Sunday, September 16, 2018

Choosing to be a Church Community

Deuteronomy 6:4-9 & Mark 10:13-16 by Rev. Susan Lukey
Series:Why We Are A Church Community Fall 2018

We are the church – together – in this place. We are sitting in a church building which we have built, gathered as a church community which we create each time we gather. 1885 is the official date of the start of this congregation as The Presbyterian Church of High River, though Christian worship happened on this spot in the decades before that. This area by the Highwood River, known as “The Crossing,” was, for the Indigenous Peoples, the sacred wintering ground of the buffalo and the healing place of the Medicine Tree for thousands of years before white settlers began to arrive. It is holy ground on which we gather, to be the church together, in 2018 in High River, Alberta, under the banner of The United Church of Canada. But why? Why do we gather? Why do you choose to be here this morning? This is a question unique to our generation. For the first white settlers, who held worship services in each other’s homes, and the Methodist and Presbyterian itinerant preachers, who rode into town on horseback and preached in the waiting room of Buck Smith’s Stagecoach Stopping House & Saloon located on this very spot, the question would have been quickly answered. If we were able to ask them, “Why do you worship?”, the response would have been clear. “Because we must give glory to God. Because human beings are created to praise God. Because we can not live our lives without worshipping God.” Today, however, we live in a time when fewer and fewer people in North America make worship a part of their lives. “Why bother!” is an acceptable response to the practice of faith in our culture. Yet, for many of us in our growing up, it was assumed that one belonged to a church. For many of us the regular practice of attending worship on a Sunday was a given. For most, it was rare to miss church, except due to illness or an extended holiday or perhaps harvesting the fields. Everyone claimed a faith affiliation, even if they didn’t attend. But those days are gone and aren’t coming back. Sunday shopping. Sunday morning activities and sports practices. These are the new norm. And even those of us who want to make Sunday morning worship a weekly part of our lives are caught when other family members and friends plan events, which we need to attend, at a time that conflicts with Sunday worship. We are more and more the exceptions, we who choose to be church together.
Duration:18 mins 9 secs