“Where two or three are gathered together in My name,” said
Jesus, “there am I with them.”
I expect you know that
the Gospels were only written down about 50 or 60 years after Jesus’
death.
A lot of things happened during those years, of course,
and although we know how accurate oral transmission can be,
there are a few places where it looks as though an extraneous
passage got inserted.
I don’t quite mean extraneous, I don’t
think –
but a passage attributed to Jesus that perhaps wasn’t
what he actually said,
but what the early Church thought he
ought to have said.
And part of the passage we heard just now
is, I think, one of those passages, mostly because it talks about the
Church, a gathering of Christians –
and such a thing didn’t
exist in Jesus’ day.
But whatever, it got into our Bibles, so
we need to read it and learn from it.
And although my text is,
as I said at the beginning, “Where two or three are gathered
together in My name, there am I with them,” we do need to look at
the whole passage, as “a text without a context is a pretext!”
The
first part does seem, at first reading, extraordinary, though.
We
know from elsewhere that Jesus tells us never to put limits on our
forgiveness.
We know we must forgive, or it’s impossible for
us to receive God’s forgiveness, we block ourselves off from
it.
And we are told never to judge.
We’re told to
sort out what’s wrong with ourselves first –
you remember
how Jesus graphically told us to remove the very large log from our
own eyes before we could possibly deal with the tiny speck that
bothered us in someone else’s.
But we are human.
No
matter how much we want to love our neighbours as ourselves, it’s
difficult.
It’s easy enough to love suffering humanity en
masse, to send a text to a certain number to give three pounds
towards relieving some kind of community suffering somewhere
else.
It’s easy enough to throw an extra box of tea-bags into
the food bank box at the supermarket, or to donate to homeless
charities.
It’s even relatively easy to do small things to
lower your carbon footprint –
to take reusable produce bags to
the supermarket, to be scrupulous about recycling, and so on.
Now,
don’t get me wrong, all these are good and right and proper things
to be doing, and we should probably all do them more than we actually
do.
But they are all relatively easy –
the difficult bit
comes when we have to start interacting with other people, and loving
them.
“To love the world to me’s no chore.
My problem
is that lot next door!”
That’s when we’re apt to forget to
be loving, when we are apt to go our own way, when we’re apt to
hurt people, most probably totally unintentionally.
The careless
word, the accidental insult –
or even, sadly, the intentional
one.
Now, obviously, if we realise we’ve hurt someone,
the thing to do is to apologise at once.
Sometimes there
are times when we don’t really want to apologise –
they
started it, it was their fault.
Well, even if it is, we are the
ones who need to apologise, if only because it makes us bigger than
them….
Well, perhaps not for that reason, but you know what I
mean.
But what if it is they who hurt you?
The human
thing to do is to hit out and hurt them back, but we’re not
supposed to do that, and with God’s help we won’t.
This
passage tells us what to do –
first, go and explain what has
gone wrong,
and if they agree and apologise, all is well and no
harm done.
Then you take a couple of friends along to witness
that you had a problem and to try and help you be reconciled,
and
then, finally, take it to the church.
The church, note –
not
the world!
And then, the passage says, if they still won’t
listen,
let them be to you as a tax gatherer or a
gentile.
Which, on first reading, sounds as if you should shun
them completely,
which was how Jewish people of the time
behaved towards them.
But that’s not what Jesus
did!
Remember the story of Levi, who was a tax collector, and
Jesus called him to become one of the disciples.
Remember
Zaccheus, who resolved to pay back anybody he had cheated after Jesus
loved and forgave him and went to eat with him.
Remember how
many times he talked with, and healed, Gentiles, non-Jews, people who
observant Jews would have nothing to do with.
So what is
the church to do with those who won’t see that they’ve hurt
someone, or if they do see it, don’t care?
From Jesus’
example, it looks as though we have to go on loving them, trusting
them, and caring for them.
Heaven, as one paraphrase puts it,
will back us up.
Obviously, there are very rare occasions when
steps have to be taken,
if a child or a vulnerable adult is at
risk, for example,
but mostly things can be put right without
that.
And even when steps do have to be taken –
and the
Methodist church has systems in place to organise such steps,
so
our safeguarding people know what to do –
we still have a duty
to love and care for the perpetrator.
Now, the next part
of the passage is really not easy to understand.
If, says Jesus,
or the Church speaking in Jesus’ name, two or three agree on
anything in prayer, it will be granted.
But we know that, with
the best will in the world, this doesn’t always happen.
We
have all seen times when our prayers, far from being answered,
appear to have gone no further than the ceiling.
But then
again, were we only looking for one answer to our prayer?
Were
we telling God what to do, as, I don’t know about you, but I find
I’m rather apt to.
Were we just talking at God, and not trying
to listen,
trying to be part of what God is doing in the
world?
All too easily done, I’m afraid.
But the
final sentence –
ah, now that brings hope.
“For where
two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.”
You
see, in the Jewish faith, you need what’s called a minyan, a
minimum of ten people –
in many traditions, ten men, not
people.
If there are only nine of you, you can’t go ahead with
the service.
But not for we Christians.
We know that even
if there are only a couple of us,
Jesus will be there with us
and enabling our worship.
I think I told you that last time I
was with you, when the congregation was rather smaller than usual
because of the Cup Final!
But Jesus was definitely with
us.
“Where two or three are gathered together in
My name,” said Jesus, “there am I with them.”
I
don’t know about you, but I found that to be very true during the
pandemic, during those long, weary months when we weren’t allowed
to meet together, and when we could, there were huge
restrictions.
Last time I preached on these passages, it was, I
think, the first Sunday we had been allowed back to church in five
long months.
We had to sign in, and in some churches we even had
to book a seat!
We had to sit miles apart from anybody except
our own families, we had to wear masks, we weren’t allowed to sing,
or to take an offering (there was usually a box by the door for those
who had brought one), or even share the Peace or make our Communions
as we were accustomed to do.
But it was a lot better than not
meeting at all, which had been the case for so many months, and was
to be again the following winter.
Many of us lost loved
ones during that hard time, either to Covid-19 or to other
illnesses.
Many of us had Covid ourselves, and although some
recovered quickly,
others, myself included, were still feeling
the after-effects a good two years later.
Many of us had mental
health issues during that time.
Many, if not most, of us
wondered where on earth God was in all this.
But God was
there.
There in the many different ways we struggled to be
church together –
the recorded services, the Zoom services,
eventually, the livestreams.
Some of those continue to this day
–
we now have two Zoom services weekly in the Circuit, the
Wednesday evening Compline and the Sunday evening service which,
although it is Clapham who run it, welcomes any of us who care to log
in.
But most of this is, we hope, ancient history.
There
may or may not be another pandemic in our lifetimes –
I hope
and pray there won’t be.
Eventually, there will be one, of
course;
but I hope not for a long while yet!
But what is
total, current, today’s news, is that Jesus is here with us, right
now this minute.
We are gathered together in his name, and he
has promised that where two or three –
or a dozen or so, in
this case –
are gathered together, he is there with us.
We
have been told what to do if we have a problem with someone else who
refuses to acknowledge it, or to clear the air.
Although I’ll
just remind you here that Jesus said that if you know someone has a
problem with you, or you with them,
you really ought to make it
right before you come to the Lord’s table together.
But that,
as this passage points out, isn’t always practical.
All we can
really do is pray for God’s grace.
It’s not as if church
quarrels were anything new –
even St Paul has to tell two of
the women in the church at Philippi to get over themselves and get
their acts together!
They happen.
They have always
happened.
And they probably always will happen.
But
Jesus is there with us, no matter how many people’s backs we’ve
put up.
Jesus is there with us because we are gathered in his
name.
And this, of course, means we can’t actually exclude
anyone!
How can we be gathered in Jesus’ name and exclude
anybody from that gathering?
We can’t, of course.
Not
even people like tax-gatherers or pagans!
Jesus would never have
turned his back on such people unless they had made it very, very,
very clear that they wanted nothing at all to do with him, and how
can we do differently?
“Where two or three are gathered
together in My name,” said Jesus, “there am I with them.”
And
it doesn’t matter what we are doing in His name,
whether we’re
attending public worship,
or visiting someone who is ill,
or
helping at the food bank,
or any other form of community
service.
Or even being at work or school, or at home.
If we
do it in Jesus’ name, and if there are other people involved, he is
there in the midst of it all!
Amen.
