Why We Gather, No.2, Rhythm

INTRODUCTION

Two weeks ago we started a new four-talk series titled ‘Why we gather?’ I got the idea for the series from a website called SermonCentral. For the past 16 months most of us haven’t been gathering, or at least, not in person. Two weeks ago we started to meet again. So I think it's a good time to think about WHY we do that, WHY we come to church Sunday by Sunday.

In general, WHY questions are really important. When you know why you’re doing something it motivates you to do it. Or perhaps you don’t find a good answer to your ‘why’ question and you decide to stop. Often, we can’t show that we’re doing the right thing unless we can answer why questions. At the start of my career I worked as a mechanical engineer for a company that designed power stations. We’d design something, for example a section of pipework carrying high pressure steam. There would be all sorts of calculations and references to standards that would explain why the pipe was a particular diameter or used a particular kind of steel. If we couldn’t answer the various ‘why’ questions we would have no confidence that the design was right.

So, why do we gather? Why do we come to church Sunday by Sunday?

The SermonCentral series suggested four reasons for why we gather. They are encouragement, rhythm, strength and unity. Gathering for encouragement, strength and unity all make sense to me. They seem like very solid reasons to get together. But gathering for rhythm!? That seemed very strange to me.

Rhythm is important if you’re a musician. But is rhythm important for God?

The Bible emphasizes things like love and justice and mercy. Most English versions of the Bible never use the word rhythm at all! So we might think that rhythm is way down in our priorities or not on the list at all.

But that would be a mistake. Because the SermonCentral series included rhythm as a reason to gather I’ve thought about it, probably for the first time in my life. I now see that God is very interested in rhythm and that Sundays support God’s desire for us to have rhythm in our lives.

IS GOD INTERESTED IN RHYTHM?

Yes, he is! We can see that he is in the creation story. Here’s Genesis 1:14:

‘And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the DAY from the NIGHT. And let them be for signs and for SEASONS, and for days and years.”’

God set up lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night – the sun and the moon, in other words. He created the sun as a metronome which goes ‘day – night – day – night – day – night.’ There’s a rhythm in the regular beat of day and night, a rhythm which God established. The moon is another metronome. It controls the tides, for example. And it establishes a monthly cycle: the word month comes from the word ‘moon.’

This verse also mentions seasons. There’s a rhythm in the seasons, a rhythm which God established.

Early on in Genesis we find that God established another rhythm. At the beginning of Genesis 2 we read that God took a break. He’d worked for six days and on the seventh day, he rested. In Genesis 2 verse 2 we read that ‘on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day.’ The verb ‘rested’ is the Hebrew word ‘shabat’. That’s where the word ‘sabbath’ comes from. The fact that God worked for six days and then rested for one day doesn’t establish a rhythm. A pattern has to be repeated for it to be a rhythm. But God then made this pattern into a rhythm.

Then in verse 3 we read, ‘So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy.’ When it says, ‘God blessed the seventh day…’ it doesn’t mean one particular day thousands or millions of years ago. It means that God blessed the seventh day in general.

It’s clear that this is what God meant in the Ten Commandments. God commanded, ‘Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.’ God told the Israelites to ‘remember’. By Moses’ time the seventh day was an established concept. Moses reminds the Israelites: ‘For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.’

When Genesis tells us that ‘God blessed the seventh day…’ it clearly means all seventh days. On the first seventh days, God ordained a rhythm for humankind to follow. The seventh day was to be ‘holy’. You probably all know what ‘holy’ means. It means ‘set apart’, or we could say, different.