Faith Works 2-22-20

Faith Works 2-22-20

Jeff Gill

 

Practical reasons for going to church

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Obviously as a parish minister, I have a bias in favor of attending weekly worship.

 

There are many arguments made for regular church attendance, and I know non-attenders can find many of the usual ones somewhat self-serving, especially when working clergy are making them.

 

I can't change who I am, but I'd like to offer up some slightly different reasons that are why I go to church regularly, even when I'm on vacation or on the road. It may not be my tradition or even faith, but a religious service each week is important, for what I think of as practical if personal reasons.

 

Well, practical to me, anyhow.

 

Why do I attend worship?

 

Reason one: to stop time. Science fiction author Ray Cummings first said a hundred years ago that "Time is what keeps everything from happening at once," and many physicists have borrowed that line. But in ordinary existence, especially our modern 24/7 lives where everything is always open and anything can be ordered at 2 am and text messages or email show up all hours . . . we need something to give order and structure to our week.

 

Sabbath-keeping and Sunday observance is another subject for another day, but in pure practical application, I need Sunday worship to help me know, in my bones, that one week ended, and a new one begins. I could be all theological and half-religious and talk about being renewed and strengthened for a new week, but I just need sometimes to be able to say "stop the world, I want to get off." Church is where I get off the merry-go-round for a moment, before I have to clamber aboard again and head into Monday.

 

Reason two: to defeat time. Just as a Sunday service puts a punctuation mark on the week, the nature of the words and music and architecture puts me in touch with Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (let alone Jesus), with Catherine of Siena and Julian of Norwich, with Thomas Cranmer and T.S. Eliot. In worship, I hear my grandmother singing in certain hymns; in the sanctuary, I see Van and Joe and Jane in their usual pews, if not quite visible to the ordinary eye.  I anticipate the End of Days with equanimity, and recall the purposes of Creation with satisfaction. During the average worship hour, I'm all over the last four thousand years and anticipating eternity. Time is different, even if they do have a clock where I can see it as I preach.

 

Reason three: to find peace. No, not always where you think. Different orders of worship put silence or prayer in various locations of the service, but the peace I find in a worship gathering is in the gently swinging hinges of the elements of the liturgy. During communion, it's more in the waiting than in the partaking; out of the music, it's the rests, the pauses as much as the notes themselves that make my heart sing. There's peace in certain faces out in the assembly; there are angels in the architecture, but not always in art as much as the obscurer parts of the structure. But I do find peace in worship, even when I'm the worship leader and preacher. I hope everyone else gets more than I do out of it, but I get plenty.

 

Reason four: to remember who I am. Rick Warren had a lovely summary of the Bible at the opening of his "The Purpose Driven Life." Pastor Warren says "It's not about you." Yep! Rick's on to something there. Out in the world, in line at the BMV, writing newspaper columns, you can start to crawl inside your own head to where you start to think "it's all about me." Church is a great place to find antidotes to that.

 

Sometimes, I get called away. A crisis at the hospital, once I just got sick, and I wasn't at church, where I'm the senior minister. And ya know what? Church still happened. Yay God! The basics were handled, and they didn't need me at all. For any of us, worship is a communal experience, which both lifts each of us up, but also reminds us that we ourselves are not the whole deal. Even a soloist needs a choir behind them and an accompanist with them. And yes, worship reminds me Whose I am, which is the core reality of who I am.

 

Which brings us to Reason five: to meet God. Because God does show up in worship. Yes, yes, you can meet God anywhere. But at church I know I will.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he goes to church. Tell him about your experiences with the practical benefits of attending worship of any sort in any place at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.