“Sunday morning worship is a Saturday night decision.”
Maybe you’ve heard that said, or maybe you’ve said it yourself. And it's right. It gets at something important, which is that attending Church has to be a personal priority. The decision to physically gather with the saints of God is a choice we each have to make. Sunday morning corporate worship means saying “no” to other things so that we are able to say “yes” to being present with the gathering of God’s people. The Church is the people, after all; not a building, not a website, and not a devotional gathering.
But the quote also misses something. More on that in a moment…
A Decorating Tradition
Christmas is one of my favorite times of the year. The seasons are changing, the air is cooling, holiday festivities fill up the calendar. As the song says, “its the most wonderful time of the year.” And along with all festivities come the decorations. Trees, garland, lights, stockings, and more! These decorations make a statement: It's Christmas time! Christmas is coming! Christmas decorations build anticipation and hope.
I remember as a young child growing up near McAdenville, North Carolina, affectionately called “Christmas Town USA.” If you’ve never been, you should put it on the to-do list this year. Every December, the little town glows with light that says, “Christmas is coming.” Its holiday decorations create anticipation and hope.
And that’s what decorations are meant to do; they are meant to tell a story. Whether it's a beach house, a mountain cabin, or your living room…decorations are meant to say something; they’re meant to remind, inspire, and create hope.
And here’s something incredible: God Himself decorates. He decorates the lives of His people with reminders, anticipation, and hope.
A Decoration Festival to Start Every Week
This past Sunday, our Church was studying St. John’s account of the resurrection of Jesus Christ (John 20:1-18). John 20:1 reads, “Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb.”
Fred Burner writes this, “three time references stand at the gateway to our chapter — “the first day of the week, very early in the morning, while it was still dark outside…and they decorate the entrance to this most important of all historical spaces like garlands.”
God hangs a fresh garland each and every week in countless sanctuaries and places of worship around the world. The weekly Sunday morning gathering of Christ’s body, Resurrection gatherings, are meant to function as decorative garlands for the week ahead.
Just as the phrases of John 20:1 decorate the opening of the greatest Scriptural passage ever written, so the weekly corporate gathering of the Church hangs in beauty over our lives each new week.
What the Church does on Sunday mornings is not the culmination of the week behind it, but a decoration and promise for the week ahead. Each Sunday morning is a reminder for the coming week that Christ is risen; hope is secure; there is real forgiveness of sin, and real hope for eternal life.
So much will come at us during the span of a week— personal challenges, bills, doctor visits, family struggles, personal temptations, etc. But God, in His wisdom and kindness, has chosen to decorate the beginning of each of our weeks with the proclamation of His Son’s death and resurrection, which is the most important news in all the world. It is always the most important news for us to hear and believe, the most important truths in our circumstances and our situations.
And our Lord has made sure to give it to us again, and again, and again.
Each and every week, the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ hears again the good news of its salvation: Christ was crucified according to the Scriptures; He was buried, and He was raised according to the Scriptures.
All of these things are declared to us by God’s grace, in His good wisdom, at the beginning of each week of our lives as we gather with our Church.
To the hopeless, God sings "In Christ alone your hope its found!" through the voices of brothers and sisters.
To the young Christian struggling to pray, God decorates with their prayer life with lessons from seasoned saints who pray in the gathered body.
To the weary, searching, and hungry souls, God decorates their lives with the beautiful food of His Word.
On any given Sunday, you may come into the sanctuary broken and bruised; maybe you're worried and anxious; your body may be riddled with cancer; perhaps you’re reeling from a job loss; an affair; a personal loss; maybe your kids are on the verge of driving you crazy. Whatever the circumstances of your life on any given Sunday morning, each and every week, God invites you to come and be reminded of why you still have hope.
These pronouncements of Good News in Jesus are decorations for the week ahead; fresh, yet constant reminders of your heavenly Shepherd's love and care.
Sunday mornings are constant reminders that God sees you struggling, and that He knows what you need.
And like the good Shepherd He is, our Lord gathers us into the fold of His Church, opens His Word to us, and provides nourishment for our souls once again.
And He’ll do the same again next week.
Eugene Peterson once wrote that it is “in the weekly gathering of the Church where Scripture, Sermon, and Sacrament combine to develop a relationship between God’s voice and our ears.”
And that's what we need most, for our ears to learn and know God's voice.
God's voice feeds our souls, helps our bodies, builds our relationships, strengthens our weaknesses, and gives us what we need most as we gather with His people week after week.
There is something sacred about the gathered body of Christ…something that cannot be purchased, obtained elsewhere, or experienced via a screen. Make it a priority to be there.
A Priority and an On-Purpose Decision
Church is a decision, yes, but is it a priority? According to Scripture the answer is YES. But what is it about church that makes it so essential that saying “yes” to church and “no” to other things makes so much sense?
For one thing, God commands His people to do it; He commands us to gather together. The Lord states it in the negative form saying, Heb. 10:25, “Do not neglect to gather together, as is the habit of some…”
Another reason to prioritize gathering is what we see growing out of the Church, which is the beautiful spiritual fruit (Gal. 5) that God has designed His Church to produce in and through the lives of its people.
Think about how Paul describes the body of Christ in Phil. 2:13-14 saying, “...work out your own [plural: Your all's own; do it together] salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”
In Heb.10:23-25, “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.”
A third reason to prioritize Church is what God intends to do in each of us. While there may be no spectacular moment each and every week, the steady diet of the Word of God with the people of God will grow us into strong and steady Christians. Being a regular member of a healthy Church will help us grow into Psalm 1 trees. Sturdy trees that come to decorate the lives of others through the beauty God has hung in our own lives (2 Cor. 1)
In their book, Humanity, John Hammett and Katie McKoy note several essential qualities about the gathered Church body:
First, God has created us in His image (Gen. 1-2), and that means that He gets to define who we are, what we need, and what we are to do. And He said, “It is not good for man to be alone.” Most immediately, this refers to the marital relationship. But, as we expand our view out over the Scriptural horizons, I think we may rightly apply it to the life of the Christian. Christianity is not a lone-ranger deal, it is a marriage to Christ and His body. It is not good for a Christian to be alone.
Second, God has spoken and continues to speak to us through His living and active Word (Heb. 4:12) about all of these things. And if God, our Creator, is speaking to us, especially on a weekly basis, then we should commit ourselves to listening. Everything else can wait.
Third, the authors note that there is something essential about the relationship between the Church and the Christian that cannot be obtained elsewhere. It cannot be obtained by watching online, doing devotions, or by participating in another “religious” type activity. The Lord Jesus did not die on the cross for religious activities, He died for His Church.
“The Church community is ‘the context’ for spiritual formation, and the community members (Christians) become the ‘agents in our formation,’ and the community itself (the gathered Church) is ‘the means to formation’” (262). All of which means that neglecting the gathering of the Church body on Sunday mornings is not only disobedience to God’s clear Word, it is also pulling yourself away from the very thing God uses to shape and mold your life in Him.
Sunday morning Church is a Saturday night decision, but it’s also a whole life decision.
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