Until quite recently, Sundays in parts of the UK were days when nothing happened. The pubs and shops were shut, there was no entertainment, there was nothing to do except go to church – and many biographies of people who grew up in those areas remember Sunday as the most boring day of the week.  It seems sad  to me that Sundays (which of course aren’t the Sabbath – that is Saturday) were seen as boring. Is that what has to happen if we are to keep the Sabbath holy?

In some cultures – particularly some  African and Caribbean cultures – Sundays are clearly kept for God, and therefore, for church –  which is why services  in those cultures (which are anything but boring) often last for many hours. Jesus, too, as we hear often in the Gospels, was regularly in the synagogue on the Sabbath, teaching and/or healing. He was an observant Jew, despite the opposition of others in the synagogues at the time.

For me, a vital question is: why go to church? What are we doing when we worship?

There are many people, who may not be churchgoers, who have a residual respect for spaces which have been used for worship. Philip Larkin describes that respect in his poem Church Going

…. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence,
Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new-
Cleaned or restored? Someone would know: I don’t.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
“Here endeth” much more loudly than I’d meant.

But, he goes on to ask, what will we do when no one goes to church? Will we let them, rent free, to rain and sheep? Will we avoid them as unlucky places?

Church has survived – is surviving – more strongly than many in the 1970’s and 80’s expected. Although attendances are down, there are many strong congregations around the country. It is clear to me that churches bring something vital to the communities where they are located, something which is rooted in shared worship. But that begs the question: what are we doing when we worship together?

First, we are doing something which is collective. The things we do in church – unison singing, standing and sitting together, calling and responding to prayers, have been shown to contribute to a sense of wellbeing. It seems that shared activities. such as attending a football match, going to a barn dance, or going to church, release endorphins. We are also, often, moving outside our comfort zones. Church services gather people from across the spectrum of class, race and gender. Often, the people gathered in church represent a broader section of society than many of us are used to spending time with; which can be both challenging and exciting. It can, perhaps, contribute to what the great sociologist of religion Emile Durkheim termed ‘collective effervescence’; a sense that the group has, through its shared actions, moved into a place of sacredness and excitement, a place which feels different from the everyday.

Second, we are doing something which is conscious. In attending worship we are, ideally, bringing ourselves into the presence of God – the God who is love – in a way which enables love – or God – to work through us. Another word for that is prayer: in worship we are, perhaps, actively bringing our minds, hearts and bodies into a place where we can be more open to the possibility of prayer. It helps that worship is structured: the form of the service, being relatively predictable each week, means that we can relax and allow our minds, hearts and bodies to be open to the transcendent, the Divine, God… bringing us into a different place.

Third, we are doing something which is creative. It isn’t an accident that some of the greatest art of all time has been created for religious settings, in churches, temples, mosques and synagogues. Just as the structure of worship can be liberating, so the form and style of worship demand a response which encourages creativity – either through the arts, or through community action, or through the building of relationships of love. Worship at its best expands our ideas and our thoughts, and, again, opens us up to new things.

Which is why attendance at church is, I’m clear, intrinsic to being Christian, just as collective activity is intrinsic to being human. It is, at its best, also connected to building and rebuilding, appropriately enough for us at St John’s.  As the prophet Isaiah says:

12Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets to live in.
13If you refrain from trampling the sabbath,
from pursuing your own interests on my holy day;
if you call the sabbath a delight
and the holy day of the LORD honourable;
if you honour it, not going your own ways,
serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs;
14then you shall take delight in the LORD,
and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth;

(Isaiah 58.12-14)

Worship transforms:  many of the healing miracles which are often recounted in the Gospels take place in or close to the synagogue: Jesus’ touch heals the woman bent over in Luke 13.

We regularly include an invitation to Holy Communion during the service which opens;

‘Come to this table not because you must but because you may.”

I am starting to wonder, though, whether we should reword that invitation:

‘Come to this table not because you may but because you must.’

It feels to me as if worship is intrinsic to our full humanity. It can genuinely help us to discover more profoundly who we are, as individuals and in community.

Philip Larkin recognises that in the last verse of Church Going:

A serious house on serious earth it is …
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in.

So, perhaps we to come to church not because we may but because we must. For the love of God, for our good, and the good of the whole world.