Subversive gatherings

 ‘…For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.’ (Matthew 18:20)

Matthew 18:15-20 (Year A: Trinity+12)

This passage complements Matthew 16:13-20 (‘Who am I for you - Joining up the dots’).  Whereas the ‘binding’ and the ‘loosing’ in heaven as on earth refers to Peter as ‘primus inter pares’ (first among equals) the same ‘binding’ and ‘loosing’ applies to where ‘two or three gather in my name’.  The ‘primus’ and the ‘inter pares’ need to be in balance. At times over the last two millennia the balance has swung too far to one pole or the other.  However, the earth is balanced on two poles – not one.

Potentially, the gathering of two or three in his name is subversive and disruptive because where Jesus is so also the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit can gently wreck havoc on the best laid plans, assumptions and imposed structures. It is a gathering/ekklesia/church literally without walls. But, we need walls and structures, too, provided they don’t keep people out or keep people stuck in all the time.

If we were more conscious of the presence of Jesus ‘where two or three gather’ in his name we might review some of our attitudes and dispositions in daily life.  It comes back to daily living. Ecumenism in high places requires a change of attitude and heart at the local and specific levels where ‘two or three gather’ in his name whether for prayer, work, joint action, simple conversation or silence. At the end of our lives we might catch a momentary glimpse of situations where  God was present where two or three were gathered and we didn’t quite realise it at the time. And didn’t our hearts burn within us when he talked with us and when he opened the scriptures to us (Luke 24:32).