In Other Words...Gathering

There are clubs, organizations, societies, and groups of all kinds in the world. Some meet once a year, once a month, once a week, or even every day. There is a group called the Red Hat Society. Their motto reads like this: “The Red Hat Society is a social organization where there is fun after fifty (and before) for women of all walks of life.” Basically they all wear these gaudy red hats and go do fun stuff. Carrie and I went to the Barter Theater last year, and they were there with their purple dresses and big red hats. They just get together to have fun because they share a common trait—they are old and bored.

Like I said, there are groups of all kinds that meet together. And so is the church. We are a gathering. We are like-minded people. But here’s the question that I don’t think we always answer well:
Why do we gather together at church? What purpose does it serve?
Is it because we are bored? Is it because that is all we know?
A few answers spring to mind:
Obligation—God commands it, so we obey. But that doesn’t really answer the “what purpose” question.
Fellowship—we like one another and like to have fun with one another and help each other grow. But that doesn’t really answer the “why” question.
Worship and Proclamation—we give God praise and worship because he deserves it. Granted, but couldn’t we just do that at home?

This leads me to a final possibility—Preparation
The retelling and remembering of who God was and what he had done functioned as the means of transformation more than reminding. When we sing praises we say, “This is who God is, and this is who God wants us to be.” These dramatic encounters with God enhanced their memory and transformed their hearts and lives to be the kind of people God wants them to be. Practice generates reality.

The reason why the temple was so important to the Israelites was not because they thought God existed only there. But they knew that the temple gathering was a special experience that could transform them to be the kind of people God wanted them to be.

What happens next? What is the point of all of this? Other groups just gather to waste time, some to further their agenda, still others to accomplish some goal. So what happens when our meetings are over?
There is something about gathering that brings us into the presence and awareness of God. We celebrate together what God has done in all of us. And something amazing happens—we leave transformed into the temple. As the body of Christ we want to function in a similar way. We are now mobile tabernacles. We become the temple.

Now the temple, the place where people encounter the presence of God is within us. 1 Corinthians 3:16-17 states, “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple.”

There is no separation of church stuff and regular stuff. This goes back to the discussion of holy and sacramental living. If we are a traveling, mobile temple, we have some responsibilities don’t we? As the temple of God, we invite people into our lives. We invite them into our gathering.

We see a problem when the gathering becomes an end in and of itself rather than the proclamation that stems from the gathering. We turn into just another club or society and not a group of people that has had their lives changed and wants to see the world changed. We don’t gather just to hang out. We don’t gather just to meet some time quota. We don’t gather just to listen to and sing some music.

We gather to be changed so that we can change the world. Wherever we go, people should see the presence of God in our lives. If we, the body of Christ are the new temple, we should give people the opportunity to see God’s faithfulness and praise him as a result.