Go To Church

It Should Have Been Obvious

[Praying for those in Texas, this morning, who are sorting through the rubble and looking for their lost people. May God have mercy.]

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vincent_van_Gogh_-_The_Church_in_Auvers-sur-Oise,_View_from_the_Chevet_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

Did not intend to take a couple of days off from Ye Olde Blogge, but, as I’m sure you understand, moving things around is the worst. I couldn’t lay my hand on my computer or my wits. We’re about halfway there. Matt and I are out of our attic lair and all the kids have moved into their new rooms—basically, if you count being able to sleep in a bed and find anything to wear the next day “moved.” The big task that remains is to shift the contents of my office out of the attic and down the stairs, but first I have to paint. I might try to do that tonight, but, I am weary to the bone, so we’ll see.

In the meantime, I happened to be glancing over the lections, and then tried to catch up on all the items of note Matt sent me over the past three days, and discovered something completely serendipitous. Down in the Atlanta, there is something called 2819 Church. I noodled around the website and found it to be pretty unobjectionable, and then watched the better part of this sermon and was impressed. Seems like, if you are looking for something non-liturgical in the style of a stage and lights and praise choruses, it would be a good place to try. I probably would, if I was on holiday, because I like to see what’s out there in the wide world of American Traditional Religion.

Except that, and I mean this in all kindness, this Sunday there is no “in person” gathering because they want to give the whole church a “Sabbath.”

Along with the picture, the Tweet says:

2819 Family, this SUNDAY, JULY 6 we will observe an ALL CHURCH SABBATH. This intentional pause is a time to rest, reflect, and honor the faithful labor of our servant leaders. There will be no in-person gatherings, but we encourage you to be still, seek the Lord, and enjoy His presence. We’ll gather again the following Sunday and we can’t wait to worship with you!

So, that is a curious idea, and makes me wonder what they do to their “servant leaders” that they need to give them time to “enjoy His presence.” For me—and I guess I’m only speaking for myself, which is too bad—sabbath rest is something you get in church with other Christians, and not an individualized experience related to staying home and puttering around in the imaginations of my own flesh.

Looking over their content, this seems to me a misguided, but well meant attempt to be good Christians. Indeed, there are lots of clips on 2819 Church’s X feed of people smiling and doing outreach in the blazing hot sun. They seem like really nice Christian people who are getting decent teaching, which is absolutely nothing to sniff at in this day and age. But, well, let’s just wander over to the lections and see what the Bible has to say about anything.

The bit that most particularly stood out to me, as I considered the mighty acts of God, is an awful verse that I have thought about often over the last five or so years. Paul is trying to wind things up in his Letter to the Galatians, and it may feel like a jumble of instructions. But perhaps not jumbled enough for my tastes, for he says, to my chagrin, “let us not grow weary of doing good.” The whole paragraph goes like this:

Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself. But let each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor. For each will have to bear his own load.

Let the one who is taught the word share all good things with the one who teaches. Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.

Every time I happen across that line, I feel the depth of my weariness in my bones. If one could say anything about the Christian life, it is that it is replete with weariness. For just when you have exerted yourself beyond what you thought possible, and feel you ought to be allowed to have a rest, God almost always presents an opportunity to give, or do, a little bit more.

In this, I am totally on the side of 2819 Church, the name of which is a reference to the Great Commission in Matthew’s Gospel. Going to church is hard work, especially if you have suffered an awful blow, like a flood, or a war, or the death of someone you love, or a betrayal, or some bad interaction with someone, or trying to move all the occupants of all the rooms in your house around. The trouble with Sunday is that you have staggered through the week and you need rest but the day when you feel it most keenly is also the day you have to go be with a lot of people you may or may not know that well, and if you feel brittle and grief-stricken, you may not want to face it. You feel too weary to go, or to do good, or anything.

Add to that, a certain value has been put onto the universal human experience of fatigue, especially in the realm of “doing good.” Being too weary to explain things to other people, to engage, to reach across the political divide is one way to signal one’s virtue. I’ve already done so much, I shouldn’t have to do anymore.

In the case of 2819 Church, they obviously have a desire not to take advantage of those who serve. It seems like a high commitment congregation, and they obviously don’t want to drive the hapless Christian down the road, demanding more and more work all the time. It is meet and right for pastors to be mindful of how much people do, especially when life in general is so complicated.

But do you need to give everyone a “sabbath” from church to accomplish this goal? I don’t think so, mostly because Isaiah, in the Old Testament lesson appointed for today, sees a vision of that sublime moment when Jesus comes back, and what it will be like:

“Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad for her,
all you who love her;
rejoice with her in joy,
all you who mourn over her;
that you may nurse and be satisfied
from her consoling breast;
that you may drink deeply with delight
from her glorious abundance.”

For thus says the Lord:
“Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river,
and the glory of the nations like an overflowing stream;
and you shall nurse, you shall be carried upon her hip,
and bounced upon her knees.
As one whom his mother comforts,
so I will comfort you;
you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.
You shall see, and your heart shall rejoice;
your bones shall flourish like the grass;
and the hand of the Lord shall be known to his servants,
and he shall show his indignation against his enemies.

“For behold, the Lord will come in fire,
and his chariots like the whirlwind,
to render his anger in fury,
and his rebuke with flames of fire.
For by fire will the Lord enter into judgment,
and by his sword, with all flesh;
and those slain by the Lord shall be many.

When you go to church—if it is really a church—what happens is that God also goes there. He is, you know, “present.” If you want to enjoy the presence of God, as 2819 Church says you should, on this, July 6, a Sunday, the “Lord’s Day” as it were, you would probably want to go to church to be with other Christians to do that.

It’s not that God isn’t present with you when you’re by yourself. But you don’t only require the regular, ordinary presence of God that sustains you through the week. Once a week—at least—you need the blessings of the eschaton. These don’t flow down to you in the privacy of your jumbled kitchen and disordered bedroom. To see Satan fall like lightning, to know where you should go and what you should say and how you should be, you have to go to Church. You have to go, physically, to be in the place with other people where joy and peace and consolation flow down from heaven into the Cup, where the Word of Christ is spoken as a fire to convict and rebuke you, as a balm to bind up your wounds, as the wisdom from on high to enlighten the eyes of your heart. If you don’t want to grow weary in all the works God is making you walk in, you have to go to church every Sunday or you will starve and then peter out midweek, unable to carry on.

The Psalmist says it best:

Come and see what God has done:
he is awesome in his deeds toward the children of man.
He turned the sea into dry land;
they passed through the river on foot.
There did we rejoice in him,
who rules by his might forever,
whose eyes keep watch on the nations—
let not the rebellious exalt themselves. Selah

Bless our God, O peoples;
let the sound of his praise be heard,
who has kept our soul among the living
and has not let our feet slip.
For you, O God, have tested us;
you have tried us as silver is tried.
You brought us into the net;
you laid a crushing burden on our backs;
you let men ride over our heads;
we went through fire and through water;
yet you have brought us out to a place of abundance.

I will come into your house with burnt offerings;
I will perform my vows to you,
that which my lips uttered
and my mouth promised when I was in trouble.
I will offer to you burnt offerings of fattened animals,
with the smoke of the sacrifice of rams;
I will make an offering of bulls and goats. Selah

Come and hear, all you who fear God,
and I will tell what he has done for my soul.
I cried to him with my mouth,
and high praise was on my tongue.
If I had cherished iniquity in my heart,
the Lord would not have listened.
But truly God has listened;
he has attended to the voice of my prayer.

So anyway, as I was saying, go to church.