As the light dawns on a new year, we are asking a simple but persistent question: Why church? Why do this thing we do together?
People have been asking that question for decades. Some ask it quietly and opt out, choosing a Sunday morning bagel and a few more hours of sleep. Others stay but reshape church into something easier to manage: a country club, a political tribe, a self-help space, or reliable children’s programming. Still others stay out of deep loyalty, even when it’s hard to explain why.
But the question remains: why be here? Why take part in something with a complicated reputation, rising costs, and people you didn’t get to choose? Over the next weeks, we’ll explore several answers. Today we start with the first and most foundational reason: Why church? Because God chose community. Not as a strategy to lure us to beliefs. Not as a backup plan so we’re not just sitting on earth alone. But within God’s own life … How God is…The forever state of things. Listen to this, from the 1st chapter of the Gospel of John:
John 1:1–18
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it.
There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.
And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. (John testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’ ”) From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is the only Son, himself God, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.
I love a New Year’s “best of” list… best novels, best shows. Every list turns into an argument, first with yourself. I can’t possibly choose just one! Then with others. Fredrik Backman is not for me. I don’t get Taylor Swift. Gasps all around.
Many people’s favorite series was Stranger Things which just ended. I only made it through season 3 which makes me the strange one in many conversations. It is a show about this longing for home, for belonging, old school friendship when the world feels upside down. Longing not just for a nostalgic home full of ’80s music and simpler technology, but a home where we are loved … not in spite of our quirks, arguments and changes, but because of them.
There’s a new series out called Pluribus, from the creators of Breaking Bad. It imagines
an alien virus that turns all of humanity into a blissfully unified hive mind. When I first read about it, I thought, Finally! Everyone coming together. This must be a happy show. But woah! It isn’t. It’s a dystopia about forced happiness and the profound loneliness of being the one who doesn’t belong.
But both series speak the truth about us: we cherish our uniqueness … without difference, who are we? If something feels too perfect, we don’t trust it. And yet, we also fear the stranger. We fear being the stranger who gets rejected. We fear the changes that make our world feel unrecognizable, upside down. Inside every human heart, there is a profound longing for belonging.
And that is where John’s Gospel begins. Not with a baby in a manger or a genealogy or a moral lesson. It begins with relationship, with belonging. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.” The God we meet in Scripture is not a solitary being floating outside time and space. God is relationship. From the very beginning, God is with.
And then God comes toward us, knowing full well that we will not understand. The Word becomes flesh and dwells among us… moves into the neighborhood instead of opining from a distance. Not as an idea to be argued, but as a presence. And what does this presence create? “Power to become children of God.” Not by blood. Not by willpower. Not by getting it right… If you want to know what all the influencers are selling right now, it’s those things as the path to belonging. This tribe. This diet. This army. Everyone in my feed believes 145 grams of protein, the right kind of planner, and the right kind of rage will set the world right.
But John says belonging, being fully at home as a child of God, that comes through grace upon grace. I love that. Exponential grace. Grace not as a passive shrug “eh, I’ll allow it” but as the cosmic engine of the light and life. The sacred glue. The very nature of God. God responds to our longing not with control or conformity, but with incarnation.
This is where the church comes in, not as a perfect institution (you’ve been here five minutes; you know better) but as a place where God keeps forging community anyway. Through grace made visible in Jesus and grace made tangible among people.
Amy Julia Becker, a brilliant writer and seminary friend of mine, talks about what she calls the spectrum of belonging. Amy Julia is also Penny’s mom. Penny has Down syndrome, and Amy Julia has spent years thinking and writing about how communities move from exclusion and tolerance and inclusion finally toward true belonging.
She taught this to a fourth-grade class by inviting three girls to come to the front of the room and asking two of the girls to throw a ball back and forth. “How could they exclude the third girl?” Easy. Send her out of the room. “What would tolerance look like?” Well, she can stay but she just can’t play. Inclusion means the girl joins the circle, but they follow the same rules. Participation, yes, but on terms that already exist.
Then Amy Julia asked, “What if this girl has never learned the rules? What if her body or brain works differently and she drops the ball every time?” One student raised her hand. “Oh!” she said. “Then, we should change the game.”
That idea will stay with me. Belonging happens when we realize we are actually part of a better game than just the preservation of a set of rules. Belonging happens when relationships are at the center of what we do. That insight isn’t just about kids with a ball. It’s about church. It’s about community. It’s about us.
I know that because of the place I occupy in the world, the game often works in my favor.
The rules feel familiar. The passes come easily. And it’s dangerously easy not to notice who isn’t playing at all.
I’m not talking about a tennis ball. I’m talking about cultural norms… who has access, who feels comfortable, who is expected to adapt. I’m talking about immigrants fleeing violence.
People with severe autism or in cancer treatment. People who grew up in poverty. People of
color navigating systems not built with them in mind. People who are grieving and their world is turned upside down.
Changing the game isn’t about being a hero or a martyr. It’s about noticing who’s missing at the table and putting relationships at the center of everything we do. It’s about believing that we truly need one another and that when people are left out, our world feels upside too.
Erin’s husband Jeff died on Christmas Eve in 2020. Because of Covid, ugh, there couldn’t be a funeral, not like they deserved anyway. But the Monday night Bible Study got creative.
They each showed up with a different candle, stood outside her home, in the cold January air and held the light for her. That’s what she saw when she opened the door.
These lights stayed by her, and the darkness did not overtake them.
When I think of what church is, that is the image that I come back to, all of our candles,
different colors and shapes, surrounding someone who needs more light, or who needs someone to hold it for them for a while. That is not a program. That is not efficiency. That is the Word made flesh, showing up in winter coats, holding light in the dark.
God does not simply invite us into a perfectly preserved heaven where the rules never change. God changes the game entirely, by becoming flesh, by dwelling among us, by forming a community rooted not in sameness but at a table where grace and truth scootch up their chairs together.
I have to remind myself how stunning this is. At the very first communion, at a table where misunderstanding and betrayal were already present, Jesus still said, This is the new covenant. Still proclaimed, This table isn’t complete without you. So why church? Not because it’s efficient. Not because it’s tidy. Not because we all agree. But because God chose community and keeps choosing it over and over again. St. Augustine said, “Our souls are restless until they rest in thee.”
I believe grace upon grace still flows here: through imperfect people, awkward conversations, the hard work of forgiveness, of other people and ourselves, that leads to the hard work of justice in the world and in ourselves, all of it centered around a table that keeps stretching wider than we expect.
Church, at its best, is where we practice playing this better game again and again until belonging is no longer rare or fragile, but real. Until it feels less like a performance and more like our true home.
Amen.