Why Church?

Pastor’s Annual Report, A.D. 2015 B

Why do we come to Church?

Certainly it cannot be for entertainment. No matter how good the music or how rousing the sermon, we cannot possibly compete with plasma televisions and high-speed internet. Hopefully there is a degree of entertainment when we gather; Church ought to be a place of joy. But we cannot come primarily to be amused. We are more than a show.

Perhaps we come to Church for education. Certainly that has been a traditional role for Christianity, what with founding all those universities and publishing all those books. Religious institutions still provide some of the finest educations on earth. Besides that, more locally, don’t we want our kids to have good moral formation in Sunday School? Don’t we want to learn more about the Scriptures for ourselves and our families? Absolutely! That’s why St. Peter’s puts such emphasis on youth, Confirmation, and adult education. But we do not gather on Sunday simply to learn. We are more than a school.

Our Church does a good job serving the community. We work with all manner of charitable and service organizations; we raise money for good causes; we support mission work and outreach throughout the synod and the world. As Jesus said, good trees bear good fruit—and James in his epistle, dear Lutherans, reminds us that faith without works is dead. Thank God for all that we do for others both in our community and our congregation. But is that why we gather? Surely fraternal and governmental organizations raise more for good causes than St. Peter’s can. We are more than our works.

So when we come to Church one hopes that we are entertained, educated, and given an opportunity to serve God by serving our neighbor. These are good things indeed. But these are not the reasons that we gather every Sunday and throughout the week. We gather, brothers and sisters, to worship.

In the midst of an increasingly hectic world, in which all of us tend to be overscheduled and overstretched, Christ offers for us here a refuge, a peaceful sanctuary, in which the cares and concerns of modern life are put aside. We exit normal time and enter an encounter with the eternal God; there is no clock in the nave. Here we listen to God’s Word spoken and chanted and sung for us. Here we share in Christ’s Cross and Resurrection, at the baptismal Font and Communion Table. Here we are forgiven our sins, sanctified by the Spirit, renewed and refreshed and raised up to Heaven itself. We must simply have eyes to see it!

In this humble place, amidst our fellow sinners, Christ descends from Heaven above to meet us, to rest with us one hour. He is present in this congregation, in common people gathered in His Name. He is present in the Sacraments of Holy Baptism and the Eucharist. He is present in the Scriptures and the Word of God rightly preached. He meets us—Emmanuel, God-With-Us, comes to meet us right here in New York Mills—and He then sends us out to be His hands and feet and voice for a needy world. Here we are healed, here we are forgiven, here we are blessed to be Jesus’ own Light for the illumination all of humankind.

Nowhere else can we find such wonders. Don’t get me wrong: God is truly with us in our families, in our communities, in the wilds of nature and the simple wonders of everyday life. Our Lord is in no way limited to the walls of St. Peter’s parish. But when we gather in the liturgy, which literally means “the work of the people,” we stand in the long line of witnesses stretching back thousands of years. We are called out from the nations to become the people of God, the people of the Bible, together woven into the very story that we read. We do not gather to learn simply about what God has done in the past but to become a part of what God is doing now.

In Church we are forced to sit with people with whom we might otherwise never sit, and see that God loves them, God dwells within them. In Church we sing songs that we might otherwise never sing, lifting up our voices to join not only our forebears stretching back throughout history but even the angels in Heaven who sing before God’s throne. In Church we hear the old, old story that is both ancient and ever-new, the story that makes sense of our own lives with all our hopes and struggles. We begin to see the world through the loving and suffering eyes of Jesus. We begin to experience time as a cycle of death and resurrection, dying daily to ourselves that we might rise to live more fully in Jesus.

Here we are taught not to fear the grave, for death has no dominion over us. Here we are taught not to fear failure, for we always have worth in the love of God. Here we are given eternal truths that stand like bulwarks against the shifting fashions of every age. We come to Church that we might know God in worship, and thus be able to recognize Him outside of Church, in our neighbor and in our world. We come because Jesus, God made flesh, has promised to meet us here each and every week. And God does not break promises.

Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. O come, let us adore Him.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. AMEN.