Life Together
"For where two or three have gathered together in My name, there I am in their midst" (Matthew 18:20)
Jesus Himself says that when even two or three gather in His name, He is there in their midst. He has the audacity to declare Himself not just mediator, but the very medium of our relationships in the daily life of the Church: as surely, and maybe more dramatically, in the prosaic task of getting along as in the more visible ministries of word and deed.
When we are divided, Paul says that we live as though Christ were divided (1 Corinthians 1:13a). So we must live our lives in the question of what it means to truly gather in His name. We know that when we experience it most fully, there will be the joyful pain of happiness and sorrow multiplying as they are shared. We find this in Paul's concentric emanations of affliction and comfort for the sake of the Gospel (2 Corinthians 1:3ff.). In its absence, there is at best distant politeness and perfunctory kindness, and ultimately nothing but "hyper-fighting" and "glory-emptiness" (the "vain-glory" of the KJV) (Phil. 2:3).
Why is there quarreling among us? Only when Jesus is standing "in [our] midst" does He say to us, "Peace be with you." (John 20:26)
Expressed in the categories of our language, Jesus in the midst of three gathered in His name is "among" them; in the midst of two, He is "between." Though we are many members of one body, this fact is in tension with the quintessential two to which relationship devolves. This is the "I and Thou" of Martin Buber, and is modeled in the relationship of the Father and Son in the person of the Spirit.
In Him we live and move and have our being as the living Church.
[AV, 1998]
Jesus Himself says that when even two or three gather in His name, He is there in their midst. He has the audacity to declare Himself not just mediator, but the very medium of our relationships in the daily life of the Church: as surely, and maybe more dramatically, in the prosaic task of getting along as in the more visible ministries of word and deed.
When we are divided, Paul says that we live as though Christ were divided (1 Corinthians 1:13a). So we must live our lives in the question of what it means to truly gather in His name. We know that when we experience it most fully, there will be the joyful pain of happiness and sorrow multiplying as they are shared. We find this in Paul's concentric emanations of affliction and comfort for the sake of the Gospel (2 Corinthians 1:3ff.). In its absence, there is at best distant politeness and perfunctory kindness, and ultimately nothing but "hyper-fighting" and "glory-emptiness" (the "vain-glory" of the KJV) (Phil. 2:3).
Why is there quarreling among us? Only when Jesus is standing "in [our] midst" does He say to us, "Peace be with you." (John 20:26)
Expressed in the categories of our language, Jesus in the midst of three gathered in His name is "among" them; in the midst of two, He is "between." Though we are many members of one body, this fact is in tension with the quintessential two to which relationship devolves. This is the "I and Thou" of Martin Buber, and is modeled in the relationship of the Father and Son in the person of the Spirit.
In Him we live and move and have our being as the living Church.
[AV, 1998]
posted by CS at 5:03 PM
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