Marvin Gaye’s 1968 song “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” is #80 on Rolling Stone magazine’s top 500 hits of all time. Jesus also had something to say about grapevines, and I will get to that after the song.
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It is a known fact that Jesus was not born in Minnesota; nor was he born in Germany, Norway, Ireland, Sweden, or wherever else your ancestors were from. How then does it come to be that we worship this Jesus who lived 12,000 miles from here, 2,000 years ago? How did his words get from way back then and way over there, to us here today? Well, you heard it through the grapevine. The Church is that ‘grapevine’ that has carried the Gospel from Jesus to you. The 1968 hit by Marvin Gaye is about the breaking up of a relationship, but there is just one line I want to focus on because it is such a good image. “I heard it through the grapevine” sings Marvin Gaye, and the Bible also says that same thing. Do you remember where? The image of a grapevine is an image Jesus himself used.
In John 15 Jesus is talking about a vine and some branches, and in that time and place it was most certainly a grapevine he was referring to. Wine was a common beverage and so grapevines were all over the place. In verses five and six Jesus says, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit, but apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.” And then in verse nine Jesus says, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now, remain in my love.” Keep connected to me, says Jesus. For now, the physical connection God has provided is in His Word and His Sacraments, received primarily (not only), but primarily through the Church, in one form or another.
Every once in a while, someone will say to me, “You don’t have to go to church to be a Christian, do you?” Or, as it was put to me by someone a while back, “My grandma always told me that if I don’t go to church every week I am going to go to hell. Is that right?”
That is getting right to the heart of the matter, isn’t it? There was no beating around the bush in the question, so he didn’t need an evasive answer from me. So this is what I told him. I said, “There is a short answer and a long answer to that question. Let me give the short answer first, and that is NO, your grandmother is not right. We are saved by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and in his death on the cross for us. We are not saved by going to church. That’s the short answer.”
“But” I added, “a little bit more needs to be said. So, here is the long answer. God does command in one of the Ten Commandments to ‘Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it Holy.’ And most Christians, most of the time, over these past many centuries, have found going to church each week to be the best way to do that. If one chooses to not go to church, they must ask themselves what else they are doing on that day to obey God’s clear command to ‘keep it holy.’ And, if there is nothing at all they are doing to pay attention to God, then what does that say about their faith, or lack of faith. And what happens to faith when one chooses to disobey so basic a command of God each and every week? I am not interested in getting into how often you have to go to church, or, which excuses are valid and which are not. That is another subject, and as I said, we are not saved by going to church, but by faith in Jesus. But going to church is one very basic thing that can strengthen and sustain faith, whereas when one decides not to go to church, and not to pay attention to God in any other way, faith can weaken and die. That’s the long answer.”
The focus, then, must always be on Jesus. Jesus saves you, not church attendance, but if one chooses to ignore Jesus, that will matter. What does God want from you? God first of all wants your attention, and if you cannot even give God a bit of your time in worship, then you might very well be saying ‘no’ to Jesus—and you don’t want to do that. “If anyone does not remain in me (the grapevine),” said Jesus, “He is like a branch that is cut off and withers and is thrown into the fire.” God freely offers us all things here and in heaven; everything we are and everything we have is from God. But God is not mocked, says the Bible, and God will respect how you use the free will he has given you. He will not force anyone to spend eternity with Him who wanted nothing at all to do with him here in this life. And so yes, going to church does matter.
Now, how and where God draws the line, I do not know. Do you? Are you sure? And any uncertainty about that is even more reason to not disobey so clear a command to simply pay attention. We don’t want to trifle with so great a God, nor do we want to trifle with so great a gift as eternal life. (continued…)
