“Jesus went to Nazareth, where he had
been raised.On the Sabbath he went to the synagogue
as he normally did and stood up to read.”Luke 4:16 (Common English Bible)
People are
leaving the church – one major study indicates
that people are scrambling for the exit doors of the church. Those who remain
are becoming less frequent in worship. The felt need for a personal faith is
undiminished. Religious convictions remain strong in our nation according to
the same study. And many strive to live in a manner that is in accordance with
those convictions. The difficulty is that people are becoming impatient with
the church as an institution.
Luke’s Gospel records of Jesus, “On the
Sabbath he went to the synagogue as he normally did.” This observation is made
as a sidebar in a larger narrative but it is noteworthy. What it tells us is
that the personal habits of Jesus included as a priority the regular
participation in corporate worship. Naturally, Jesus knew, as any of us that
God can be worshipped anywhere. He could have found support in his day that
holy moments can be realized in quiet meditation and private prayer, under the
open sky. In fact, each of the four Gospels record Jesus doing just that –
moments of prayer in a garden, upon a mountain and – agonizingly – upon a
cross. Each place made sacred by prayer and personal worship. Nonetheless, on
the day of the week when the faith community gathered for public worship, Jesus
was present.
Close attention to the Gospel stories
offer nuanced clues that much of the preaching Jesus heard was boring and the
worship uninspiring. Yet, the fact of the matter is that the character of the
worship services did not affect his attendance. For Jesus, the house of God was
a spiritual home. It was where the people of God belonged. Participation in
shared worship offered a reminder that life is lived for something larger and
finer and more enduring than a preoccupation of the individual life. As
Theodore Roosevelt once wrote to his wife, “I feel that as much as I enjoy
loafing, there is something higher for which to live.”[1]
Yet, right at the end of this brief verse
in Luke’s Gospel lay the most compelling answer for the question, “Why go to
church?” Jesus stood up to read. Corporate worship provides the opportunity of
contribution, as well as the receiving of religious experience. A shared
witness and a mutual encouragement in our faith journey are simply absent in
private moments of worship and prayer. The church may struggle with tedium and
uninspired worship from time to time. But worship is not about us – and our
needs – as much as it is about the community of God’s people and how we might
be used to strengthen one another.
Joy,
[1] David McCullough, Mornings On Horseback (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), 30.
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