The Assembly

A Spirituality

Gordon W. Lathrop

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781506478814
• eBook ISBN: 9781506478821
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

In his previous book, The Pastor: A Spirituality, Gordon W. Lathrop writes: "The most important symbol of Christ in the room is not the minister, not the altar, not even the bread and wine or the water of the font. It is the assembly, the Body of Christ, as the New Testament says" (page 27). This statement forms the central theme of this new book. Reflecting on the recent painful time of pandemic, when the wisest and most caring course was not to assemble at all, has illuminated the author's conviction and strengthened it. But as churches return to in-person worship and life in community, they will need to revisit formation in assembly practice.

This book articulates why and how the assembly is so important in Christianity. Lathrop intends the book to assist Christian congregations and their pastors or priests to recover vital, participatory, and life-giving in-person worship after the pandemic. He further intends that participants will see and treasure the importance of assembly as the primary form of "church" and as a vital source of Christian daily life.

Part 1 of the book looks in depth at the assembly, discusses why the sacraments are assembly events, and explores how the assembly forms Christians for daily living. Part 2 presents a critical catechism for the assembly, with emphasis on the sacraments, the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments.

PART ONE

Learning the Assembly by Heart

1

What Is the Assembly?

Perhaps it is like this: The room slowly fills. People are coming into the room past the baptismal font. Some are touching the water and making the sign of the cross on their foreheads or on the upper parts of their bodies. A few adults trace such a cross on the foreheads of their children. Some have brought food to give away, and they place that in a basket near the font. These people all began coming some time ago, when they rose from sleep or rose from their breakfast tables, when they decided “let’s go to church,” or when they simply dressed to do what they always do on Sundays. But at last, they come together, finding a place to sit in a pattern arranged before a prominent reading desk they can see and a gracious table that seems almost to reach out into their midst. Candles burn to mark these central places. They are glad to be there, in that room, still remembering a painful time when they could not gather in such a group. They are a diverse company: old and middle-aged, young and very young; well dressed and not so well dressed; men and women and non-binary people; laborers and scholars and merchants and the retired; of many skin colors and from different cultures; able-bodied and not so able-bodied. There is some buzz of greeting and quiet conversation in the room that then falls into silence. A bell rings and, as they are able, they all stand, turning to face that font. A vested presider leads them in remembering the baptism that made them part of this group. Then music begins and they all sing as several members of the group, clothed amply in the white that also recalls baptism, follow a cross and a great book that lead them—and with them the presider—to the center or the front of the room. Formal and mutual liturgical greetings follow, then more singing, then a gathering prayer, and they sit to hear the Scripture. They have gathered as the assembly.

Such is “the Gathering,” the first part of the four-part ecumenical Sunday liturgy that marks most Christian assemblies. So start here: Who has gathered? Or what has come into being by that gathering? More, what do we actually mean by “the assembly”? What is its history? Is it in the Bible? How has the idea of such a gathering figured in Christian theology and liturgical practice? Can it mean those same things to us today when we join such a gathering?

And further, can we learn the meaning and practice of assembly “by heart”? That is, can it matter so much to us that we find it deeply inscribed in our lives, marking our days, shaping the way we are with others, intimately belonging to how we are Christians, and, at least partly, organizing the way we see the world around us? Can we see again how important—even urgent—this gathering is? These questions can draw us into the possibilities of a spirituality of the assembly.

ASSEMBLY IN THE BIBLE

A place to begin is in one of the earliest writings of the New Testament, Paul’s letter to the Galatians. In Galatians 1:2, Paul addresses this fiercely reforming reassertion of the gospel “to the assemblies of Galatia,” or to the “churches of Galatia,” as we usually translate the plural of the Greek word ekklesia. “Assembly” or “convocation” or even “meeting” or “gathering” are more accurate translations, “church” being an anglicized form of the largely post–New Testament Greek word kyriakon, which means “belonging to the Lord.” What Paul is talking about is not buildings but events, groups of people who come together in a local place, often someone’s house. And in Galatia, they were plural; there were many local assemblies in that region of Asia Minor. As we look further in Galatians and then elsewhere in Paul’s writings, we discover that the plurality in Galatia was echoed in many other places. There were assemblies in Judea (Gal 1:22), Paul says, and in Macedonia (2 Cor 8:1). “The assemblies of Asia” (1 Cor 16:19) send greetings to “the assembly of God that is in Corinth” (1 Cor 1:2). All the assemblies among the Gentiles give thanks for Prisca and Aquila (Rom 16:4). Indeed, there is an assembly in the house of Prisca and Aquila (Rom 16:5; 1 Cor 16:19), as are there assemblies in the house of Philemon (Phlm 2) and, probably much later, in the house of Nympha (Col 4:15). All of the greetings in chapter 16 of Romans most likely point to a diversity of house assemblies in Rome, and then Paul says, “Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the assemblies of Christ greet you” (Rom 16:16). We could go on, naming particular assemblies in particular places as they are mentioned throughout the Pauline correspondence and then also in subsequent passages of the New Testament.

But in the very same passage of Galatians that begins with the address to the assemblies of Galatia and mentions the assemblies of Judea, Paul also writes that he had been “violently persecuting the assembly of God” (Gal 1:13). That global singular is also echoed elsewhere in Paul (e.g., 1 Cor 10:32). And it is probably in reference to this whole “church”—all the assemblies as one great assembly—that Paul speaks of “the Jerusalem above” that is free (Gal 4:26) and, at the end of Galatians, says, “Peace be upon . . . the Israel of God” (Gal 6:16).

Thus the New Testament uses its term—the assembly—primarily for a group that has its local gathering in a local place, a group of people thus able to talk together, eat together, and greet one another with a kiss. That is clearly its meaning in passages in which someone’s house is mentioned. It is the meaning implied by Paul’s anger when the rich exclude the poor from the common meal, thereby “not discerning the body” (1 Cor 11:29). It also seems to be the meaning in one passage of the only Gospel book that uses the word, the instructions to the church in Matthew 18 (see 18:17), in which a process for personal, face-to-face reconciliation in a local group is outlined.

But that is not the word’s only usage. It could be that expressions like “the assembly of God that is in Corinth” (1 Cor 1:2) or “the assembly in Ephesus” (Rev 2:1) point to a common, shared identity for several house churches in the city and its environs. More, as we have seen in Galatians, the New Testament also occasionally speaks of all Christians, in every place, as ekklesia—“church” or “assembly”—using the singular noun. Similarly, using body and building metaphors for the whole of the Christian movement, post-Pauline writings could call Christ the “head of the body, the assembly” (Col 1:18), and the Matthean Jesus could say, “On this rock I will build my assembly” (Matt 16:18). Again, the nouns are singular.

Although only Matthew uses the name ekklesia, recent study of all the Gospels makes clear that they were written for such assemblies. Mark has a clear image of such an assembly, gathered in a house in Galilee, in the very center of the book (Mark 9:33–37). Then the circular structure of this Gospel makes it clear that the conclusion of the book sends us to such an assembly, an assembly where the risen Christ can be seen in the reception of the disregarded little ones, in a serving leadership, and in the account of Christ’s death. The other Gospels, all of which made extensive use of Mark, continue to make this point, but they do it by having their image of the continuing assembly of the church as the final rather than the middle passage of each book. In Matthew, it is the assembly of disciples sent to teach and baptize (Matt 28:16–20). In Luke, it is the little Emmaus assembly gathered around the risen Christ known in the interpreted Scripture and the shared meal, and then it is the larger meal assembly to which the Emmaus disciples return (Luke 24:13–49). And in John, it is two Sunday gatherings, the very beginning of week-after-week Sunday gatherings that come down to our time, in which the risen Christ is encountered, the Spirit poured out, the peace shared, and the Gospel book itself treasured (John 20:19–31). These endings make clear that the books themselves have been written for such assemblies, that assembly is the home of the Gospel book, and that our own gatherings are called to hear—even to be reformed to hear—what the Gospels say.

There has been a scholarly debate over the source of the Christian use of the word ekklesia. Some regard it as borrowed from the Greek political term for the gathering of all the voters in a city, convoked by a crier. They can point to the fact that the term was occasionally used for other associations or collegia rather than strictly Christian groups. Indeed, a number of scholars have proposed that the social life of Hellenistic cities and towns in the time of Christian origins—and well into the early centuries of Christian existence—was marked by diverse interest groups, supper clubs, collegia, or associations. One minority example of such meetings would have been the Christian gatherings we call “house churches.” The various Hellenistic associations, nearly ubiquitous in the ancient Mediterranean world, were neighborhood groups, professional or trade groups, cult groups, ethnic groups, and extended family groups. They were called by a variety of names: associations, societies, guilds, initiates, synagogues, and sometimes, though infrequently, even ekklesiai. That may be one possible source.

But other scholars are more inclined to see the background of the Christian use of the word ekklesia in the Greek translation of the Hebrew word qahal, the principal word used for the “assembly of the Lord” or the “whole assembly of Israel,” as found in many places in the Hebrew Scriptures. That proposal does not need to exclude the Greek societal origin: Christian gatherings occupied the same social place as many other Hellenistic house groups and collegia. But what they were called could well have also had a biblical origin and carried biblical connotations. The comments of Richard Hays about the way Paul read the Old Testament matter here: “Paul’s interpretation of Scripture is always a pastoral, community forming activity. . . . He finds in Scripture a rich source of image and metaphor that enables him to declare with power what God is doing in his own time. He reads the Bible neither as a historian nor as a systematic theologian but as a poetic preacher who discerns analogical correspondences between the scriptural story and the gospel that he proclaims.” More, Hays writes, “We find Paul calling his readers and hearers to a conversion of the imagination. He was calling Gentiles to understand their identity anew in the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ. . . . Such a thoroughgoing conversion could be fostered and sustained only by a continuous process of bringing the community’s beliefs and practices into critical confrontation with the gospel story.”

Among those analogical correspondences, those reborn images, those critical calls to a reconfigured identity, we should see the primary name Paul uses to speak of the local assemblies he was addressing. Indeed, it is most likely Paul himself who privileges this name for those Christian communities, which otherwise might have been much like other Hellenistic supper clubs and like-minded associations. And his privileging of this name had a reforming, pastoral intent. Paul’s extensive use of the word—sometimes in the plural for the various assemblies; sometimes in the singular for one local house gathering or several gatherings in a city; and sometimes in the singular for all the assemblies together as one great worldwide assembly of God—recalls a biblical image. Again, the word is the Greek translation for the Hebrew word qahal, the assembly of all Israel as convoked by God, specifically as it was constituted before God at Sinai and again at Jerusalem’s Water Gate in the return from exile and as it was to be finally constituted on the day of the Lord, drawing people of all the nations into this eschatological gathering. Each of these assemblies was imaged as an occasion for the word of God to be heard and for a shared meal to be held (see Exod 20:1 and 24:11; Neh 8:1–12; and Isa 2:2–3 and 25:6). For Paul, that image then encountered the existence of the supper clubs and the local associations and called those that were Christian to find the Spirit of God dwelling in their midst, to find the gospel of the crucified and risen Christ converting their usual conversations into a hearing of the word of God, their usual meals into eucharist proclaiming the death of the Lord until he comes, and their usual mutual benevolence into care for God’s wretched poor. Their gatherings of the like-minded, thus, were to be turned into church, into the assembly of God, a local assembly in communion with the other assemblies. By God’s gift, every local assembly around the gospel of Jesus Christ and all the assemblies as a single reality were already the holy convocation of God around the word and the life-giving feast. The existence of this convocation among the Gentiles, including people of all nations, was already a fulfillment of the ancient promise. Ekklesia as a name for the gathering belongs thus to Paul’s eschatology and to Paul’s understanding of the way Scripture creates Christian identity.

Galatians itself gives us evidence that Paul is reusing a scriptural image when he addresses the assemblies. Throughout the letter, like the Gospels after him and on his model, he is calling for reform—for the centrality of the gospel of Jesus Christ; for freedom in Christ; for an end to religious legalism; for mutual correction in a spirit of gentleness; for an end to distinctions between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female; and for a faith that is active in love. These things must mark the identity of the assembly of God. The Galatian assemblies are in need of this reform. But where it exists—where what matters is not circumcision or uncircumcision, for example, but the new creation in Christ—then, in his own hand, Paul writes the blessing of peace to those who follow this rule, including them thereby in “the Israel of God” (Gal 6:15–16), the eschatological assembly already present and gathering the nations, the priestly people called together for the sake of witness in the world, as 1 Peter later says (1 Pet 2:9).

As well, Galatians, simply by its use of both the plural and global singular, gives us evidence of the presence of the whole eschatological assembly in each local assembly. The letter to the Corinthians says the matter more clearly, addressed as it is “to the ekklesia of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours” (1 Cor 1:2). Local assembly, when it is faithful to the gospel, becomes the way that one is in touch with “those in every place.”

In a later style of speech profoundly influenced by this earlier Pauline grammar, the address that begins the account of the death of Polycarp of Smyrna, a beloved second-century martyr and bishop, says the matter more clearly still: “The ekklesia of God which sojourns in Smyrna, to the ekklesia of God which sojourns in Philomelium, and to all the sojournings of the holy catholic ekklesia in every place” (initial inscription). Again, there is a local singular and a global singular; the biblical image applies to both. Each local assembly is entirely church, the presence of the eschatological convocation of God, and a “sojourning” of the holy catholic assembly, to quote those second century Christians of Smyrna. But in Paul’s conception, each assembly greets and is greeted by the others, as the “sojourning” at Smyrna greets all the other “sojournings.” In Christianity, each place is important, and the very presence of the saving love of God is there, in that locality. Yet each assembly also needs the others. Each assembly should send and receive to and from one another both spiritual gifts and material resources, signs of communion between real places.

It is right then to inquire about “instruments of communion” between the assemblies, like Paul’s collection in Macedonia and Achaia for the poor in Jerusalem (Rom 15:25–26; cf. 2 Cor 8–9 and many other places) and like his conception of the blessings of the assembly in Jerusalem in which the Gentile assemblies had come to share (Rom 15:27; cf. 11:17–24). The visits of the apostle and the letters that stood for the apostle and were then to be shared assembly to assembly—as we know from later sources (Col 4:16)—are such instruments. So are the greetings carried by those letters, surrounded as they were with prayers and with ritual acts, like the holy kiss and trinitarian blessings (1 Cor 16:19–24; 2 Cor 13:12–13). So are the passing on and reception in assembly of the more-than-local gospel—including, finally, the four Gospel books themselves—and the signs of Christ in baptism and eucharist, which proclaim and enact that gospel (see 1 Cor 11:23; cf. Rom 6:3–4). And the leadership roles in the church—what we call the ministry—are recognized between the assemblies. Those positions of leadership, in Paul’s writing (Rom 12:4–8; 1 Cor 12:27–28), in post-Pauline writing (Eph 4:12), and in the Gospels (Mark 10:44; Matt 24:45–51), have been appointed for the sake of the assembly: for serving, for “building up the body of Christ,” for the common good. We have pastors and priests, deacons and bishops, teachers and workers of good for the sake of the assemblies.

Assembly, thus, is the local Christian gathering, in communion with other gatherings, and the local gathering as the dwelling place of the universal gathering, the clearest place to encounter the whole “church.” For us, those ancient Hellenistic clubs have long ceased to exist. But the bodily gathering called “the assembly” by Christians has gone on to this day. Perhaps that is so because its identity has been continually reformed to carry the heart of Christian meaning, to become essential to Christianity, the very “body of Christ,” as Paul says. In any case, taught by Paul and the Gospels, such reform needs to go on. Our assemblies are by no means perfect but, when they are centered in the gospel and its signs, they are basic to Christianity. “Assembly,” then, is not just a local meeting; it is a local meeting in the name and the presence of Jesus Christ, convoked by the Spirit of God, bearing witness to the word and mercy of God present in the world.

ASSEMBLY IN THEOLOGY AND LITURGY

Assembly—this biblical name for the local, celebrating Christian community—has had a wide ecumenical currency in our time, with a depth of historical use. We have seen already Ignatius of Antioch “singing the assemblies” on his way to martyrdom. Emeritus has shown his willingness to die for the meeting of Christians, the meeting that gathered in his house around the matter of the risen Lord. Julian of Norwich had that window to the assembly in her cel...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction: Christian Assembly and Liturgical Spirituality
• Part One: Learning the Assembly by Heart
• Part Two: A Critical Catechism for the Assembly
• Works Cited
• Index