SKIP SUNDAY AT OUR OWN PERIL

One of the main excuses for skipping church on Sunday is that we claim we don’t get anything out of it. We don’t like the music. The Sunday School is too small. There are too many old people and not enough young ones. The list is endless or at least long enough for us to justify why we would rather either stay home in bed or be somewhere else Sunday morning other than at church.

The fact, the truth, is that when we skip church on Sunday, we do so at our own peril, whether we realize it or not. We don’t come to church on Sunday primarily because of what we can get out of being there even though we get more out of it than we realize and often more than we put into it. We come to give something of ourselves. We come primarily to worship God. No matter what hymns we sing, no matter how mundane the sermon, no matter how we feel, God is pleased and God is worshiped and that, in the grand scheme of things, is all that matters.

We come to church to tune into God. It’s not that we cannot do so somewhere else and perhaps do so much better somewhere else. We are supposed to be able to find God, see God, worship God anywhere we happen to be because everywhere and everyone and everything is God’s creation, is of God and should speak to us of God. Yes, there are often better places, more worshipful places to be on any Sunday morning than in the church building that is our parish home.

All that being undeniable, the fact is that we also come to church to tune into one another. Church is where we not only worship God but where we come to take care of one another. As others care for us, so we care for them, however that care happens to take place: a kind word, a smile, or simple just checking in. We take so much of this for granted, I think, that we often miss just how important it is that we do all of this, that we indeed need all of this.

The world is full of lonely people, people seeking someone, some ones, to care for them, to listen to them, to be there for them. They are looking for what we have but so often either overlook or assume that everyone has what we have. They don’t. Having a community that cares about us, truly cares about us, about our needs and our wants and is willing to help us fulfill them, all that is a blessing of inestimable value. That is why it is so important that we gather together regularly.

None of this is to denigrate the importance of worship and our being present to worship both individually and as a community of faith. It is to say, however, that community is the key word. God created us to be in community. Almost the first words out of God’s mouth in the Genesis story of creation is that God deemed it not good for wo/man to be alone. In order to be the person God created us to be, we need one another.

Whenever we become lax in our participation in our faith community, whenever we begin to take it for granted, whenever we make excuses why being somewhere else or doing something else is more fulfilling, we do so at our own peril and loss.