Having mostly left assembly as a Christian behind, I often feel the very real experience of being an exile from my people.
If you consider the experience of the first generation of Christians, they were mostly Jews who had embraced Christ as Messiah. But their brethren in the flesh had mostly retained the 'Jewish ways’ while rejecting YHWH-Incarnate.
In other words, even as the Apostles accepted a New Covenant and had pivoted with God's new direction, Judaism was locked in its love for the old wine of the Mosaic covenant.
Exiled In Jerusalem
It must have been deeply isolating for the Apostles to have friends, family, kin, neighbors, loved ones - to become strangers overnight. By embracing a hard word from God ('the old covenant is old and passing away'), they had become exiles without leaving Jerusalem.
And so you have the apostles saying things like:
"And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one's deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile,"
and
"Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who are elect exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia,"
and
"James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, To the twelve tribes in the Dispersion: Greetings."
and
“These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.”
These words and phrases: "exiles," "strangers," "the dispersion," "time of your exile," must have been deeply personal and something tangible to the apostles who wrote them.
This was not some kind of an ethereal stretch, like saying "well we're spiritual exiles" like I hear most pastors say - it must have had a huge literal and earthly meaning to them.
They lived the exile somewhere between a feeling of being not quite Jewish (not accepted in the synagogue) and not quite gentile (feeling out of place in this increasingly gentile Christian movement).
So I feel the same when I think about Christianity sans-assembly (without assembly). Growing up "Christian" - the meaning of the word Christian was so connected with gatherings that to "come out of her" meant to leave behind a whole paradigm of Christendom.
Going back is turning away
But just as "going back" to doctrinaire Judaism was impossible for the early Jewish-Christians, so going back to assembly-addicted Christendom is likewise impossible. We cannot go back to a broken idea that God has departed from.
I am not saying assembly = bad, because to do so would be to condemn the apostles and most of Christian history. But it is bad now - just look around.
And when it comes to looking for new wine skins (a form) for new wine (staying Christian in this time), I am still waiting to see the way God will propose. Mostly I think it will be cataclysmic, paradigm-bursting, and anti-flesh-mindedness.
It is the New Covenant stripped of every externality that cannot make it to eternity.
Nate