Jesus: “Whenever you did it for any of my people, no matter how unimportant they seemed, you did it for me.”
Gathering for church is a strange kind of event. On some levels it has the outward appearance of a concert venue. Those arriving enter, receive a bulletin, then sit down like an audience.
At a concert the expectations of the audience are pretty minimal. Don’t make out with your date the whole time and gross out the people behind you. Don’t spill your beer on anyone.
Besides that the bar is rather low. Everyone is there to see the band and listen to the music. Expectations are set for the performance, not the audience.
This is the definition of a crowd.
Church, at least theoretically, is not like that at all. When the church gathers it is because something is expected of those who arrive. The church is the gathered community of Jesus, the one who taught repeatedly to focus on “the least of these” and “love your neighbor.”
Now I do think self-care is wonderful so it’s fine from time-to-time to show up at church just to get fed. And of course the mission and values of your church matter: if you belong to a church that still doesn’t include LGBTQIA folks in leadership, it’s not just your church that fails at exclusion, it’s also you…
But…
I’m going to repeat something here I repeat often in many contexts. You really shouldn’t go to church for yourself.
Now, what exactly do I mean by this?
Consider: if you go to church for yourself then you prioritize your own preferences. You place at the top of your agenda the style of music, how much you will get out of the sermons, whether you like the seats, whether you can network at the church to build business connections, etc.
But, if you go to church for others: then you hope the music meets the needs of some small children dancing near you. You scan the gathered congregation and look to see who is alone who may need a friend. You wonder what spiritual gifts you can bring to the community to strengthen it. You ask yourself whether committing to that church will further social justice in your community.
When you go to church for others, you live into the eschatological parable Jesus teaches in Matthew 25. You go trusting that “if you are there for someone, as unimportant as they seem, you are there for Jesus.”
I know it’s wild, but Jesus really teaches that when you go to church, you will encounter Christ in your neighbor. It’s like that other line in Scripture about entertaining angels unawares (Hebrews 13), when you gather in Christian community you find yourself face-to-face with Jesus/angels/God.
No wonder some of us are tempted to go to church for ourselves: it’s a lot more risky and scary to anticipate we may be meeting God.
If you’re wondering whether or not my argument holds water and is biblically grounded, let me offer a few examples.
In Hebrews the author asks us to “consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds” when gathered for worship. If you wish to heed this directive, you’d go to church asking yourself how you could inspire others in the congregation to love and good deeds.
In the letters to the Corinthians Paul argues that the gathered community “belongs to each other.” This is a radical concept of Paul’s: we are not our own. We are Christ’s, and we are each other’s. If you are trying to live according to this claim, you’d go to church asking yourself how to see yourself not in yourself but in all those gathered with you.
In his letter to the Colossians Paul encourages the community to “teach and admonish one another with all wisdom.” That’s a quite different model (and more Quaker) than the model where everyone comes to church to be taught by the one preaching voice. Everyone comes with teaching, with wisdom.
In James, Jesus’ brother encourages people to bring those who are sick to church and heal them. So you’d go to church planning to watch for those who need healing and participate in it. You’d also bring sick people to church.
I could go on, but I hope you’re kind of catching the point. Essentially, the challenge is to think of church as a team sport rather than a couch activity. It’s not passive reception, it’s active giving and cooperation.
I have a few basic reasons for stating this argument so starkly. First, if everyone came to church for others more than themselves the church would be a transformative community. Rather than Sunday worship looking like a spectator sport with fans who have a favorite seat in the stands and maintaining a scoreboard rating the quality of the sermon and the hymns, it would look like a construction site with everyone building something together, and evaluating itself along the lines of Matthew 25: did we, did all of us, give water to the thirsty, food to the hungry, clothing to the naked, right here, right now, with this community? And did we visit those in prison?
Second, such a way of thinking is closer to the heart of Jesus. Basic to Jesus’ constant teaching was this sense of neighbor-love, of prioritizing living now in the coming kin-dom of God, of prioritizing not our own felt needs but the more immediate and significant needs of our neighbors. This is not a kind of self-abnegating prioritizing of the other, but rather having such a robust sense of self that one has a self to give.
Going to church for ourselves looks like the Pharisees and other religious folk who walked by on the other side of the road when they saw an injured man in the ditch.
Going to church for others looks like being the Good Samaritan, who was ready in a heartbeat to meet the need of the one waylaid and dying in the ditch.
And he was ready because he had time and was in the right mind-frame. He wasn’t on the road to get to his destination. He was on the road ready to help if there was a need. He had time and was watching for his neighbor’s need.
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Consider how this transformation of our mindset—making church be about the others gathered with us—would change our perspective on so many things.
For example, right now conservative voices are going crazy on Twitter tweeting, “The border isn’t secure.” I see that tweet, and I think to myself, “Good! Our nation isn’t just for us, it’s also for others.” America first is like the big existential version of “me first.”
Or if we went to church for others and not ourselves, we’d very likely spend a lot of our time worshipping with other communities, not because we’re shopping for a new church, but because we know they may need us. We’d be in prisons, etc. or in new immigrant churches, or churches on the frontline of care, because we know how much going to visit neighboring partner churches or nursing homes, etc. means.
Just stop and think about the difference this concept would make. Imagine waking up Sunday morning and thinking to yourself:
I’m going to church this morning because so-and-so needs to see me and get a smile.
I’m going to church this morning because the world needs our prayers.
I’m going to church this morning and I’m going to watch for the person who appears new or confused or alone and I will sit with them.
I’m going to church this morning because my children love to make new friends.
I’m going to church this morning because the only way the beloved community in the way of Jesus gets built is if we “do not give up on meeting together” (Hebrews again).
I know encouraging this way of thinking is an uphill battle. So much of modern life has conspired to train us in the idea that church is something we consume. It’s hard not to think outside the consumerist frame.
And I’m not arguing that we shouldn’t get something out of church also. Clearly we should. In worship we receive Jesus.
I simply happen to think we’ll get the most out of church when we reframe it as an exercise in neighbor-love. In the same way that teachers learn content even better than students because when you teach you learn twice, I think it’s a comparable truism that when you go to church for others you go twice, first in shared life with your neighbor in Christ, then also “as yourself.” As in that classic teaching of Jesus, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Perhaps that is precisely how we receive Jesus in worship: by being for others the way he was.
Thanks Clint. I needed to hear this today. We've heard it before of course, but think how transformational it would be to embed it into our minds.