July 20, 2003 -SixthSunday after Pentecost
Ephesians 2: 11-22
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Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
“Gathered for a Reason”
Tell me. Why did you get up on a lovely summer Sunday morning and come here? I could phrase my question using the words of a colleague asking about the National Association’s annual meeting, “Why in the Name of God do we get together?” Maybe my question would make more sense if I asked using an anecdote from the late British Congregational theologian Albert Peel. Back in 1920 Peel wrote: “The other Monday a minister was sitting over the fire reading the paper: his wife was clearing the breakfast table : the maid had already begun the weekly washing. A small child surveyed the three of them and then remarked, ‘Mummy, what’s Daddy for?’”[1]
Now, some of you probably have some appropriate answers to my query, I’m sure. I know that there are all sorts of answers, including ‘fire insurance’ – if you catch my drift, but we need to look beyond the appropriate, the pat answers. From time-to-time we need to ask ourselves why we do what we do and how it affects who we are. If we’re going to be authentic in our Christian faith, our Christ following, this kind of periodic reflection is essential. Remember that we can define authenticity by asking ourselves yet another question, “Are we who we say we are?” So, let me offer some thoughts.
When I was taking Psychology back in college there was a study that we discussed that disturbed me greatly and has stayed with me for almost thirty years. It seems that back in the 1940s two groups of infants were given identical food and care, save in one area. One group was treated as would normally treat babies. They were cuddled, talked to, touched and paid attention to in every way. The other group was touched only long enough to feed, or wash, or care for bodily needs. They weren’t mistreated, but they weren’t shown what we would consider normal human contact. The study showed that the first group developed as one would expect and were healthy, normal children. The second group was sickly, showed signs of developmental problems, and some even died. Why do I remember that study? Because it brought home to me very powerfully that human beings were made for relationship and when we are alienated from that we are less than what we were destined to be.
Paul is reminding the church at Ephesus that it was not very long ago that they were in the position of being strangers and aliens. Before they had not been in a covenant relationship with God and with each other, but now they were in a new relationship with God and with each other. Paul holds up the Israelites because they were the covenant people par excellence. The whole of the Old Testament – even the word ‘testament’ means ‘covenant’ – is the record of God’s establishing the covenant relationship with humanity in general, and Israel in particular. In the Jewish mind God had approached their nation when he called Abraham and had renewed this formally with Moses when he said to them, “I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God” (Exodus 6:7). Again and again, the Scripture reminds us of God’s essential covenant promise: “I will be with you.” God seeks to relate to us as really as we seek to relate to one another.
What we also see in the Scripture, and indeed in all of human history, is the slow, steady process of alienation. We pulled ourselves away from God, remember the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis and how God has to come looking for them? “Where are you?” And they did what? They hid. And as the alienation, the estrangement from the Divine-human relationship happens, so too there is the steady estrangement in human relationships. It doesn’t take a great deal of time reading the newspaper or a magazine, watching television or listening to the radio, or, for that matter, just watching people on the street, to see the continuing evidence of alienation. However, God’s desire is not for that alienation to continue. The record of Scripture is also, equally, the story and record of God’s response to human alienation. God ultimately did something radical about it. God became one of us, all in the attempt to draw us back into relationship. And here it might be appropriate to remind ourselves that the word ‘religion’ comes from the Latin for reconnect.
God’s desire to reconnect with us is precisely what Paul is talking about in the second chapter of Ephesians. He says, “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.” What he alludes to there is the unique relationship of the Divine and human that existed in the Christ. When we think of Jesus Christ we cannot simply think of an individual. Rather, we have to realize that in the person of Jesus, God has taken on humanity – completely. So, when Jesus is baptized all of humanity is baptized with him. When he is on the cross, humanity dies with him. And when he rises from the dead, we rise with him to life transformed. Christ’s humanity is, thus, a corporate reality and when we are drawn into his life we are drawn into the very life of God.
Why are we here? What is the church for? It makes that reality tangible. Paul told the Ephesians, and us, “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.” Paul’s great metaphor for the church is the “body of Christ.” It speaks to us of the destiny that we have when we open ourselves to God’s living Spirit and enter into the covenant relationship which then binds us together. Those saints that Paul talks about, believe it or not, are us. Saints aren’t plaster statues and far-off holy people, they’re people who have come into relationship with God and live that relationship out in their daily life. The Cambridge Platform, an important Congregational document from 1648, goes so far as to describe a Congregational Church as, “consisting of a company of Saints by calling, united into one body, by a holy covenant, for the publick worship of God, and the mutuall edification one of another, in the Fellowship of the Lord Jesus.”[2]
As saints aren’t statues, the church isn’t a building. The church is an organic, a living entity; which is why we refer to this building in the Congregational tradition as the “meeting house.” When we come together for worship, when we meet to do God’s work in this particular place, when we actualize on our covenant as a body, then we are the church, we are the body of Christ living, active, present, and evident in the world. And when we are together, as we are this morning, we are truly the dwelling place of God, for God is here among us.
What is the church for? The church exists to give God a living temple in the middle of God’s creation. What is the church for? The church is for reminding God’s special creation, humanity, that they have the possibility and a venue for reconnecting the relationship that makes us whole, that makes us human. So the church is to be a place of welcome where all who come through the doors of the meeting house will be received just as they are – welcomed as God welcomes. The church is to be a place of openness, of love and of tolerance, where what we believe and think is given due consideration and heard with respect, even if – I suppose it would be more honest to say when -- we disagree. One of the great gifts that our Congregational Way has to offer to people, and indeed to sister churches of every stripe, is this non-sectarian approach that we take; because Congregationalists have long been committed to reaching out to fellow Christians regardless of denomination.
I go back to this statement from J. S. Griffith again and again because it inspires me and reminds me of what we’re called to be. “The glory of our Congregationalism is that we refuse to make the Church of our Lord a theological sect. Our position, which has grown gradually clear through the centuries, has been that the basis of fellowship is common experience of Christ and not identity of thought about Him . . . That exclusion of fellow-Christians would be schism . . . This is the trust that has come down to us, and a stewardship for which in our day we have responsibility; the stewardship of the Church Universal, to save the Church from becoming a sect . . .”[3] Now, let me also be quick to add that the church is also to be a place of challenge as well. Here we are received with respect and consideration, but we’re also challenged to grow, to develop, and yes, hard as it is to hear, even to change. Why are we here? We’re here to share in the fellowship of the living Christ who is present through His gathered people.
So, we are gathered for a reason. At the time of the writing of the New Testament the word used for church, ekklesia, from which we get our words ecclesial and ecclesiastical, meant the assembly of the freemen of a city to hold elections. Early on, Christians used this term to describe their assembly as followers of Christ. As the citizens were “called forth” and then “gathered” to elect their officials, Christians were, and are, “called forth” and then “gathered” to be one with the Lord and with one another. We are called to be together, to remind ourselves and each other of the wonderful relationship into which God has invited us. We are also called to realize that there is so much more to us, to what it means to be human, than what we see on the surface of daily life.
Mark tells us that after the apostles had reported back to Jesus about their teaching and healing mission, “He said to them, ‘Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.’” That’s the other reason we gather. Our time of worship each week, our taking time for fellowship, perhaps sitting in on an adult education session, is our coming away to rest. Recall the definition we heard of a Congregational Church, a church is gathered for the public worship of God and for the mutual edification one of the other in the fellowship of the Lord Jesus.
Why, then, do we come together on a Sunday morning? What is the church for? Why in the name of God do we do this? Well, I think it should have become fairly clear by now. But let me summarize. We come together because God has called us into relationship with God’s self and with one another. We come together because we need to come away and to rest in God’s love and to know God’s presence made real for us through the saints, the sisters and brothers who, like us, have come to an experience of God’s love in Jesus Christ. We come because God’s Spirit has witnessed to ours and draws us, gathers us together.
Oh, and lest I be remiss in my duty. We come apart to prepare ourselves to go back into the “daily grind.” The Apostles went apart to a deserted place, but it wasn’t deserted for long. Jesus saw the crowds that followed and “had compassion for them.” He taught, he healed, and he brought the living presence of God to them. It is no different for us today. We come here so that we can go back out through the doors of this meeting house to bring God’s healing touch to a hurting world. Because, ultimately, that’s what we’re for – to continue God’s presence, God’s touch, God’s love in the world God has made.
So, when someone asks you why you go to church – tell them. Oh, and invite them to come along. Everyone is welcome, aren’t they?
[1] Albert Peel “What are we for?” in Inevitable Congregationalism (London: Independent Press, 1937), p. 24.
[2] “The Cambridge Synod and Platform” in Williston Walker The Creeds and Platforms of Congregationalism (Philadelphia: Pilgrim Press, 1969), p. 205.
[3] J.S. Griffith The Congregational Quarterly, April, 1939, p. 189 ff.