We Gather. Hebrews 10:19-25. 04/14/24.
We Gather
Hebrews 10:19-25
Rev. Dr. Rhonda Blevins
April 14, 2024
Therefore, my brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain (that is, through his flesh), and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
Last week I spent time in the mountains of North Carolina enjoying a post-Easter retreat with some fellow clergy—roughly 30 ministers, a couple of lay people, and one very brave minister of music. The theme of the retreat was “SpiritFlow”—it was a time of renewal and reflection and learning from one another.
We came from as far north as upstate New York, as far west as Columbia, Missouri, and I won the prize for the southernmost participant. Some participants serve large churches with multiple pastors, others lead small church plants. We were Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, Lutheran—two of us from the International Council of Community Churches.
We talked about our vocation as church leaders. We shared stories about our churches. Most of us are serving thriving congregations. One pastor there is serving a church that recently decided to disband. Their last Sunday together was back in March. The pastor is continuing to serve the congregation as she closes accounts and distributes assets to the entities to whom the church decided to bequeath their final gifts.
I asked that pastor what that experience has been like—leading a church through its dying hour. An experience, my colleagues and I agree, that will become more and more common in the coming years. The pastor talked about how the small congregation never quite bounced back after COVID shutdowns. Some never came back to in-person worship, others were taking long-overdue trips while others had kids who started participating in Sunday sports—sports having been closed off to them during the shutdown. So worship attendance dwindled.
One Sunday, the pastor recounted, three new couples showed up to their church for the first time! The three couples were looking for a church to join together. They found the website for my friend’s church, and they liked what they saw. But the Sunday the three new couples showed up, there were only five church members in attendance. The three new couples never returned.
“What do you think happened?” I asked this new pastor friend. “Was there one thing you could point to that led to this church’s closure?”
“Absolutely,” the pastor said. “They stopped showing up. They stopped showing up to church. They stopped showing up for one another.”
Hold that thought for just a moment.
Today at the Chapel, we’re focusing on the second of ten “Core Commitments”—these values that you, Chapel by the Sea, determined to be most important for your shared life together throughout the listening sessions and Saturday workshop we held back in January. Together, you crafted a “Missional Aspiration” statement that I’m inviting Chapel members to memorize. Let’s practice together, shall we?
Chapel by the Sea aspires to be a beacon of God’s love,
inviting people into a vibrant life with Christ.
I love that so much!
The ten “Core Commitments” you identified together speak to the “how.” How will we live out this calling to be a beacon of God’s love? How will we embody this mission of inviting people into a vibrant life with Christ?
You decided on ten ways, reflected in ten action verbs. They’re printed in your bulletin. Let’s read them together:
Welcome. Gather. Pray. Give. Serve. Forgive. Sing. Grow. Respect. Love.
Last week we talked about our commitment to “welcome and include all who come our way.” This week we tackle our core commitment to gather: “We gather weekly for worship and fellowship.”
As the leadership team gathered on Sunday right after the Saturday workshop, I remember some of the conversation around this core value of gathering. When the team added the word “weekly,” “We gather weekly for worship and fellowship,” I pushed back a little. I am careful, as your pastor, to represent a version of the Christian faith that isn’t primarily about guilt. Many of us have been a part of traditions that are all about guilt. We’ve “been there, done that” and gotten way too many t-shirts from that expression of the faith. I was concerned that the word “weekly” would come across as a guilt trip. I was overridden, but overridden in a way that helped me understand the intent behind adding in the word “weekly”—that it is positive, not negative.
You see, I recognize that we’re not giving out many “perfect attendance” certificates at churches these days. Even your pastor takes off an occasional Sunday now and then! But adding the word “weekly” to this statement isn’t about making one another feel guilty for missing a Sunday here or there—it’s about our commitment to one another. That when we can—when we’re in town, when we’re healthy—we’ll prioritize showing up for one another.
I think the team was onto something. As my pastor friend who recently closed her church forever taught me—showing up for one another is a critical facet of church life.
Maybe that’s why the author of Hebrews encouraged the young church to show up for one another, saying: “And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”
Showing up.
“Showing up,” according to Father Richard Rohr, is the final stage of transformation in the life of faith. Rohr borrows language from the brilliant philosopher, Ken Wilbur, to describe four stages of moral and spiritual development: cleaning up, growing up, waking up, and showing up. “An evolutionary faith understands that nothing is static,” Rohr writes. “The universe unfolds, our understanding of God evolves and deepens, and our moral development surely evolves as well. We simply cannot, as adults, live by the same overly simplistic rules that governed our morality as children.”
This evolution of faith happens in a predictable progression, observes Wilbur and Rohr:
1. Cleaning up is the earliest stage of faith development. It’s about controlling our impulses and creating ego boundaries. It’s about living according to whatever “purity codes” dominate the culture at a specific place and time. It has very little to do with what Jesus taught and embodied—a transformation in consciousness itself. There was a saying that I used to hear sometimes that perfectly captures the “cleaning up” phase of faith development: “Don’t drink, smoke, or chew or run with boys that do.”
2. Growing up is the stage of faith development in which we see psychological and emotional maturity begin to manifest. We grow up, even if in a bubble. The social structures surrounding us as we grow up certainly color and strengthen how we grow up—social structures around us can also limit how much we can grow and how quickly we can grow. We may “rebel” against these structures as we grow beyond them.
3. Waking up refers to spiritual experience—particularly spiritual experience that reveals to us our oneness with God. This is what we Christians call “salvation.” This is the goal of the life of faith and the spiritual journey. It is marked by surrender, by love, and by union with God. There is a past, present, and future component of this “salvation” or waking up. As my old seminary professor used to say: “We have been saved. We are being saved. We will be saved.” We wake up into unity with God.
4. Showing up is the last of the four stages of faith development identified by Wilbur and proliferated by Rohr. “It means engagement, social presence, and a sincere concern for justice and peace for others beyond ourselves. If we do not have a lot of people showing up in the suffering trenches of the world, it is probably because those of us in the world of religion have merely focused on either cleaning up, growing up, or waking up. Showing up is the full and final result of the prior three stages—God’s fully transformed ‘work of art.’”
These stages are not linear necessarily—we may circle back through. Showing up may lead to further growing up. Further growing up can result in continued waking up. Growth builds on growth. Brick by brick.
These stages can’t be forced. They are organic. The progression unfolds in its own time over decades or even a lifetime.
This “showing up”—engagement, social presence, concern for others—this is countercultural. Our culture conditions us to be consumers. As consumers, it’s all about “me.” MY preferences, MY habits. I don’t like a certain restaurant? I’ll go to a different one, one I will enjoy more. I don’t like a particular store? I’ll go to a different one that will cater more to my preferences. Even at home, we’re consumers. Don’t like Spectrum? Then I’ll go streaming. Don’t like Hulu? Then I’ll go Apple TV. Social media takes it a step further: we go from being the consumer to being the consumed. We are the product on free social media platforms. Big business pays for our attention—our consumption.
“Showing up” punches this runaway consumerism in the face. “Showing up” flips the switch from what I can “get” to what I can “give.” Like John F. Kennedy so powerfully implored, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”
At the highest level of spiritual and emotional maturity, “showing up” means that we’re in community not just for what we get out of it, but for what we can put into it.
That’s why we, here at the Chapel, place such a high value on “gathering.” We gather weekly for worship and fellowship. This isn’t “We MUST gather weekly.” This is “We GET TO gather weekly.” I GET TO show up every week and offer what I can to this community. You GET TO show up every week and offer what you can to this community. We show up for one another.
You may think that you’re not offering much when you show up on Sunday here at the Chapel. I want to challenge that thinking.
When I was with colleagues last week, it was interesting to note how often COVID and its disruptions were still a part of the conversation. As for me, I was reminded of those early days of COVID when we couldn’t meet for worship—the church staff and I scrambled to figure out how to record some semblance of a worship service from our isolated locations. I had to learn video editing. Some choir members recorded their individual voices—singing to their cell phones. I set up a little studio at my house and preached into the back of an iPhone on a tripod. It stunk.
Then one day in the middle of all of that, I couldn’t get out of bed. I hit some kind of emotional or mental or spiritual wall. I nearly crashed.
One learning from that day was a stark reminder that worship isn’t some “show” performed by those of us here on the chancel. It’s a dance. And I need you. We need each other. The sermon I prepare and deliver each week is only one-half of the dance. The energy you bring to the preaching moment is at least half the equation! The hymns need your voice! The liturgy needs your spirit!
When we. . .
Read the Word
Preach the Word
Pray the Word
Sing the Word
See the Word (through the sacraments)
. . . the folks on the chancel aren’t the performers and the people in the pews aren’t the audience. Kierkegaard taught that in the “theater of worship,” the performers are the people in the pews, the folks on the chancel are merely the prompters, and the audience is an audience of One—the Lord God Almighty!
While on retreat last week, one of my colleagues told me a story about a gentleman who participated in a contemplative prayer circle each week. Contemplative prayer, as you may know, is a silent form of prayer. While individuals can practice contemplative prayer on their own, this gentleman needed the circle—he found it much easier to practice contemplative prayer with the circle than on his own. So one day he was heading to the circle, and he got a late start. Not only that, but there was an accident on the highway. By the time he got to his contemplative prayer circle, his friends were finished. They could see he was upset. So two of them stayed longer for their friend. They sat with him, in silence, so that he could pray.
His friends held space for him, that he might practice his faith.
That’s what happens when we gather. It may not seem like much, but when we show up, we hold space for one another, provoking “one another to love and good deeds” like the author of Hebrews encourages.
So yes, “We gather weekly for worship and fellowship.” Not because we must, but because we may. Not just for what we will receive, but for what we might offer. “We gather weekly for worship and fellowship” is not prescriptive, but descriptive, acknowledging our common commitment to “show up” for one another.
Thank you for being a church that “shows up” for each other. After cleaning up, growing up, and waking up, we count it as a great privilege to show up for one another! How? It’s simple!
We gather.
I close with a poem by Shagun Rastogi:
Do nothing else, they said.
Just show up.
Show up for the task that is given
even when you know nothing of how it is to be accomplished.
Show up for pain
even when every part of you would rather run
hide, escape or scroll endlessly, through bottomless feeds.
Show up.
You do not have to know what to do with it.
You do not have to breathe deep
hold space, witness or release.
You just have to show up.
Show up for joy
even when nothing in you is light or song
and you would rather forget than remember.
Show up.
You do not have to laugh or play along,
say nice things
or look like you’re having fun.
You just have to show up.
Show up for love
even when your heart is a closed fist
and your armor won’t budge
and you’d rather be cocooned
than cracked open, again.
Show up.
You do not have to be selfless or sacrificing
perfectly desirable or well-maintained,
clear, committed, unafraid or steady.
You do not have to be ready.
You just have to show up.
Day after day,
Moment by moment,
Show up for life.
Just as it is.
Just as you are.
That is enough, they said.