling that doesn’t do any good either to you or to
the world!
The
Christian church offers a way to live out that connection. It helps you to
understand that the connection you feel is to God through Jesus Christ. He not
only gives you an identity as a child of God; he shows you how to behave because
you are. Understanding that connection with Christ is really important; and
it’s easy to lose it if you just rely on warm, fuzzy spiritual feelings! You
heard a text this morning from the gospel of John in which Jesus tells his
followers that they need to stick with him as tightly as a branch sticks to the
vine to which it is attached (John 15:1-5). We all know that if you cut a
branch off from its source, it withers and dies. That same thing happens when
we are separated from Jesus. Oh, we may not wither and die physically, but our
souls lose the nourishment that they get from the One who created us, who
rescues us from sin, and who promises to guide our path as we go through our
lives. If we’re cut off from Jesus, we’re like a flower that has been picked
from the garden. It may last a few days in a vase, but it ultimately dies for
lack of nutrition. In the same way, we need strength and courage and wisdom
from Jesus, who grounds the spirituality that we feel. The church helps us to
understand all that.
Then there
are other people in our society who understand what it means to be grounded in
Christ. They’ve been baptized and confirmed and probably spent a lot of time in
Sunday school when they were kids. No one sees them in worship, though, because
they insist that they can be Christians without bothering with church. Now,
throughout history, some people have been able to pull that off. Holy hermits,
both men and women, have lived solitary lives of meditation and prayer; and
some of them have even been sainted! But most of us don’t fit that description.
Let’s be real, it’s very easy to fall away from what Jesus expects of us if we
don’t bother with church!
Christians
down through the ages have realized that the best way to maintain our
connection with Jesus is to be in a faith community that helps us to do that. The
second scripture reading today was from the book of Acts (2:42-47). It takes
place right after Pentecost, that day when the Holy Spirit swooped down and
filled all the believers with power. After that event, the believers all united
as a community. They learned from the apostles’ teaching, and they helped folks
who were in need. They ate meals together, and they celebrated what God did in
their lives. In other words, they became a church; and that church became one
of the central elements of their lives!
Why was
meeting as a congregation so important to the first Christians? Why did they
put such an emphasis on gathering for worship and fellowship? The simple answer
is that they needed one another to be able to do what Jesus asked of them! It
was very difficult to be a Christian in those early days. The Roman government
didn’t much like Christians, because they refused to worship the gods of the
empire and to live by the values of the society around them. They renounced
greed, violence, and thirst for power, living instead by the values that Jesus
taught: humility, generosity, charity, and peacemaking. They didn’t have a chance
of doing those things if they weren’t surrounded by a faith community that
celebrated with them when they were doing well, encouraged them when they were
discouraged, and supported them when they were weak!
Well, not
much has changed since then. Oh, we don’t wear togas nowadays; and we give our
political allegiance not to Rome but to the United States; and we are no longer
thrown into the arena for daring to confess our faith in Jesus Christ. We
Christians, though, are still at odds with the values of society. We still
renounce greed, violence, and thirst for power. We still try to live by the
Christian values of humility, generosity, charity, and peacemaking. And if we
want to stick to Christ as closely as a branch sticks to the vine, we need a faith
community that will help us to do that! Our faith communities help us through
the difficult times of our lives, offer us love and support when we’re
struggling, and helps us to live the Christian values that are so different
from those of the society around us. The reality is that if we try to be
Christians all by ourselves, we usually don’t do very well.
Here’s the
bottom line. Church is important! It not only gives us a foundation for the
spirituality that is born into every one of us, it helps us to live as the
people that we want to be. So if anyone
asks you why you bother with church – why you don’t just sleep in on Sunday
mornings or read the Sunday paper over a second cup of coffee – here’s what to tell them. Tell them that you need the challenge and the comfort of the gospel of
Jesus Christ in your life. Tell them that following Jesus is hard, and that you
just can’t do it all by yourself. Tell them that without the love,
encouragement, and support of your fellow church members, your life would be a
lot harder than it already is. And I am so happy that each and
every one of you is here this morning; because I need all of you to help me as
I struggle to hold on to my own spiritual grounding in Jesus. Let’s stay
connected to Jesus and follow him together! After all, that’s what this thing
called “church” is all about.
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