“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.” Colossians 3:16
Much has been said over the past couple of months, and much continues to be said, about Christians not being able to gather together for worship publicly. Questions about authority, politics, constitutional rights, scientific conclusions, medicinal protocols and what should be deemed “essential” in the public arena continue to be raised.
Forgotten is the fact for the first 300 years of Christianity, that is, for the first three centuries of its existence, the public worship of Christians wasn’t a given. Not until the early fourth century was Christianity accepted as a legal religion within the Roman empire. Up until that time, Christianity was periodically persecuted in one way or another, in this place and that, as something odd, strange, and certainly against the social norm.
So where would Christians worship? They would gather in homes, or in out of the way places like river banks, or hillsides. One of the more interesting places that Christians worshiped was in the catacombs under the city of Rome, that is, a series of tunnels and rooms dug out by the Romans to bury their dead. The Romans would not go there so the Christians would, and worshiped, worshiped among the dead.
Common then even yet today are the above-ground tombs in the cathedrals of Europe that ring the pews and altar and pulpit. There worship continues to this day in a graveyard, among the dead!
The point? Up until Christianity was accepted publicly, Christian worship life was a private affair, beginning in the home.
We carry on that practice today when we have home devotions, pray in the morning or evening by our bedside, and pray before meals. It is in our homes that “the Word of God can dwell among us richly,” where we can “[teach] and [admonish] one another in all wisdom,” and certainly we are encouraged to do so.
Even more private, of course, is the worship of our Savior in our hearts. We are, that is, each and every one of us, a temple of the Holy Spirit—that is, a place where the Holy Spirit dwells (1 Cor. 6:19). The Church existed for 300 years in relative privacy because this is so: Each of us is a temple of the Holy Spirit who then, reach out in union and communion to other Christians, and then ultimately, gather together for worship of our Lord and Savior.
So perhaps our current situation has given us the opportunity to take a few steps back, to realize that faith is created within each and every one of us by the Holy Spirit, and that even though we cannot gather together, we can continue to remain and grow in faith, letting “the Word of Christ dwelling among [us]” richly!
