On Going to Church
by Brother Christopher
Recently I had the opportunity of speaking with a mother and her young son when they brought their dog to New Skete for training. In the course of the conversation, the young boy suddenly looked at me directly and asked me a question from left field: ‘Why do you go to church?‘ I was a bit startled at his forthrightness. In that moment I knew I couldn’t hide behind a more heady theological explanation designed to ease the discomfort of the question. He was seven years old. Yet I couldn’t dismiss his question... His eyes were scrutinizing me, looking up at me expectantly. After a healthy pause I replied, “Because going to church is one of the ways I get to say ‘thank you’ to God for all God’s blessings.” He smiled broadly and turned to his mother as if to say we could continue and we went on with the conversation about their dog without missing a beat.
But throughout the day the question stayed with me: ‘Why do we go to church?’ I suspect the real answer is more complicated than the simple answer I gave. Yes, I go to Church because I find it deeply meaningful, because I adore the beauty of the services, because I love to sing, because I sense God’s presence there. But I realize that there is a shadow side to this as well: There’s a part of me that goes to church because I fear that if I don’t I will be punished: God will not be pleased. I would be breaking God’s law, God’s rule. So, to be perfectly honest, my relationship to church is complex and I suspect yours is as well.
For example, let’s do a thought experiment. If God said, ‘You don’t have to go to church... you are free to not go and I won’t think any the less of you’... would you still go? And if so, why?...’ I would hope our answer would be, ‘because in spite of any fears or doubts I may have, I go because it is life-giving, because it has something crucial to do with me manifesting my best self, my true self.’
Throughout the Gospels Jesus deliberately seems to stir up controversy about sabbath observance. The Law was quite meticulous about how a faithful Jew was to observe the sabbath and it is clear that Jesus was not bound to a literalistic, fundamentalistic observance of the sabbath. Jesus understood that the purpose of the sabbath was entirely humanizing, to give each of us, but especially the poor, a day of rest, a day when we can relax, eat, and celebrate with our families and friends. This gift is what the sabbath celebrates, and by extension what our own Sunday celebration celebrates. The spirit of this day is so far removed from a legalistic rule. Sunday is God’s gift to us -- not an obligation -- and church is where we get to say ‘thank you’ to God for everything.
Yet, so often we fall prey to the temptation of thinking that we have to be good in order to earn God’s love. This is heresy. Real liberation comes in knowing that there is nothing we can do to make God love us any more than God already does. This is what St Paul is getting at in his letter to the Romans: “For I know that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth ... can ever separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord”. (Rom 8:38,39) To the extent that we truly grasp this, far from leading us to take it for granted, to say, ‘it really doesn’t matter what I do because God will always love and forgive me’, it causes us to respond with the fullest love we are capable of, to become who we are truly meant to be simply out of gratitude. From such a perspective, the act of going to church, of sharing deeply in the experience of worship is absolutely relevant to manifesting our true, our best self, that self that maturely understands the importance of saying ‘Thank you’ for the unfathomable gift of life.
Recently I had the opportunity of speaking with a mother and her young son when they brought their dog to New Skete for training. In the course of the conversation, the young boy suddenly looked at me directly and asked me a question from left field: ‘Why do you go to church?‘ I was a bit startled at his forthrightness. In that moment I knew I couldn’t hide behind a more heady theological explanation designed to ease the discomfort of the question. He was seven years old. Yet I couldn’t dismiss his question... His eyes were scrutinizing me, looking up at me expectantly. After a healthy pause I replied, “Because going to church is one of the ways I get to say ‘thank you’ to God for all God’s blessings.” He smiled broadly and turned to his mother as if to say we could continue and we went on with the conversation about their dog without missing a beat.
But throughout the day the question stayed with me: ‘Why do we go to church?’ I suspect the real answer is more complicated than the simple answer I gave. Yes, I go to Church because I find it deeply meaningful, because I adore the beauty of the services, because I love to sing, because I sense God’s presence there. But I realize that there is a shadow side to this as well: There’s a part of me that goes to church because I fear that if I don’t I will be punished: God will not be pleased. I would be breaking God’s law, God’s rule. So, to be perfectly honest, my relationship to church is complex and I suspect yours is as well.
For example, let’s do a thought experiment. If God said, ‘You don’t have to go to church... you are free to not go and I won’t think any the less of you’... would you still go? And if so, why?...’ I would hope our answer would be, ‘because in spite of any fears or doubts I may have, I go because it is life-giving, because it has something crucial to do with me manifesting my best self, my true self.’
Throughout the Gospels Jesus deliberately seems to stir up controversy about sabbath observance. The Law was quite meticulous about how a faithful Jew was to observe the sabbath and it is clear that Jesus was not bound to a literalistic, fundamentalistic observance of the sabbath. Jesus understood that the purpose of the sabbath was entirely humanizing, to give each of us, but especially the poor, a day of rest, a day when we can relax, eat, and celebrate with our families and friends. This gift is what the sabbath celebrates, and by extension what our own Sunday celebration celebrates. The spirit of this day is so far removed from a legalistic rule. Sunday is God’s gift to us -- not an obligation -- and church is where we get to say ‘thank you’ to God for everything.
Yet, so often we fall prey to the temptation of thinking that we have to be good in order to earn God’s love. This is heresy. Real liberation comes in knowing that there is nothing we can do to make God love us any more than God already does. This is what St Paul is getting at in his letter to the Romans: “For I know that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth ... can ever separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord”. (Rom 8:38,39) To the extent that we truly grasp this, far from leading us to take it for granted, to say, ‘it really doesn’t matter what I do because God will always love and forgive me’, it causes us to respond with the fullest love we are capable of, to become who we are truly meant to be simply out of gratitude. From such a perspective, the act of going to church, of sharing deeply in the experience of worship is absolutely relevant to manifesting our true, our best self, that self that maturely understands the importance of saying ‘Thank you’ for the unfathomable gift of life.
