We continue with pieces from “Holy People” by Gordon Lathrop.
The church is an assembly. The church is a gathering of people in a particular place who are, together, through concrete means, participating in the mystery of Christ and so are being formed into the holy assembly. The church is not a collection of consuming individuals, choosing religious goods according to their own self-perceived needs or desires. It is not a club supporting a particular ideology. It is not the audience for a speaker’s eloquence, a choir’s concert, or a priest’s rituals. The local church-assembly is itself, as gathering, the primary symbol. By its participation, by its communal mode of song and prayer around Scripture reading, meal keeping, and bathing, it is being transformed into a primary witness to the identity of God and the identity of the world before God.
This is a wonderful picture of the church. Everything about the assembly since the first days of people gathering together in what is called the church is a living word that points to the Christ of God. There may be many things that attract us to worship but it is the act of gathering that makes us the body of Christ and not simply an individual on a journey for something or a consumer wanting to be satisfied.
Connection: Once we gather, we are given the opportunity to grow beyond our own world and to see and feel the power of a simple community fed and nourished by our God. Try it.
When you bind us together through the Word and make us a people, O God, you offer us a vision of life that is not readily available to us through other pathways in our world. Continue to inspire us to gather with other to share in the power and joy of your presence. Amen.
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