I love the story Carlyle Marney, the great Baptist preacher used to tell. Tongue-in-cheek he would say that God does not come to church every Sunday. After all if God really is God, the Almighty can do whatever it is the God wants to do. Perhaps God some Sundays simply stays home and reads The New York Times. So why should we come to church? Attendance is waning everywhere and many former churchgoers have opted out. I’ve heard some folk say: Nah, I don’t to church anymore—I home church. But back to the question: why should we go to church. Marney said that we need to put on our clothes Sunday after Sunday and find our places in some pew. Why? Because, the great preacher said, we never know when God will decide to come to church. And if some Sunday when we least expect Yahweh-God, he may just saunter down the aisle and stop at your pew. And if this happens your life will never be the same again.
Our age is starved for some mystery, for some holy, holy—for some moment when we lift our eyes away from the computer and the incessant news and the troubles of our lives and our friends—and see, as Isaiah discovered, God high and lifted up and with a train that filled the temple. Arthur Gordon calls this a touch of wonder.
For John Wesley praying before the altar at London’s Aldersgate Church his heart was “strangely warmed” and his life was changed immeasurably. Frederick Buechner writes that one Sunday at the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City as George Buttrick was preaching the “great wall” of China fell down and life was forever different. Anne Lamotte tells in Traveling Mercies how slowly she was drawn into a little tiny church in Marin County and she was never the same again.
When God really does come to church lightning strikes and we are turned inside out. So maybe on Sunday morning we ought to put on our clothes and leave the house and walk into the door of some church. Who knows what might just happen?
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