Together in His name

“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. 

Moses in the bulrushes

 

I think I remember first hearing the story of Moses in the bulrushes, which was our first reading today, when I was in primary school! I imagine you did, too, most probably. It’s one of the first Bible stories we ever learn.

It’s an important story, as Moses was an important person – so important, in fact, that he was one of those who visited the transfigured Jesus on the mountain-top, along with Elijah. God made it clear then that it was Jesus who we are to listen to, Jesus who has superseded both Moses and Elijah, Jesus who is God’s beloved son.
But Moses, like Jesus, wasn’t born to greatness. In fact, rather the reverse. The Israelites, at that time, were living in Egypt – you might recall how they moved down there at Pharaoh’s invitation, and that of his right-hand man Joseph. And at first they settled down, and built farms, and lived their lives according to God’s word as it was then understood, and all went swimmingly. They grew, and they prospered.

Meanwhile, however, the Pharaoh grew old, and died, and a few generations later a new Pharaoh ascended the throne, and this Pharaoh had never heard of Joseph, and didn’t really want to, either. He was concerned, because here was this enormous group of people who weren’t Egyptian at all, living in the middle of Egypt and it was possible – although not probable – that they could overturn his throne. Pharaoh wasn’t having that!

So he got together with his advisors, and they pretty much enslaved the Israelites, demanding – and getting – forced labour from them to build things and carry burdens, work in the fields, and so on. They didn’t build the pyramids – the pyramids existed long before Joseph went to Egypt – but they did build a couple of towns, Pithon and Rameses. But the harder the Egyptians forced them to work, the more children they had, and the more they prospered.

So the Hebrew midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, were told they must kill any boy baby that was born to an Israelite woman, although they could let the girls live. But the midwives were not about to do that, and ignored their instructions. And when summonsed to explain themselves, they said blandly that all that work in the fields meant that the women had a very easy time giving birth, and the babies in question had been born long before they got there! And the children of Israel became stronger and stronger and more and more numerous.

So Pharaoh got very cross indeed, and ordered that all baby boys must be thrown into the river, there either to drown or to be eaten by crocodiles, or both. But it still didn’t stop the Israelites.

The Bible doesn’t give the names of Moses’ parents; they are just referred to as a Levite man and a Levite woman. This means they were both descendants of Levi, one of Jacob’s sons. The Levites, traditionally, end up being the tribe that is responsible for Temple worship and so on – not the priests, but the worship leaders, if you like. I don’t know if they had that role back in Egypt, but it seems significant that Moses should be a Levite.

This couple had two other children that we know of; a girl called Miriam, and a boy called Aaron who was a few years older than Moses, so presumably born before the edict to kill the male babies was made. And then Moses arrives.

I wonder whether Moses’ mother knew what she was going to do if she had a boy. I expect she was praying and praying that it be a girl, and then it wasn’t. Disaster! What on earth was she going to do? How could she give up her beloved baby to be killed?

We aren’t told that she prayed, but I’m sure she did. And she was able to hide the baby for three months, but babies are not an easy thing to hide, and eventually she realised she simply couldn’t. But she had been plotting and preparing. Her baby must go in the river, okay. But she wasn’t going to let the authorities throw him in – instead, she would put him in herself, in a basket she had spent time weaving from rushes, and covering it with pitch so it would be waterproof.

And she took the basket, with Moses in it, down to the river herself. Her heart must have broken as she placed it tenderly in the reed-bed. She had done what she could, complying with the letter of the law, if not the spirit. Only God could help her baby now.

She didn’t dare hang about to see what would happen, but her daughter Miriam could lurk discreetly, pretending to be playing, perhaps.

And what does happen is that Pharaoh’s daughter comes down to the river to bathe, with all her attendants. And she hears the baby crying, and sends one of her women to go and see what the noise is. And the woman brings back the baby in his basket.

Pharaoh’s daughter – we don’t know her name, either; the Bible is so bad at giving women names – is entranced by the baby, and even though he’s obviously a Hebrew baby, she wants to keep him for her own, as though he were a stray puppy or kitten. But the baby is getting hungry now, and howling, and his sister, very bravely, comes up to the women and says “I know where there’s a wet-nurse, if you want one for the baby!”

The wet-nurse is, of course, her own mother, who has just that very day put the baby in the river. And Pharaoh’s daughter says “Ooh, yes please!” and so the family end up moving into the palace, albeit into servants’ quarters, and Moses is brought up as befits a royal child.

There are some obvious parallels with Jesus here, aren’t there? The humble parents, the oppressed people, the edict to kill the baby boys. Ironic, perhaps, that Mary and Joseph fled into Egypt to keep Jesus safe!

Meanwhile, Moses grew up as a child of the palace, although he obviously did know he had Hebrew roots, as we learn later in his story. But Jesus, we hope, had a happy and serene childhood in Nazareth, treated no differently from other boys his age, playing with his friends, going to school, and only very gradually learning that he was different and special as he grew up.

I’m not sure, by the way, whether he knew what Peter’s answer to the question “Who do you say that I am?” was going to be, as we heard in our Gospel reading. Did he already know he was the Messiah? He obviously knew he had a special calling from God, that he was God’s beloved son – but, the Messiah? Peter’s answer was very definitely God’s voice to him. Yes, you are the Messiah. But he asked the disciples not to say anything, as he didn’t want to be elevated to the status of a political leader, which is what they had always imagined the Messiah was going to be.

Moses, as we all know, led his people out of slavery and to the very boundaries of the Promised Land; Jesus wasn’t about overthrowing the occupying power, or really anything to do with politics; he brings us out of slavery in a totally different way – the slavery of sin, as the Bible calls it.

But Moses’ story has more to teach us than just the parallels with Jesus. It’s about God’s wonderful provision for his people.

It must have been so awful for Moses’ mother, mustn’t it? She knew she had to put her precious baby into the river; he could be – and probably would be – swept away and drowned, or eaten by crocodiles, or both. But she was also placing him into God’s hands, and God wasn’t going to let him be swept away or eaten. God saw to it that it was just at that precise moment that Pharaoh’s daughter and her attendants came down to bathe. And just at that precise moment that the baby woke up hungry.

And so Moses was saved from the crocodiles, and grew up a child of the palace.

Jesus, too, was saved from the edict that all baby boys be killed; his parents listened to the angel who warned them, and took him to Egypt, where they stayed until that Herod died, and then resettled in Nazareth, where Jesus grew up as a normal village child.

I wonder how God provides for you and me? We are probably not going to be leaders of our people, but we are still God’s beloved children. And St Paul reminds us that “God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus”.

We didn’t read the passage from Paul’s letters set for today, as it would have made the service too long, but it was that bit from the letter to the Romans where Paul reminds us that although we are one body in Christ, we are all different, and God has given us all different gifts, which we should not be shy about using.

I am sure that almost all of us, looking back, can see times when God provided for us – I know I can, several times, over the course of my life. Sometimes it was using decisions I made; other times it was the right person in the right place at the right time, and so on. And I expect – although I don’t actually know and don’t especially want to know – there have been times when I’ve been the right person in the right place at the right time. And I’m sure there have been times when you have, too.

Pharoah’s daughter was in the right place at the right time. So, of course, was Simon Peter, to tell Jesus that “You are the Messiah, the holy one of God!” I pray that all of us may be the right person in the right place at the right time – and I think I pray that we’ll never know it, as then we might think it was we who did it, not God! Amen.