The narrow way is the Church. Faith is not some privately held conviction that lives in the individual but the public identification with the Church. It is belonging. You may get the believing right and even the living may not be too bad but the question sure to come up is why you chose not to belong. I am not here speaking simply of a name on a membership roster but of a presence at the Lord's House on the Lord's Day. Where were you when the Spirit gathered the faithful, when the Word was preached in its truth and purity, and when the Holy Supper of our Lord was prepared for your communion? We think that the onus for the narrow way is either right doctrine or right morality or some combination of the two but it is surely more. It is the right gathering with the saints washed clean by baptism to hear the voice of the Good Shepherd and feast at the Table of the Lord. If it is not the latter, it cannot be the former.
We Lutherans do not speak much about this. There is not merely a choice -- claiming to believe and walk in Christ while choosing not be there in the Lord's House on the Lord's Day. There is something wrong with it. It is a sin not to be in the Lord's House on the Lord's Day without reason of mobility, work, or illness that prevents it. The Church is not given as some added little extra for those who want it while the strong and the mighty simply believe and try hard to be holy. The Church is the narrow way and implies the rightly held belief and the striving to live holy, upright, and godly lives. The narrow way is not mental assent to a series of truth propositions and an attempt to live a moral life. Covid has only hastened the normalization of the false idea that God wants you to believe rightly and live as the godly but does not care if you actually belong formally or attend the worship services of His House. We were always susceptible to the idea that God's big concern was sincerity and living morally upright lives and this was the extent of the narrow way but the pandemic distanced worship even more from the path we assume God wants us to traverse.
I will say it. If the Church is not your Mother, Christ is not your brother and God is not your Father. It is a great tragedy of our times that the Church is reduced to a symbolic role and not an earthly necessity for the heavenly goal. I wish I knew where we got this. We might be able to blame Protestantism on the idea that the Church is simply a bonus and the essential is right believing and right living. Even then I cannot imagine even Protestantism to get a warm and fuzzy from any faith that does not drive a person into the presence of God to receive His gifts. Sadly, the reality is that it appeals to our sinful natures that we can imagine ourselves into heaven or work our way into God's good side without living in need of worship and of the gifts He gives us there.
God intends for us to be in worship, gathered by the Spirit around the Word and Sacraments. To be able without real hindrance and to simply choose not to is not just plain wrong; it is a sin. How shallow are we or God to believe that all those people whose names adorn our membership rolls are sick or working or honestly prevented from being together in the Lord's House on the Lord's Day? Yet we must face the reality that it has become normal to disassociate faith from behavior and both from being in worship. All the surveys insist that the new normal for active Christians is closer to once a month, 12 times a year, than it is once a week or 52 times a year. Part of the decline in attendance numbers suffered by orthodox churches is the growing acceptance that this kind of less is more. There is something inherently wrong with that kind of normal that has been invading the minds and hearts of the faithful and tacitly accepted by the Church. We are struggling not simply because there are fewer people who call themselves Christian but also because fewer of those who do actually show up on Sunday morning.
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