I slumped down into my chair with a throbbing hand, attempting to bring my blood pressure down from its skyrocketed height. Incomplete pass. The call on the field had just been reversed and the Dallas Cowboys were now just four minutes from playoff elimination after a fourth down prayer of a pass was miraculously caught and then debatably dropped. The officials made their ruling of an incomplete pass and I had to hit something, so the floor absorbed my open handed frustration. “Are they blind?” “Who paid these guys off?” The refs were now the object of my fury.
I was not alone either. The Cowboys vs. Packers playoff game reached a rating of 46.8 in the Dallas, Fort Worth metroplex.[1] That equals 1.2 million homes, that’s right, homes in the area. Surprisingly, no earthquake was felt after the refs broke so many hearts. It was at this most inopportune time that I terrifyingly remembered a rhetorical question from my father…”What has the NFL ever done for you?” It made me smirk.
Thinking about how the refs robbed the Cowboys and myself of victory and joy, I suddenly came to this thought: They are just human. Part of the human experience is getting things wrong, messing up, or spilling the milk. This is one manifestation of the many reasons why I need to be a part of a church.
I need to be a part of a group of people that assemble around the fact that we are imperfect, prone to wander, and at times simply wrong because that assembly points to something that was taken out of their hands. That assembly unites because someone perfect, unchanging, and pure provided a means for justification, redemption, and forgiveness and while attendance and patronage does not secure that salvation, it does insulate me with relationships that pull my thoughts from disparity to worship. That assembly of living human beings in similar fleshly frames derive strength not in collective human power, but in connected divine worth.
So why take the time to go to church? Why must I make the time and invest energy and resources to sing, pray, listen, discuss, and respond? Because that relational time points me along with my companions, peers, and fellow screw-ups to the perfect God who makes no mistakes or screw-ups and yet loved me in my imperfection so much to pay the debt I could not pay. Through shaking a hand, giving a hug, discussing back and forth, praying together, meditating on scriptural truth side by side, and praising in unison my need for friendship is more than met, it is energized because it finds shared human deficiencies overcome by love, grace, and mercy through Jesus Christ.
The author of Hebrews says it like this, “Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” (Hebrews 10:19-25)
So while many of the 1.2 million DFW home dwellers took to twitter and facebook with a piece of their fuming minds, I went to church and found peace of mind. And when I opened the Word of God, beginning a new Sunday night study, one of the verses I read reminded: “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace.” (Ephesians 1:7)
That’s why I go to church.
[1] As reported by the Dallas Morning News at: http://cowboysblog.dallasnews.com/2015/01/cowboys-packers-tv-rating-in-dfw-is-gigantic.html/