“For where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there among them.” This passage is a favorite of mine. In our world that values bigger and better, it reminds me that bigger and better is not what is most important to God. You do not need to be with a huge crowd to encounter God. Just a couple of people, faithfully gathered, is sufficient. “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there among them.”
As I think about my own faith journey there have certainly been holy moments in great big events, like the joyful celebration of Easter morning with hundreds of people gathering together at St. Mary’s. But most of the deepest, richest, most fulfilling spiritual experiences have been in the smaller moments. A small mid-week Eucharist, a Bible study, a one on one conversation, or tea at a coffee shop.
In March, on the day we decided to move online for Sunday services, things were busy as we were trying to figure out how to make an online worship service. A woman stopped by. A loved one had recently died and she wanted to pray with a priest. So the two of us went to the chapel and prayed together for about 20 minutes. It was a disruption, no doubt, to all that “needed” to be done. But it was a profoundly holy moment. It did not feel like the two of us were alone in the chapel. It felt like Jesus was with us, comforting her in her grief, and comforting me in my own grief over what was coming. “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there among them.”
We recently started doing some very limited in person, outdoor, physically distanced, masked Eucharists at St. Mary’s. We are following all the best safety guidelines, doubling up on all our safety measures to keep people safe. One of the many ways we keep these services safe is by keeping the gatherings small, very small. We have a maximum of sixteen people in these courtyard services, but we have never reached that number at any one service. We held three services last Sunday and had no more than nine of us there at once.
I love church services. A professional hazard, you might say. It is not like every church service is a particularly profound spiritual moment for me, but at one of the services last Sunday while praying the Eucharistic prayer, I had a sudden and overwhelming sense of Jesus’s presence with us in that very moment. As I spoke those words that he spoke to his disciples on the night before he died, “Take, eat. This is my body given for you.” Given for you, for me, for us. It felt like Jesus’s words were directly for us. The very real sensation of his presence in that space held for the rest of the service. For where two or three or six or nine, as the case may be, are gathered together in my name, I am there among them.
It doesn’t take many people, but notice that Jesus is still encouraging us to be in community. Yes, there may be spiritual power in personal prayer and doing things on your own. Jesus does suggest at other times to go into your closet and pray so that no one but God sees you. But the ideal for Jesus is to be in community. As Bishop Powell has told us many times, there is no such thing as a Christian alone. We are only Christians together. We are the body of Christ, each an individual member of the greater body. We need each other. We do not have an individualistic faith. On our own we have an incomplete faith. The fullness of our faith is only realized together. “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there among them.”
We still have to gather together. But what does it mean to gather together in a pandemic? Sure, we can gather together in these outdoor, masked, physically distanced services. But what about the past six months? Did we neglect to gather or were we gathering over Zoom? Or what about those who are particularly vulnerable and the risk, even of these relatively safe outdoor masked services, is not a wise decision for them? Are we neglecting to gather if we don’t come to an in-person service during a pandemic? I would argue that our virtual gathering is still a gathering. I have felt deeply connected to everyone who has gathered in the Zoom Spanish service, the Zoom Morning Prayer, Zoom Evening Prayer, Zoom coffee hour, Zoom Sunday School, and so on.
What about the video service? Are we gathering together when we are not all praying in the service at the same time? I think we are. Every Sunday when I pray with this video service, I feel like I am praying with you. I feel close and connected to you, most especially when I see your faces and hear your words in pictures and videos you submit. But for those who are not submitting, I feel your presence with me in these services, too. It’s almost like that feeling of the great cloud of witnesses that we talk about every All Saints Day. We can’t see them. We can’t see the cloud, but it is there, nonetheless.
Early on in the pandemic, about four weeks in, a long-time parishioner said that she felt more connected than ever to you, her fellow parishioners, because you invite her into your home in these video worship services. It is a virtual invitation, of course, but no less real to her. I know this is not the case for everyone. I have also heard from others that they do not like this way of gathering, that it makes things more difficult, more isolating. I am grateful that we have these relatively safe in-person gatherings, so that those people who are isolated by the virtual can feel the connection of gathering again.
Whether we are gathering in person in our modified, simplified, safety protocol filled services, or gathering on-line through email connections like Circle Service does, or over Zoom like the Spanish service does, or one of the video services like you and I are doing right now, we are gathered. We do not have to be physically in the same space, we don’t have to be doing it at the same time, but we are gathered. And Jesus is here among us.
AMEN
