Matthew 18:18-20 "All That He Stood For"

         A group of five church members meet at 10:00 A.M. as usual to play golf together on a humid Sunday morning in the summer.  They pray that the thunderstorms will not hit until after the 18^th hole.  Well, you know, where two or three of us are gathered in his name, he is right there with us.

         A family heads out to the slopes on a clear and frosty Sunday morning – perfect skiing weather. Oh, that’s right.  They said grace together at breakfast.  So, remember, where two or three are gathered in Jesus’ name…

         A handful show up for Sunday morning worship – the weather is too bad or too good to expect many more – and the pastor prepares to welcome the remnant that showed up and says (primarily to make the people who did come feel that it was worth it): “Well, we all know what the Bible says: ‘Where two or three or more are gathered in his name, he is there.’”

         As if Jesus congratulates you when you are three under par on the eighth hole, as if Jesus is sharing the chairlift with you and remarking about that awesome first run on fresh powder, as if Jesus is providing the much-needed bass voice in the choir or is standing by the coffee urn after worship waiting for someone to welcome him and start a conversation.

         “For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.”  That is probably one of the most misused phrases in all the Bible.  You know as well as I do that it is constantly employed to justify all sorts of dubiously churchy behavior and religious motivations – and it is a terrific phrase for assuaging guilt over missing church because something better came along.

 We wish we could be in church, but Sunday morning is the only family time we have – and we do say grace, and our kids do say their prayers at bedtime.  At least we are thinking about Jesus.  After all, “where two or three are gathered in his name….”

Why don’t more people come to the Advent vespers service or the Maundy Thursday service?  Oh well, you can hardly expect folks to do that.  In our congregation, everyone is so busy, and besides, who cares if there is a tiny congregation.  Jesus himself says it: “where two or three (or a handful more) are gathered in my name…..”

Now, each one of those uses of that bandied about phrase carries with it a nice thought, but all those commonplace examples completely ignore the context in which these verses were first spoken.  You see, the Gospel writer of Matthew was not referring either to quality family vacation time or declining church attendance when he put those words into Jesus’ mouth. 

Reputable Biblical scholars and historians alike would agree that the Gospel writer was referring to church discipline.  He was citing the process that he believed ancient congregations should be following when they dealt with conflict in their own little portion of the Body of Christ.  

For Jews who originally heard these words back in the first century, it was a no brainer.  They immediately knew that this passage dealt with disciplinary processes.  After all, it was eerily reminiscent of parts of the Torah in the Book of Deuteronomy.  You see, the Law as outlined there stipulated that two or three witnesses were required if proper court proceedings were to take place.

 In these corresponding verses in Matthew, the Gospel writer lays out a clear path to reconciliation – or condemnation.  As Lutheran pastor Mark Hoffman notes, “There is the good strategy of starting the process privately and in person, and then, if needed, bringing in others to assure integrity to that process.” 

In fact, it is the conflict resolution process that we try to follow around here.  If you have a gripe with someone, you are encouraged to work it out with that person directly – and not discuss it with others in the parking lot.  If a one-to-one conversation does not work, then the Pastor or deacons or Pastoral Relations Committee are there to help sort things out.  If that does not work, then the Council can take on the complaint.  And if you follow that open and transparent process, then you can be assured that Jesus will have your back.  One blogger I read this week put it this way:  Jesus “will be divinely present among as they seek Christ-like unity and wisdom in making their decision.”

I think that I shall never see

A church that’s all it ought to be;

A church whose members never stray

Beyond the straight and narrow way!

A church that has no empty pews,

Whose pastor never has the blues,

A church whose deacons always deak

And none is proud, and all are meek;

Where gossips never peddle lies,

Or make complaints and criticize;

Where all are always sweet and kind

And to all others’ faults are blind.

Such perfect churches there may be,

But none of them are known to me.

But still we’ll work and pray and plan

To make our own the best we can.

         However, I am not going to focus on church conflict this morning. I am not going to talk about gossips peddling lies and being blind to one another’s faults – which lies at the foundation of this passage in Matthew we just read.  I am also not talking about how or why someone would choose – or not choose – to come to church.

Instead, what caught my imagination as I studied this passage this week was that misused phrase – ““For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.”  I found myself wondering what it means for Jesus to be with us as congregation - in the midst of us – when we are not embroiled in conflict.

I mean, after all, surely we trust that Jesus is here among us at other times as well.  We presume that Jesus is with us when we worship.  We call upon his guidance when we study together or when we meet as a Church Council.  Surely we hope that he shares our laughter and our tears and even hangs around when we serve pot roast on a Saturday night in the Vestry.  

So - I want to talk about how, as the poem said, “we’ll work and pray and plan to make our own (church) the best we can” – with Jesus clearly in our midst.

         What does it mean then for Jesus to be front and center as we strive to be the church?  What does it mean for us to connect and re-connect to him?  Those are questions well worth pondering as we seek to envision the future of our church.

         Many of you remember Fran Mains, a member of our church who now lives in a nursing home in Windham.  I was always struck when Fran prayed by the words she used to end her prayers.  She never simply said…we pray in Jesus’ name.  No - every time I heard her lead a prayer, she finished by saying: we pray in Jesus’ name and for all he stood for. 

“And for all he stood for”:  Whenever I heard Fran speak those words, they reminded me of the way I feel most connected to Jesus.  It is not by a vision of some first century swarthy complexioned Middle Eastern man.  It is not by a feeling that someone was looking over my shoulder or even had my back. 

Whenever I heard Fran’s words, I remembered that I feelmost connected to Jesus by the legacy for ministry that he left for us.  I feel connected to him by all that he stood for – and all he challenges me to be and to do. 

He continues to be present to me not because I somehow know what he looks like or sounds like.  He is real for me because of all he stood for.  Some people may have visions of him; some people may have visceral experiences of him.  Not me. 

I know him because of all he stood for.  I know him because of the work to which he calls me and calls the churches I serve.  I know him because of the way he constantly beckons me to step out of my own little world and seek a bigger picture of humanity, one that certainly includes, but also extends far beyond, Raymond.

To what extent we as a congregation decide to step out of our own little world, become less insular, connect and reconnect with people who are different than we are – who are Muslim and Jewish, who are people of color, who have values and cultural norms that do not match ours – to the extent that we choose to struggle to embrace a world like that will determine our future as a church.  In a sense, we need to figure out all that “binding and loosing” business that Matthew refers to.

One blogger I read noted that “in Jesus day, (binding and loosing) was a common term for the scholarly practice of deciding if a particular biblical commandment was applicable to a contemporary situation.  Jewish rabbis “bound” the law when they determined that a commandment was applicable to a particular situation, and they “loosed” the law when they determined that a word of scripture (while eternally valid) was not applicable under certain specific circumstances.” 

So – the question for us as a congregation is this:  If we can be most assured that Jesus is in our midst because all he stood for, then what of his legacy of ministry do we bind to us as a congregation? What aspects of Jesus’ legacy are so important that we will choose to embrace them at all costs as part and parcel of who we are as a church? 

When I think of all the Jesus stood for – inclusion, radical welcome, connection to the poor, justice-seeking, non-violence, I find we need to ask our question this way: To what extent are we willing to step out of our own little world and step into a world that is unknown and maybe even a bit scary to us, so that we can be Jesus’ hands and feet and in that way find him in our midst?   Because, you see, “Where two or three or more are gathered…” has nothing to do with golf or skiing or reading the Sunday newspaper together.

Furthermore, it has less to do with gathering inside these walls on Sunday morning and more to do with meeting Jesus in the eyes of the homeless man, the fleeing refugee, the ones whose lives have been irrevocably changed by Hurricane Florence and Typhoon Matthew, the ones who are live so differently than we do here in Raymond.   In fact, it has everything to do with the extent to which we will commit to move out of our own little world, to move from Population One to Population Two – or more.

That is what we will be exploring for these next few weeks during this new worship series.  Our overarching question will be this:  How do we gather not just to “maintain” the church as we remember it from the past, but instead gather to discover why it is that the church exists at all and just how we will find Jesus in the midst of that discovery?

Because this question of finding Jesus in our midst is closely tied to who we are as a church and to our ministries, so it is also closely tied to stewardship and to our annual fall stewardship campaign. It may seem early to be bringing up that topic, but now you will have lots of time and lots of fodder to consider in making your financial pledge for 2019. 

In the coming weeks, we will explore what our church is doing to move out of our own little world and just how we are connecting and reconnecting to the community here in Raymond – and beyond – and how we could do more.  I hope that through our worship together you will more clearly see (and better understand) the need for your financial support in this venture and that it cannot be the support of a few of us but needs to be the support of all of us for this church to survive and thrive. 

So – I invite you to come with me these next few Sundays as we venture out of our own little world of Population One and into the world of Population Two or More.  And I invite you to trust with me that along the way we will find Jesus in our midst.