For those of you who are members here at North Second Street, this may seem to be a misleading title for a bulletin article. If the majority of your life has been spent among churches of Christ, and you are visiting with us, you may be concerned as to whether you are at the right place! Relax, I’m not wearing my collar backwards today. But believe it or not, the title is accurate!
In the United States of America, December 25th is a federal holiday and is officially named Christmas Day1. In the English language, any day before a major holiday is referred to as the “eve” of that date. It is not only grammatically correct to say the 24th of December is Christmas Eve, it is factually and officially accurate in these United States. On this first day of the week (when we assemble regularly), it happens to also be Christmas Eve (a day on which we assemble for the latter cause, not the former) and you are welcome to attend our worship services every Sunday. So yes, the first five words are completely true!
Yes, I am having a little fun with the “10:AM” part. I saw a post on Facebook this week requesting recommendations for a local church to attend. As I was about to send him a link to our church webpage, his post stated he was looking for somewhere to attend, “midnight mass.” Oh…so close! Sunday mornings at 10:AM is our regularly scheduled worship service. I suppose if persecution or war forced us to meet secretly and under the cover of darkness, midnight might be an option. Thankfully we are under no such distress and 10:AM it is!
The last word in our title is “mass.” In non-religious terms, it just means a group or body of people. Mass, like the word catholic, has taken on additional meaning attached to Roman Catholicism. The root meaning of the word “catholic” means universal, in total, or undivided. However, most people think of the “Catholic’ church as referring to the independent nation-state of the Vatican in Rome. In reality, we should think of the Lord’s church as being all-together, as one, undivided, and our congregation as a local part of a universal or catholic whole. Our worship services are a weekly opportunity for Christians in our area to mass themselves together and remember the body and blood of our Savior before we are sent out into the world with prayer. Yep, we have mass every Lord’s day at 10:AM.
This article is being typed with my tongue planted, at least slightly, in cheek. However, there is a serious purpose at work. If you are a visitor, you may have come expecting a choir, a nativity scene, and maybe even a Christmas play where middle school children stumble through a depiction of the story of the first coming of Jesus. If you are confused by what seems to be a simple, ordinary worship service, you are right in your first observation and off the mark on the second.
You are absolutely correct in thinking our worship services are simple. At North Second Street, we are dedicated to worshipping our God according to his revealed will. We believe Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to his apostles to empower them to teach the gospel and organize local churches in a way that glorifies our Creator. It is our aim to recreate the church assemblies of the New Testament. If that makes our worship simple. It is God’s will.
Our desire is to engage in worship guided by the word of God and conducted in spirit. The apostle Paul says when we sing praises to our heavenly Father, we are filled with the Holy Spirit. We perceive Jesus body and blood at the Lord’s table. We are taught from the word of God. We speak as one people to our God. And we are edified in coming together with fellow Christians as the body of Christ. Simple? Yes. Ordinary? Far from it!
You may search your Bible from cover to cover this week and you will find no celebration of the virgin birth of Jesus as a religious holiday. In fact, there is no mention of his birth being celebrated in any church under the instruction of the Father, through the Son, to his apostles by the power of the Spirit. How can we claim to be a Bible church if we celebrate in ways unknown to any Bible?
So, today is not a “Christmas Eve Mass” in the sense you may have come expecting to see. But we will worship God in ways we know are pleasing to him. We know the Father, Son, and Spirit will be with us in our simple service. That is no ordinary thing!
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