sunday matters.

Today the kids and I watched a livestream Easter service in our living room.

We had communion and all I had on hand were crackers and sweet tea.

I’m 46 years old and for the past 45 years I have spent every Easter Sunday inside of a church or at an early morning sunrise service (because Baptist upbringing). (Except last Easter – remember that?)

So yes, this Sunday was different.

There have been portions of my life where I attended church because my parents buckled me into the car and drove me there. Seasons where the cute guy in the youth group was my main incentive. College years where I chose to attend because it was exactly where I wanted to be. Times when I only showed up because my husband was employed there. Years when I was at church every Sunday because it helped me cope with the chaos outside of the building in my own life.

Some of those years and in some of those churches I wondered what the point was. I wondered what difference it made – to me or to the people around me – if I continued to show up or if I slept in.

Of course the community mattered. That’s always been more straightforward to me. People matter. Showing up for one another matters. Carrying the actual burdens of your friends and your folks is where I have seen Christ most alive. Always.

But the weekly going to a building and singing songs and listening to a sermon? What’s the depth of that value? Where does it rank?

For the past several weeks we’ve all got a taste of figuring out the answer to that question.

When we tuned in Sunday morning, sitting in my living room in cozy clothes worn the day before, hair unpresentable and two kids cuddled beside me, I was not expecting to find the answer to my question – what difference does a Sunday service together make?

But the music started, a creative version of a song I love with clips from lots of different people in our church singing together from their own homes.

And the tears just start flowing.

There are fresh cut daffodils on the coffee table, beside our brunch of cinnamon rolls and egg casserole, all dropped off at our house yesterday by some angels of food and hope. Community.

I couldn’t stop crying.

I’m reading this book by Frederick Buechner. And like all good works of literature or art or music, they connect to your life even when they have nothing in particular to do with your life.

What did we hunger for today? Was I fed today? Did I feed anybody today? We all have hidden hungers. We starve without knowing it for each other, I suppose, for silence, for beauty, for holiness, for God. It’s the kind of hunger that you don’t recognize until it’s fed, and then you think, My golly, I was hungry for that.

That’s what I realized.

That’s what I saw.

I was hungry for church. Hungry for group worship. Hungry for singing the same songs at the same time with the same people. Hungry for hearts lifting together in unison.

And I realized, yes – my life would feel less without Sunday group worship, without Sunday’s anchor of a sermon and a focus and a tiny routine reset button.

And I’m hungry to have that back in my life.

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