Do I have to go to church to be a Christian? (2)

The Lord said to Moses, ‘Speak to the Israelites and say to them: These are my appointed festivals, the appointed festivals of the Lord, which you are to proclaim as sacred assemblies’… Leviticus 23:1-2

Jesus went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. Luke 4:14-16

And let us consider how we may spur one another on towards love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing but encouraging one another… Hebrews 10:24-25

A question that’s been put to me is “Do I have to go to church to be a Christian?”, and last time I tried to clear the ground, so to speak, in order to get straight what we mean – or should mean – by “going to church”.

The key point is that church isn’t a building you go to but a community you belong to. It was founded by Jesus himself. After Simon Peter confessed that “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God”, he replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah… on this rock I will build my church” (Matthew 16:16-18). Yes, his church, not ours.

So… anyone who believes in Jesus as Lord and Saviour is automatically part of the church, his very body on earth. Why then would they even think for one minute that meeting with their fellow-believers is just a take-it-or-leave-it thing? Did Jesus found the church in order for us to arrogantly tell him we don’t need it?

The Bible throws a whole lot more light on all this. Let’s gather it up under three headings…

1.   The Old Testament background.

Jesus was a Jew. That’s a fact of history we must never forget. His mind was steeped in the Jewish scriptures - what we call “the Old Testament” - and he saw his life and ministry as fulfilling many of its prophecies.

One thing he will have known from his earliest days is that the nation of Israel - God’s chosen people – had always been expected to meet together on regular occasions. When today we read Old Testament books such as Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers, we are likely to feel a bit puzzled; why has God given us all these details about his ancient people! No doubt there are various reasons. But one of them was to din it into our heads what kind of people Israel was intended to be: and that included being a people who shared and celebrated their faith together in corporate gatherings.

At the top I’ve picked out Leviticus 23, but I could have gone for plenty of other passages where the Old Testament law speaks of “appointed festivals… sacred assemblies”.

The main annual gatherings that Jesus would have known were: Passover (Unleavened Bread), celebrating Israel’s exodus from Egypt; Firstfruits (Harvest); Weeks (Pentecost, the end of the grain harvest); the Blowing of Trumpets (a one-off day of celebration); above all, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when the whole nation came to God for the cleansing of their sins.

These were high points in the Jewish year (and still are today); and they were knitted together by more routine events, the weekly Sabbath Day, and a monthly New Moon festival.

God obviously decided that his people needed a rhythm to their lives, whether big annual celebrations that marked the passing of the year, or the weekly seventh-day rest. So while the Jews of course had (and still have) a very personal element to their faith, the idea of a Jew “going solo” in their religious observance was simply unthinkable.

And that principle of a weekly and annual rhythm is carried over also into the Christian church: we focus particularly on Sunday, “the Lord’s Day”, plus Christmas, Easter and Whitsun.

2.   The example of Jesus.

Luke 4:16 couldn’t be more plain. After his baptism in the River Jordan and his testing by Satan in the wilderness, Jesus began his earthly ministry in Nazareth where “on the sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom”. Note those last four words!

It’s significant that the Greek word “synagogue” means simply “place for coming together”. In Old Testament days the Jews would gather in either the “tabernacle” – the big portable tent they carried about with them during their time of journeying to the promised land; or the “temple” - the magnificent building in Jerusalem built originally in the reign of King Solomon.

But once they were settled in the promised land, more local and ordinary places for gathering and worship – though not for sacrifice – were needed. So the synagogues were perhaps like what we might call “chapels”, and were the focal point of the community.

Picture Saturday morning in Nazareth. The sun is shining, and from every part of the town people are making their way to this ordinary-looking little building where they are used to gathering. And among them, just one of the crowd, comes… Jesus. Why? Because it was “his custom”, as a faithful Jew. It was what you did.

So back to the question I asked earlier: If gathering for worship and fellowship was an essential part of his life, how dare we imagine that we don’t need it? Do we know better than him? Coming together is part of the DNA of the church.

I’ve run out of space again, so I’ll leave till next time my third heading – how the early church applied these biblical principles, and how we today should do the same.

Father, thank you that by faith in Jesus we have become children of Abraham, and have inherited the scriptures of the Old Testament. Help me to grasp that I am bonded together with all your people, and privileged to be part of a family that shares a common life. Amen.