Thank you for being a subscriber.
Paid subscribers can continue with the full reflection. If you would like to receive these weekday reflections in full, I would love to welcome you as a paid subscriber.
You may also be interested in my new book, Sacred & Secular: Find God in the Ordinary, which brings together some of the most popular and thought-provoking reflections from this journey so far. Amazon UK or USA.
There is a verse in Matthew’s Gospel that I have heard quoted countless times in churches, usually when attendance has been slightly disappointing.
It is usually said when perhaps only a handful of people have turned up for the prayer meeting, the weather is terrible, half the congregation are away, or everyone else has apparently discovered something more exciting to do on a Tuesday evening. Eventually, somebody smiles reassuringly and says, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”
It is a lovely thought, and of course there is truth in it. Christians do not need a cathedral, a packed congregation or an impressive worship band for Christ to be present among them. Two people praying together matter just as much as two thousand. Yet recently, while reading the passage again, I noticed something I had somehow managed to overlook.
Jesus does not originally say these words during a conversation about worship.
He says them during a conversation about conflict.
That changes things rather dramatically.
