God’s People Gather: A Celebration of Christian Fellowship
I remember it like it was yesterday. It was a Sunday in January 2020. I was talking with Sandra, who, as you all know, is wise beyond her years. She was asking me what I thought about this whole coronavirus business that was coming out of China. Silly little me, I said to Sandra, “There’s only been one confirmed case in Canada so far. I feel for those Chinese people, but I’m not ready to be worried about an outbreak of conjunctivitis, or whatever it’s called, in Canada. I’m sure we’ll be fine.”
Famous last words… If I could go back in time, I think I might just slap myself for being so naïve. It was less than 2 months later that we closed our doors and didn’t open them again until the end of June. What we thought was going to be this temporary, 2-week hiatus – this blip in our congregation’s history – is still dragging on, however many months later.
But here we are! Many things have happened since January 2020 – some good, some not so good – but for better or worse, here we are, back in God’s house with God’s people to hear God’s Word. Never before have I appreciated more the opening words of Psalm 122:
I rejoiced with those who said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord.”[1]
Rejoice, dear brothers and sisters in Christ! Celebrate this blessed privilege to participate in worship together, to be part of a Christian community together, and to serve God and our neighbours together.
Are you sensing a theme? Good! I hope you are, because there’s nothing subtle about the blessings we celebrate today, i.e. the joy of being together in worship, community and service.
We’re enjoying the first part right now. We’re worshiping God together! It seems like such a simple thing, but how don’t we take this for granted? For years – probably for your entire earthly life – you have always been able to come to church. There was a service every week. If your softball team had a tournament one weekend, you knew that you could always go to church the next weekend. If work took you out of town 2 Sundays a month, you knew there were always 2 more Sundays that you could come. Sometimes you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.
But a year and a half later, not knowing from one month to the next whether another wave of the pandemic was about to strike, here we are. May we never take this for granted again.
Here we are gathered together to hear a pastor share the good news of God’s love, i.e. to announce the forgiveness of all of your sins for the sake of Jesus, your Saviour. You get to stand shoulder to shoulder with fellow sinners just like you who carry burdens of guilt just like you, but who, just like you, find relief in the cross of Christ, in the forgiveness of your sins.
Here we are gathered together to pray to our God, to cast all our anxieties on him, just as he invites us to, and to be reminded together of God’s abiding love for us and his promises to protect and provide for us.
Here we are gathered together to praise the name of the God who loves us, to lift up our voices in word and song to lift up our God in celebration for all the good that he given to us.
Here we are gathered together to do the one thing needful that Mary did our Gospel lesson for today. There are crockpots in the kitchen. There are school schedules to sort out, car problems to get fixed, moving plans to finalize, but here you are, just like Mary sitting at Jesus’ feet to hear the good news of God’s love for you, the glorious gospel that we have a God who sent his Son to save us, to set us free from sin and to give us hope both in this life and the next.
And that’s something that unites us – people from all over St. Albert and Edmonton, families whose family trees are rooted in different continents, people from every socio-economic bracket you can imagine, who have different political opinions and favourite sports teams. We’re all here together because God has united us together in the one faith we express together in worship.
It is a blessing to worship with you today.
But the amazing thing about our God is that the unity he gives us is not limited to this hour we spend in worship every week. If it were, then you might get to know people’s faces, maybe even their names, but as you’re confessing your sins together and receiving the promise of God’s forgiveness together, as you’re praising God’s name in song together, you’d just be two people walking parallel paths.
Thankfully, that’s not the limit of the unity and the fellowship that God gives us. We are blessed to be able bookend worship – before and after – with time to talk to each other, to get to know each other, to support and encourage each other.
Maybe this is your first time worshiping with us today. Maybe you don’t know another soul sitting in these seats today. I’d love for you to stick around and get to know them. Because these fellow Christians can be your lifeline in a tumultuous world.
For those of you who have worshiped with us before, who know the other people here, how many times have you gone home from church and said something like, “Wow, Emily is really going through a rough time. I’m going to need to keep her in my prayers this week. I’ll give her a call tomorrow to see how she’s doing.”
Or, “I’m so glad I was able to talk to Bill this morning. He’s such a good listener. It just felt so good to get everything out there and share what I’m going through with someone who cares.”
That’s the blessing that we have to be a Christian community – to be together, not just side by side as we worship the same God, but truly together, to encourage each other just as we heard in our Second Lesson today:
Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another.[2]
It’s no wonder God wants us to gather together as his people. When we do, he blesses us with the joy of worshipping together, united in faith and purpose. He blesses us with the opportunity to experience true Christian community together.
But – at the risk of sounding like a late-night infomercial host – that’s not all! There’s more! When we gather together as God’s people, united in faith and love for each other, we also have the privilege of serving not only each other but alongside each other as we serve our neighbourhood and our world.
That’s what God’s people are supposed to do. We gather together here every week to fill ourselves with the good news of salvation in Jesus. We unload our guilt at the foot of the cross and receive the relief God promises us in Jesus. He breathes new life into us every time we hear his Word.
Then, we get emotional and practical support from our fellow Christians, who talk to us and encourage us, whom we can listen to and build up.
But then, together, we have the opportunity and the responsibility to use what God has given us to make a difference in the world he’s made for us. When God unites us in faith and bonds us together in community, then we have the blessed privilege of pooling our resources – our time, our talents, our treasures – to serve the people around us.
I think of those of you who are on a service team, opening up church and making everyone who walks through the door feel welcome; I think of those of you who are on the altar guild, beautifying our church in every season and preparing the Lord’s Supper every other week; I think of you choir members and offering counters, every one of you who brought a dish to pass or who helped set up chairs today, the lawn mowers, the Sunday School teachers. The list goes on!
We weren’t able to do any of those things for a while. But now we can, and now we must. Because there are children who need to be taught the precious truths of God’s Word. Can you spare one Sunday a month to help out our Sunday School?
There are members of our church and our community who still aren’t ready to be here. Can you press a few buttons to make the livestream work reliably week in and week out? You can be the reason God’s Word reaches those who need it most.
There are neighbours not so far away who need our help. St. Albert’s Food Bank is desperately looking for help for their food drive that’s going on right now. Can you drive to pick up a few bags of food for those in need?
And that’s just what I can think of off the top of my head. I’m sure you can think of people in need and ways that together we can do more than just serve ourselves with God’s Word, but we can use the gifts that God has given us to serve the people he’s put in our lives.
That’s what the first Christians did. That’s what we read in our First Lesson:
All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had… God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them.[3]
A lot of things have happened since last January – some good, some not so good. But here we are, blessed to be united by faith in our one Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, bound together into one Christian community, privileged to serve not only each other but alongside each other as we use the gifts God has given us for the betterment of our community and to the glory of the God who claims us as his own. Cherish this gift that God gives you. Don’t take it for granted. But take every opportunity to celebrate the true blessing it is to be united in worship, community and service. Amen.
[1] Psalm 122:1
[2] Hebrews 10:23-25
[3] Acts 4:32-34