Sermon Title: "Why Go to Church?  1- Community"
Date: September 12, 2010
Minister:  The Rev. Charles Ensley

Lesson:  Luke 15:1-10

Why are you here this morning?  What made you get up out of a warm, comfortable bed on your day off and come to church?  If our congregation were used to answering such questions aloud in worship, I could stroll down the aisle and ask for your answers.  I listened to the recording of another minister do that this summer.  There was a long silence on the sermon recording before he got any responses.  But don’t worry; I’m not going to put you on the spot!

Why we go to church should have nothing to do with either desperation or ambition.  We pastors have a vested interest in not only the survival of the churches we serve, but also their growth.  We worry when attendance drops off.  Is something wrong?  Is it something I said or did, or did not do?

While we certainly want our church to flourish, the survival or growth of any particular church—apart from greater spiritual concerns—shouldn’t be the primary goal of our attendance and other involvement in congregational life.

I want to being my fall sermon series this morning by asserting that we go to church because we need community.  We all benefit from participation in church life.  A faith community provides instruction, support, feedback and accountability.  It brings order to our lives.  It even helps us remember what day it is.  I’ve heard many people say, “I missed church last Sunday and I wasn’t sure what day it was all week.”  Attending worship is an important way of putting the events of our lives in helpful perspective.

There’s a story about a longtime church member who had always attended regularly but then suddenly stopped coming.  After a few weeks, the pastor decided he’d better make a visit.  He went to the man’s home and found him alone, sitting in front of a blazing fire.  The parishioner invited the pastor in and directed him to a comfortable chair near the fire.

After an initial greeting, the two sat in silence, watching the roaring fire dance over the logs.  Then the pastor took the fire tongs and picked up a brightly burning ember, which he then placed to one side of the hearth by itself.  That lone ember’s flame began to flicker and eventually died. Soon it was a cold, gray coal, with no life or warmth whatsoever.

Then the pastor picked up that coal with the tongs, and placed it back into the middle of the fire.  Within seconds, it began to glow, with light and warmth, ignited by the flames around it.

As the pastor rose to leave, the parishioner said, “Thank you for the sermon, Pastor.  I’ll be back in church next Sunday.”

That story’s been around as long as I’ve been a minister.  Whether true or apocryphal, I don’t know, but the truth it presents is plain enough.  Our individual faith gives off more light and warmth when kindred believers support it.  So we go to church because it satisfies our need for community—and a faith community at that.

I’m going to tell you something that probably no one here knows except my wife.  In the fall of 1968 I had quite a bout of depression.  I had just transferred as a junior to UC Santa Barbara.  I knew no one except my roommate, a friend from high school.  My college girlfriend had transferred to another college out-of-state, and that long-distant relationship wasn’t going very well.  My first two years as a pre-med major had ended with poor grades in organic chemistry and physics.  I was at a loss as to what to major in, and there I was a junior.

Each morning I would get up, shower, dress and eat breakfast with my roommate.  Then he would go to class and I would sit down.  Sit down in the living room of our apartment in Isla Vista and just look at the curtains, closed over the windows, all day long.  I was not a happy student.

There is one thing that got me out though.  Each Sunday morning I dressed and drove in to Santa Barbara to worship at the First Congrega-tional Church.  I didn’t know those people either, but I could sit there in the midst of that community of faith and worship God.  That was a familiar and meaningful part of my life, for I had attended church for as far back as I can recall.  I remember one Sunday that fall the opening prayer we were to say in unison began, “O God, there are other places we would rather be this morning.”  I could not bring myself to recite that line, because I wanted to be there; I needed to be there.  And attending church had a part in gradually lifting the depression from my life. 

Do we go to church because God says so?  While the pastor or church officers might push church attendance for the survival or growth of a congregation, attending church because of the faith benefits is a perspective from those of you out in the pews.  Yet neither reason takes into account the perspective of the God whom we worship when we do come.

Nowhere in Scripture does God say, “Go to church every Sunday.”  The Bible does have many texts in which God tells the Israelites to worship him.  In the fourth commandment, God said, “Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy,” but true Sabbath-keeping is somewhat more than showing up here each Sunday.  Luke reports that it was Jesus’ custom to go to the synagogue on the Sabbath day (4:16), and Acts reports that Paul had a similar custom. (17:2)  Some of the members of the early church in the first century apparently worshipped daily.  Acts reports, “Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple…praising God.” (2:46-47)

Taken together, all these references give us a biblical basis for worshipping God through attending church, but none are “because God said so.”

The Good Shepherd wants us with the flock, not apart from it.  And maybe the best place to see that is from a text not usually thought of as referring to church attendance.  The oldest stained glass window in our church, the Good Shepherd window over the altar, has always watched over this congregation at worship, both when it was in Gabrielson Chapel before this sanctuary was built, and for the last sixty years in this place.  In today’s Gospel lesson, the shepherd had 100 sheep, but when one wanders off, the shepherd leaves the 99 and searches for the lost one until he finds it.  And when he does, he brings it back to the flock and then asks his friends and neighbors to rejoice with him. 

While finding the sheep was of some benefit to the shepherd, it was of even more benefit to the sheep, which, had it stayed apart from the flock, may have made a tasty dinner for a wolf.  Thus, that window may be said to depict Jesus not with the lost sheep, but with the found sheep.

Can we draw from this parable something of God’s perspective on our church attendance?  Perhaps the main reason to be present in the flock that is the church is simply because that’s the place to which the Divine Shepherd drags wandering sheep.

In today’s parable, the shepherd does nothing for the sheep beyond bringing it back to the flock.  Of course, the sheep is only an animal, so the shepherd cannot seek a commitment from this rather dumb creature that it will obey the shepherd from now on and not wander off again.

But it’s a parable, and so if the wayward sheep represents sinners, there are human applications.  Yet the only one Jesus makes is that the return of the sheep to the flock qualifies as “repentance.”

And maybe that’s the point.  Although we can enumerate benefits to our faith from being in church, the main reason for being here isn’t for the benefits, or because God said so, but because it’s where God wants us to be.  Yes, shepherds do go out after strays, but most of the work shepherds do with sheep is while they’re in the flock, and most congregational flocks are nourishing locations where God can work with us.

For a number of people who have been absent from church attendance for a while, some come back to church when a crisis of some sort erupts in their lives:  a devastating diagnosis, a divorce, financial woes, family problems, a bad work situation.  Unfortunately some of those same reasons cause others to absent themselves from worship, due perhaps to stress, embarrassment, or depression.

We can talk about why we should attend church in terms of the church’s survival or of the benefits we receive from being there, but it’s enough to notice that when we wander off and Jesus comes looking for us, he will likely push us toward a flock, toward a community, toward a place of safety, sustenance and nurture.

And when we get there, there will be joy in heaven.  “Just so, I tell you,” said Jesus, “there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.”

 

Notes from the Preacher:

1)  Portions of my fall sermon series are conceptually based on some sermons preached by the Rev. Dr. Melanie Rosa at Lakewood United Methodist Church in Lakewood, Colorado.  Dr. Rosa is now District Superintendent of the Mile High/Pikes Peak District, having served churches large and small, rural and urban for 25 years.  Dr. Rosa allowed use and adaption of her material in Homiletics, from which I adapted ideas for this sermon.

2)  The Good Shepherd Window in Bay Shore Church’s sanctuary was originally located in the former sanctuary, now known as Gabrielson Chapel.  We are told that the window in its former setting was installed as a tribute to Mr. George Gilchrist, a Harvard Divinity School student who helped organize the first Sunday School in the newly-developing Belmont Shore in 1924.  His success led to the organization and incorporation of Bay Shore Community Congregational Church in 1925.