Why do we gather? (1)

I think there are three live understandings (in my context, at least) of what it is that Christians are doing when they gather on Sundays.  In this and the following two posts, I will no doubt caricature them, but perhaps it might still be helpful as a way of thinking through how we engage with Sunday services.

In the Roman Catholic tradition, when Christians gather together as church on a Sunday, they are doing salvation.  "For it is in the liturgy, especially in the divine sacrifice of the Eucharist, that 'the work of our redemption is accomplished..." (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1068 [citing here Sacrosanctum Concilium]).  The explicit connection to the Mass will render this view unacceptable to most evangelicals, and rightly so.  "In Christian tradition (liturgy) means the participation of the People of God in the work of God" (Cat. Cath., 1069).  In so far as this definition of liturgy is accepted, the word itself had better be rejected.  There can be no sense of the church participating in the salvific work of God in the way here anticipated.

That being said, evangelicals would be unwise to completely shut the door on the idea that we gather together to 'do' salvation.  The biblical link between baptism and salvation, which clearly ties a human-liturgical action into the economy of salvation means that the door has to remain open.  Similarly, reflection on the fact that preaching is also an essentially liturgical action leans in this direction.  The word of God preached is the seed of the faith that saves.  So, just replacing the Mass with the sermon?  Not quite.  The sermon (like baptism, actually) represents the witness in the church to the accomplished work of Christ.  It is not a participation in his work.  That God, by the Spirit, lifts up this human work to make it the means of applying that completed work to the individuals gathered is a very different thing from the Roman Mass.  This is the difference: we are recipients, not actors.

Nevertheless, it would be helpful for us evangelicals to take seriously the fact that when we gather on a Sunday this is the place of salvation.  This is where the Word of God is, in Scripture read, the gospel preached, the sacraments administered.  If church has become a bit of a chore; if we find ourselves wondering if it was worth getting up for this Sunday; if we think that perhaps we'd get on with the Christian faith better by ourselves: perhaps we need to remember that Sundays are for salvation.