The “Proper Place and Number” for Worship
Someone asked me to comment on our current situation under COVID of restricted ability to gather as congregations, assemblies of worshippers. And I know this is a volatile topic, that some pastors have chosen large fines and even jail in defiance of government regulations blocking massed church gatherings.
In Israel from the time of Moses up through the time of exile in Babylon, "the place" to worship God was the tabernacle and then later the temple which Solomon built. When Israel was taken into captivity, something which God permitted because of their unfaithfulness and idol worship, that temple was destroyed and then later rebuilt in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah. But while Israel was in exile, we have Ps 137, which is so well known, and became a pop hit by Boney M in 1978. That psalm starts like this:
By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept
when we remembered Zion.
There on the poplars
we hung our harps,
for there our captors asked us for songs,
our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
How can we sing the songs of the Lord
while in a foreign land?
After that exile was over, even once the temple had been rebuilt, the Jewish synagogue came into existence – a place for Bible reading, prayer, and worship. The word “synagogue” means assembly or meeting. This helped decentralize worship from the one place, the temple in Jerusalem, into many places, and not just throughout Israel. Technically, you didn’t need to have a building, a synagogue, for worship. Proper worship could happen wherever 10 male Jews gathered, and in fact, one could worship alone or with a smaller group if there were less than 10 available.
The very early church met both in the temple courts in Jerusalem and in private homes, according to Acts 2:46 and other passages in the NT. The first church gathering in Europe was not in a building, but at the side of another river, this time not in Babylon but in Macedonia. You can read the story in Acts 16 of the vision given by God to Paul, and then in v13, “On the Sabbath we went outside the city gate along the river, where it was customary to find a place of prayer. After sitting down, we spoke to the women who had gathered there.” Apparently there were not 10 Jewish males, heads of households, so that this was not “official,” but God is not restricted by place or number or gender.
Yes, we are not to forsake assembling, as Heb 10:25 says. The word used in Heb 10:25 is ἐπισυναγωγή, and has the word “synagogue” or assembly/meeting as its root. Is there a command on what that must look like? No, there isn’t. If all you have is a river, as was the case for the exiles in Babylon and the first believers in Europe, that will do. The focus is after all not on the place, but on the God we worship, and those who have gathered to worship him.
Yes, Rosemarie and I totally miss seeing God’s people gathered together in one physical spot on Sunday. But we will focus on worshipping God together with all who have gathered at the stream – the live stream, that is. We have a pretty good precedent, I would say!
