Through the Flaming Sword

Introduction

Friends get the phrase “gathered meeting” from Matthew 18:20: “Wherever two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in their midst.” I believe that the promise and experience of the gathered meeting—direct communion with God as a worshipping community—is what makes us a religious society and that it is one of the most distinctive and important gifts we offer to seekers and our members and attenders. As a result, this foundational Bible passage deserves our special attention.

The wider context for Matthew 18:20—verses 15–20—describe Jesus’s 3-step process for reconciling a conflict in his household churches. Early Friends adopted this protocol for their own practice, calling it “gospel order”—bringing gospel order to a situation. This wider context is key for understanding Matthew 18:20’s promise.

And as always with the sayings of Jesus, once we read below the surface, we uncover one nuance after another. This passage (Matthew 18:20) and its wider context are very rich in this regard.

So this introductory post begins a series of posts that seek to unpack what this passage means and how it can foster and deepen our experience of the gathered meeting. Each of the posts that follow offers a careful reading of the passage from a different angle.

Here are the headings for the posts in the series:

• A promise (not a condition) of a gathered meeting, a culminating promise out of three promises corresponding to the three steps in Jesus’s protocol for resolving conflicts in the church.
• Timeframes—We can read this passage in three different timeframes: Jesus speaking to his disciples; Matthew writing for his audience; us reading the passage for ourselves today; OR: what did Jesus mean by this passage? What did Matthew mean? And what do we mean?
• Literary structure—what can the passage’s literary structure tell us?
• “Name”—what does “name” mean in this context?
• “The midst”—what are the ‘geographical’ metaphysics of Jesus’s presence?
• Conclusions— How do we read the passage in the light of our own experience? How does all this foster and deepen the gathered meeting?

Tagged: Gospel order, Jesus, the-presence-in-the-midst