microchurch and worship, part 2

There is an ancient greeting or welcome that Christians say to one another:  "The grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you." It is a biblical phrase found in the New Testament, at the end of the 2nd letter to the Corinthian church.  It expands another greeting common to Paul's writing:  "Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."  Grace and peace.  Who doesn't want more of those in their lives?  Peace instead of anxiety, worry, fear.  Grace instead of debt, scarcity, slavery to unjust systems.  I know people who are worried about their growing debts.  They need grace and peace.  May it be so, not only in our speaking, but in our living with one another.
We say the longer, three person greeting every Sunday morning to begin worship.  The communal response is: "And also with you", which becomes a Lutheran joke. What happens when a group of Lutherans watch "Star Wars" and hear the phrase "May the force be with you?"  They all say, "And also with you."  Reciprocity build relationships. We do not only receive, we also give.

I want to suggest something important about microchurch worship that must not be overlooked or underestimated.  Something happens at worship that begs description for a general audience.  If someone asked me why I go to worship I would have a three-fold response.  I worship because of the grace of the Lord Jesus, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit.  And this is what I mean:
First, Jesus was and is God's free gift to the world.  Jesus reorients and reconciles God's people with God.  He teaches people what it looks like to live a life with God at the center.  Jesus was crucified, a form of public execution. He was raised  So I worship God because of Jesus.
Second, God is love. I experience that love everyday in the abundant fecundity and beauty of the earth. I have been raised with love by parents, grandparents, and other caring adults.  I am married with children.  I know what love is because of them.  God is love.  Love produces life.  I worship God because of love.
Third, I worship because of the communion of the Holy Spirit.  The Greek word for 'communion' is koinonia.  It means to hold in common, to become one, to share.  In worship, where the Word of God is spoken and heard, where faithful people gather around a common table, something happens. In the microchurch, a gathering of 70 or less, Communion happens.  It is not an emotional response. A lot of people confuse their emotional responses with communion.  Communion is not only when some experience feels good or produces euphoria.  I have been to great concerts and experienced a kind of euphoria.  But I did not experience communion.  Communion binds one's heart, mind, body to others.  Some people describe it as becoming like "family".  I know that families are not always places of communion for people; of peace, of love, of grace. Jesus himself recognized that one's family of origin, one's blood relative or ancestors, could very well prevent someone from encountering God or experiencing the good life. Communion transcends familial bonds and establishes another kind of relationality.  We become bound to the life of another person.  Marriage is a place where communion can and ought to happen.  But it is not the only location.  Bonds of mutuality, friendship, kinship occur among people that transcend family ties.  We may call it community formation.  Mutuality to accomplish a common purpose or intent.  More and more, however, we see the erosion of communities.  Because of dislocation, fragmentation, and transiency, neighborhoods and porches no longer function as communities.  People dwell anonymously and privately in big houses with back patios.        
People need and want communion today.  What they are getting is Facebook. Social media through technology does not give us basic, authentic human interaction.  Its always like peeking in a window at someone else's life.  It is not sharing, even though there is a 'share' function that allows you to 'share' videos, pictures, stories, etc...I have used the share button many times. But it is not spiritual communion. It isn't because a sound bite, a video clip, a tweet do not allow us enough access to each other to know and be known with grace and peace and love between us.  We need more.  And increasingly people do not know how or where to get what they are missing.  We are thirsty.  We long for communion, but have lost our way to it.  
Many churches assemble for worship, but do not experience communion. A big gathering can feel euphoric, powerful, emotionally charged. Billy Graham Crusades led the way toward the kind of megachurchianity that has emerged in the last 30 years in the U.S.  Where Christian faith has been equated with a personal, emotional response to two basic anthropocentric ideas: humans are sinful. God punishes sinners.  But God forgives sinners who confess, and welcomes us into eternal life because of Jesus Christ.  One is invited to respond to the divine offer by pledging faith and rejecting sins. Music has been used to draw out the emotions that prompt conviction.  Increasingly video and image is used to prompt emotional responses, too.  I went to a Crusade once.  I felt manipulated.  I believed I was saved as a baptized Christian. But that wasn't enough. I had to feel different, too.  No communion in an auditorium full of people.  Only private faith between me and God.
But that was not the way of the first Christians or of Jesus.  The way of salvation was always communal.  It was always about formation as a community, an assembly or following.  Jesus called disciples (plural) to feed and heal people (plural).  He commanded them to make disciples of all nations (plural).  The multiplying effect of the church's witness was accomplished through a multi-lingual, multi-ethnic outreach that included non-Jews.  The first Christians learned to be less prejudiced and discriminatory.  Communion often occurred when different people, enemies or factions, came together around the Word and the table.  So it is today.
Communion.  Koinonia.  It is what is missing for so many of us.  It is what the microchurch offers.  More than a feeling, it is a sense of being knit or bound together with God and one another.  Of the Holy Spirit means that we breathe together the very breath of life.  It happens when 2 or more are gathered in the name of Christ to bring resolution, peace, and reconciliation to human relationships.  It can only happen because of the Word and the table of grace and peace.  You can't make it happen.  But it does. What we say and what we do together matters. Microchurch begins with this promise and gift: The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.