Past Sermon

Sermon Title: "Do You Have To Be In Church? "
Date: August 27, 2006
Minister: Rev. Charles E. Ensley, Jr.

Lesson:  Psalm 84

From the “Ask Amy” column of last Monday’s (8/21/06) Los Angeles Times:

            “Dear Amy:  I work at a printing company where one of our most lucrative accounts is for a series of teacher/student books on Christian values.  Those books are for kids in first through 12th grade.  We print several hundred a month.

           

            “These books are teaching extreme values.  For example, a letter writer asks if it’s OK to help out at a homeless shelter on Sundays instead of going to church.  The response ripped him to pieces.

            “The book states that under no circumstances are you to miss church on Sundays.  It goes on to say that the person who wrote the letter must spend several hours in church every Sunday and several times during the weeks in hope that he can be saved and not damned to eternal hell.”

Boy, I’d sure like to know what printing company she works for, and to what religious groups those books are distributed!

The greater question raised here is one I’ve heard repeatedly over 33 years of parish ministry:  do you have to be in church on Sunday morning to worship God?  How many people have told me over those years that they feel close to God sitting out in a boat on a quiet lake, or gazing upon majestic mountain peaks, or looking at the waves repeatedly crashing on the beach?  I’m not certain how close to God one feels on the golf course, although I imagine God’s name is invoked there a few times!

And I cannot disagree with those who sense God’s presence out in nature.  After all, according to the Bible’s creation story, God created nature before humans.  And I’ll admit there have been plenty of times when this minister’s felt close to God in the mountains or by the ocean.

HOWEVER . . . and here’s the big ‘however’, there’s something to be said about encountering God in what we consider the most sacred of places, a church or temple.  There is no psalm which portrays more beautifully the excitement, the anticipation, the satisfaction of coming into God’s presence to worship in the most holy of places than today’s Psalm 84.  Pieces of music have been written to these words, including Johannes Brahms’ classic How Lovely Is Thy Dwelling Place, and today’s opening hymn, How Lovely, Lord, How Lovely (words: Arlo D. Duba, 1984; music:  Hal H. Hopson, 1983; MERLE’S TUNE).  Of it, one commentator has written:  “The auspicious wedding of text and tune captures movingly both the psalmist’s longing for communion with God and the experience of well-being that results from encountering the living God.  In other words, although our symbols for and understandings of God’s presence in space and time may differ from those of the ancient psalmist, Psalm 84 can continue to function effectively and powerfully.”

There is not a week that goes by but what someone comes into this sanctuary—perhaps planning a wedding or a memorial service—and, looking around at the stained glass windows, organ pipes, mahogany paneled walls and exposed-beam ceiling, exclaims, “What a beautiful church!”  And I have to agree with them.  The thought and integrity of design that went into the planning and building of this sanctuary some 56 years ago all complement the psalmist’s declaration “Happy are those who live in your house, ever singing your praise.” (84:4)

Incidentally, that was written when the priests actually did live in the temple.  Some of that carries over till today.  I have been known to leave for lunch and tell our secretary “I’ll be back home at 1:30,” meaning here, not where I actually lay my head at night!

However—and this is the second ‘however’—one must be careful not to be so enamored of a church building that it becomes more about the building than the matter of faith or the congregation which worships inside.

During my vacation, I read this new book, Leaving Church-A Memoir of Faith, by Barbara Brown Taylor, named as one of the twelve most effective preachers in the English-speaking world by Baylor University.  For ten years she served as one of four priests at a large and active downtown Atlanta Episcopal church.  She then followed her dream of becoming the pastor of a small congregation of her own.  She found a church in Clarksville, in northeast Georgia, population 1,500.  It was still being served by another priest when she came upon it.  Here’s how she describes that moment:

      “At the corner of Green Street and Wilson, I looked up to see a white frame chapel with huge clear glass windows and green shutters sitting in an old grove of white pines.  …A historical marker out front told us Grace Episcopal Church was organized December 12, 1838. …

      “I had not seen anything so clean and upright since my last trip to New England.  The small porch of the church was supported by four square columns.  Just to the left of the double front doors, a thick rope leading to the bell tower was draped over a hook just taller than a second grader.  The churchyard bore evidence of having been loved by generations of gardeners.  Native azaleas and mountain laurel grew among stones that someone had placed in pleasing constellations, long enough ago for moss to grow on them.  Ancient boxwoods grew under the six sash windows, and there was a large holly out front.

      “Simply to stand in the presence of the building was to rest.  Peace poured off the white boards and caught me in its wake as the sighing of the pines reminded me to breathe.  When I did, I could feel the clenched muscle of my mind relax.  … I shook out my arms and put my hands flat on the side of the church.  Was this what happened to wood that had soaked up a hundred and fifty years’ worth of prayers?  Did all of that devotion seep into the grain like incense so that any passerby could catch a whiff of it?”  (Barbara Brown Taylor, Leaving Church [San Francisco:  Harper, 2006] pp. 11-12)

Not long after she came upon that church, the elderly rector who had served it for nine years died on the Tuesday after All Saints’ Day.  Barbara Brown Taylor waited a respectable three days before she called the bishop and asked to have her name placed on the list of candidates for the now open pulpit.

But she came to discover, in her own words, that “by falling in love with a building before I ever met the people who worshiped in it, I participated in a popular misunderstanding of the word church.  Properly speaking, the noun refers not to a piece of real estate but to a community of people, who may or may not meet inside of a church building.”  (p. 15)

After the congregation’s year-long search process, Taylor was called to Grace Church, where she hoped to serve ten years, same as in Atlanta.  She has five successful years that see significant growth in the church, but ultimately she finds herself experiencing “compassion fatigue” and wonders what exactly God has called her to do.  She realizes that in order to keep her faith, she may have to leave parish ministry; hence, the book is entitled Leaving Church.  She resigned from the church to accept an endowed chair in religion at Piedmont College.  “Today,” she writes, I am as likely to spend Sunday mornings with friendly Quakers, Presbyterians, or Congregationalists as I am with the Episcopalians who remain my closest kin.  Sometimes I even keep the Sabbath with a cup of steaming Assam tea on my front porch, watching towhees vie for the highest perch in the poplar tree while God watches me.” (p. x)

Hers is a good book, one I ordered immediately upon its publication.  I commend it to you, though it may say more to me in the pulpit than you in the pew.  However, as a poignant “memoir of faith”, it tackles the issue of whether one must be in church to worship God.

In my sermon preparation, I ran across this writing on “Why I Go to Church,” by Henry C. Link.  Unlike Taylor’s book, this view is from the pew, not the pulpit.

“I go because I would rather lie in bed late on Sunday mornings, the only chance for a good sleep I have during the week.

I go because I would rather read the Sunday papers.

I go because I know it will please my old father, when he learns of it, and my parents-in-law, whom I shall undoubtedly see there.

I go because I shall meet and have to shake hands with people, many of whom do not interest me in the least;

because if I don’t go, my children consider that they have a good reason for not going to Sunday School;

because I might be asked to do something I don’t want to do;

because I may disagree with what the minister has to say.

I go because some of my best friends, who know the details of my life, consider me a hypocrite.

I go because I do not believe in all the doctrines of this church, or any other church.

I go, in short, because I hate to go and because I know that it will do me good.”

So far, both the words of the Psalmist of old and this sermon have been about coming into the presence of the Lord in a specific worship setting, such as this.  Praising God in worship is not a selfish act, the purpose intended only for ourselves, nor is it the end-all.  This hour of worship is intended as a period of spiritual conditioning that prepares us to go back out into the world, empowered to respond to the Gospel and act in the name of Jesus Christ.  We should leave worship even as our fitness trainers claim we should leave the gym after a good work-out—refreshed, invigorated, and ready to go.

The problem with too many churches is that they are still focused on trying to attract people into their sanctuaries—to do the work of the church in this location.  What our worship should do is start enabling and equipping members to go out into the world and serve Christ there.

And if that means serving meals at a homeless shelter on a Sunday morning instead of being here in worship, may God bless you for doing that.  As far as this minister is concerned, you don’t need to come here in the afternoon to make up for not being in church.