Welcome to Assembly!

Those of us who assemble in churches also come with various levels of church experience. Like Grade niners, some of us have less experience than others. A veteran minister recalled a young woman who, when asked to present special music at a solemn worship service which she had never before attended, took out an accordion and began playing "La Cucaracha"!

There are, however, deeper reasons why assembling as churches does not come easy. There are many forces, interior and exterior, that tend toward dis-assembly. There are, within each one of us, things that resist human assembly, and that particularly come to the fore when assembling as a church.

While on vacation in Saskatchewan this summer, our family visited my old home town, Duck Lake, and while there we visited the Duck Lake Interpretive Centre, a centre largely dedicated to the native and French population of that area. While ambling through the displays I stumbled across one depicting churches in the region, one of the panels highlighting the two Mennonite churches in the area. It indicated that one of the Mennonite churches in the area was established by Willy Janzen and John J. Reimer. I called over my brother, who informed me that John J. Reimer was my maternal grandfather! I was very pleased! To think that my grandfather was a founder of a church! This is unheard of in my family tree. My most illustrious relative to date has been a cousin who stood six feet, eleven inches tall, and who was sent to prison for a crime I'd rather not name! But a founder of a church! My mother never ever mentioned it to me. What she told me is that her father left that church twenty-five years before he died, and never set foot in a church again, leaving me with the impression that though my grandfather may have seen his exit as a highly principled one, my mother saw it as the predictable action of a crusty, old, inflexible fool! She never said it in so many words, but then my mother has never had to say anything in so many words.

Dorothy took a nice picture of the display panel honoring my grandfather, complete with French translation, ascribing to him the founding of L'église Ménnonite de Horse Lake. He established this church in a school district called Lac Cheval and in moments of fantasy I like to think that he would have preferred to call the church L'église Ménnonite de Lac Cheval, but in deference to his friend, Willy Janzen, who knew so little French, he reluctantly agreed to the name, Horse Lake. Though I cherish this new memory of my grandfather, I am also left with the memory that he couldn't summon the grace to remain assembled with the church he founded, and I also retain a memory of the other Mennonite church established in that region closing its doors years ago because of some church fight, and, unfortunately, I believe members of my family were also implicated in that incident!

The forces of dis-assembly can often be found very close to home, I'm sad to say, but I'm also aware that this inclination can be taken to rather ridiculous extremes! Church assembling is often awkward because we also bring to the task of assembly various levels of commitment. Someone has pointed out that just as the human body contains a variety of bones, so too one finds at least four different types of bones in church bodies: There are wish-bones, those who wish somebody would do something about such and such a problem; there are jaw-bones, those who do all the talking but very little else; there are knuckle-bones, those who knock everything; and there are the back-bones, those who carry the brunt of the congregational load and who do most of the work. Some of you may find a bone to pick with that perspective, but it's true that we do not all bring a deep level of commitment to our church togetherness.

Last winter I wanted to preach a sermon entitled, Plug and Play, named after the Windows 95 method of software installation, but, getting the impression that my computer analogies were getting rather tiresome, I resisted the impulse. If our commitment to assembling as Christians is not particularly deep, however, then one is dependent upon a Plug-and-Play approach -- plug the Sunday School program, plug the retreat, plug Small Groups, plug refugee resettlement, plug SelfHelp sales, plug choir rehearsals, ecumenical events, and what-have-you, plugging along and promoting things that would be un-necessary to promote if we were doing more than playing at being the church.

Sometimes it's hard to take seriously the reasons people give for resisting assembling as Christians. Were you to put those reasons in another context, they might sound quite peculiar. For example, I attend baseball games at the Lynx Stadium with others from this congregation. Imagine if at the next game I began complaining:

     I've had it with baseball.  You're not going to 
     get me near one of these places again. 
     Every time I go, they ask for money, especially
     for the treats my kids want.  The people with
     whom I have to sit aren't very friendly,
     especially the ones behind me.  The seats are
     too hard.  And though I've gone to many a game,
     not once has the coach called on me to play. 
     The umpire often makes decisions with which I
     disagree.  Many of the people who come to the
     stadium are hypocrites -- they come to see
     their friends or what others are wearing,
     instead of to see the game.  Too many games go
     into extra innings, and I'm late getting home. 
     Last time the warm-up singer sang some numbers
     I had never heard before.  The games are often
     scheduled when I want to do other things,
     ...like go to church.  I guess I was taken to
     too many games by my parents when I was growing
     up, and it spoiled it for me; I've decided not
     to take my own children to any of the games,
     because I want them to choose for themselves
     what sport they like best." (adapted)

If at the next Lynx game I started whining in this manner, I'd get laughed out of the ball park! Yet in a church context these reasons are articulated, and listened to, in all sincerity. Go figure.

THE CHURCH IS THOSE ASSEMBLED

The Apostle Paul adds, in his letter to the church in Ephesus, "I ... beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." (Ephesians 4:1-3) Yet more things that won't get done unless we assemble regularly.

The importance of assembling as Christians becomes even clearer when you look at the language of the New Testament. One of the Greek words translated as church is the word, "ekklesia," often translated as "church," but literally meaning, "called out of". It was used among the Greeks to denote a body of citizens "assembled" or "gathered" to discuss affairs of state (e.g., Acts 19:39). In the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, it is used to designate the "gathering" of Israel. There are other Greek words that designate more generic kinds of assembly, but the word, "ekklesia," is the assembling of those called out of more generic assemblies of human beings. It is an assembly of persons which has been summoned for a particular purpose, and in the New Testament "ekklesia" often refers to the occasion when a specific congregation does what congregations do -- it congregates, for prayer, worship, instruction, and deliberation.

When we were in Winnipeg a few weeks ago, we were given a tour of the facilities at Canadian Mennonite Bible College. It was intended as an introduction for our daughter, a student there, and the tour guide was so enthusiastic that she made even the small and drab dormitory rooms seem special. I must say, many educational institutions employ more inspiring architecture. In fact, one university, adding a new library to its campus, built such a monumental and impressive structure -- complete with tall white columns, beautiful marble and ornate furnishings -- that whenever students and faculty took visitors around the campus they proudly pointed out "their new library". In exasperation, the librarian finally posted a sign in front of the building which read, "This is not the library; the library is inside."

There are at least two ways in which the church-as-ekklesia is a significant concept, and one of them is that the church is not the building in which we assemble, or the doctrines we expound when we assemble, or the programs we run when assembled -- it is the assembly itself! The Church is those who have assembled! And if Christians don't assemble, there is no church! Unlike some furniture which comes with a label saying, "No Assembly required," assembly is required for building a church. Indeed, it's essential.

The second significant aspect of this concept of church is that we assemble because we are answering a deep, inner call to acknowledge the Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer of the human race! Despite things that cause us to resist assembling as Christians, I believe we share a deep human need to assemble. This summer, on the first Sunday of my sabbatical leave, I visited a church in Ottawa South. On the way to church I passed about twenty motorcycles roaring up the hill -- not the Hells' Angels variety, but a softer, gentler kind of biker crowd. "Some kind of group," I thought to myself. A few seconds later, as I stopped at a light near Billings Bridge, about a dozen people, each with a peculiar-looking dog attached, waited at the corner. "Hhmmn, some kind of group," I thought to myself. It made me aware that people love to assemble on Sunday mornings, if not for worship, then for some other purpose. Most of us have a need to assemble, even if it's only with those who own the same peculiar breed of dog!

This summer I chatted with a lay minister in one of Winnipeg's Mennonite congregations, who told me that at a retreat of that church's leadership they playing a game in which there was one chair less than the number of people in the group. And that whenever the person without a chair stated a condition, all those who met that condition had to stand up and change chairs. When my friend found himself without a chair, he called out "all those who had voted NDP in the last provincial election," but few chairs were exchanged, he said.

The call to gather with others of faith is a much less discriminate one, cutting across political boundaries, economic boundaries, gender boundaries, racial boundaries, and any other boundaries that we have erected to convey to each other that some of us are better than the rest of you. Indeed, those of us who answer an inner summons to assemble with others who acknowledge the rule of God are often perplexed to learn that God's summons is a rather in-discriminate one. Churches can bring together an assortment of people that no other self-respecting club or society could ever attract into one fellowship. God assembles people of a variety of economic means, tells us that we're all the same, and if we don't think we are, calls us to share with each other until we are the same. God assembles people of a variety of races, and then reminds us to draw no distinctions among ourselves. God calls together the famous and the ordinary, the rich and the poor, interesting people and the not-so-interesting, and then asks us not to give preferential treatment to anyone! All of which flies in the face of normal laws of human assembly!

Once assembled, it becomes clear that Christians exist at various levels of Christian perfection, though perhaps it's fair to say that most of us congregate at the lower levels. Though we exist at various levels of attentiveness to our inner call, most of us would qualify as spiritually hearing-impaired. We are, in the end, an odd assortment of people no better than anyone else, attempting the impossible mission of being the light of the world! Hardly a recipe for successful assemblies!

AN AWKWARD BUT ENOBLING AND ENDURING ASSEMBLY

Hardly a recipe for successful assemblies, were it not for a compelling reason to assemble. We share a deep, inner summons to contemplate that which transcends our earthly existence. We share a deep, inner summons to see in the ordinariness of our existence the extraordinary hand of God. We share a summons to discern among the meaningless jumble of thoughts and activities in which we are engaged a pattern that is more enduring than today's meetings, or this week's classes, or this month's project, or this year's budget! We share a summons to discover within flawed human beings that which is lovely, honorable, and of lasting beauty!

I think that the psalmist expresses a sense of this compelling summons when he describes the rule of the Lord as "perfect, reviving the soul; the decrees of the Lord are sure," he says, "making wise the simple; the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is clear, enlightening the eyes; the fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever; the ordinances of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey, and drippings of the honeycomb." (Psalm 19:7-10)

We assemble because deep within us we sense a call to be more than we are, to "do justice" with more energy, to "love mercy" with more passion, and to "walk humbly with our God" more often. We assemble because God summons us to assemble, and so we assemble, often in spite of ourselves. We assemble in spite of our flaws, in spite of our shortcomings. We assemble in spite of a minister who makes wisecracks about that which we hold dear, in spite of a youth group that may not appeal to our son or daughter, in spite of committee meetings that are stressful, business meetings that are boring, and fellow believers that are indifferent.

We shouldn't take the things that provoke our dis-assembly too seriously, for God has been summoning an odd assortment of individuals to assemble in His name for quite some time, and has gained some valuable experience at it. When Jesus summoned a very human Simon Peter, given to impulsive decisions -- to join up with a very human John, given to fits of temper -- and a very human Thomas, given to serious doubts -- and a whole host of other flawed human beings, they assembled, not because they were perfect, but because they sensed, deep within, that they were very dear to Jesus, and that with his help, they could become lovely, honorable, and beautiful human beings! Like minor niners, for whom Grade 13 seems so far away and beyond achievement but who four years later graduate with distinction, so those whom Christ calls to assemble in his name may be flawed -- and awed at the enormity of the task -- but with the help of the Holy Spirit who hovers over any group of people who assemble in Christ's name, we are given the promise that we can grow in faith and character! With the help of sisters and brothers who "provoke one another to love and good deeds," and "encourag(e) one another," Christian assembling can prove an enobling experience!

We assemble awkwardly at the best of times, but assembled, the Church conveys unique strength and beauty. There are few other places, for example, where you can sing with others for an hour! There are few other places where others will pray for you. There are few other places you can find human community in such depth and transportability. There are few other places where you can experience the same depth of forgiveness. There are few other places where death, and life, take on deeper meaning, where peace is taken seriously, where human values are considered more important than economic ones, where your neighbour's well-being is considered as imporant as your own, and where you are told that you are loved unconditionally!

We may not assemble all that gracefully, but when we assemble in Christ's name it lends to our lives an enobling and enduring quality that is without equal. About a century ago there arose in a certain European city a monstrous structure considered beautiful by few who looked at it. The citizens of the city demanded it be torn down as soon as possible, yet from the moment its architect first conceived it, he took pride in it and loyally defended it from those who wished to destroy it. He knew it was destined for greatness, and today it is one of the architectural wonders of the modern world, standing as the primary landmark of Paris. The architect, of course, was Alexandre Gustave Eiffel.

Christ has the same fierce loyalty to the unwieldy structure that his teaching brought to birth. He entrusted his teaching to an unlikely band of blundering disciples, but a band whom he defended and loved, and for whom he prayed and died. He knew that, though it might be an awkward child for the first few millenia, in God's eyes it was destined for greatness, and he has never deserted it. The Bible tells us that when we assemble Christ "nourishes and tenderly cares for (us)" (Ephesians 5:29), and builds us up, so that those of us "whoare called according to his purpose" (Romans 8:28) "might grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body's growth in building itself up in love" (Ephesians 4:15-16), and "...so that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might...be made known...." (Ephesians 3:10).

All quotations of Scripture, unless otherwise noted, are from the New Revised Standard Version.

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Ottawa Mennonite Church 1830 Kilborn Avenue, Ottawa, Ontario K1H 6N4; telephone: 1-613-733-6729