Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
September 10, 2023 (Church Picnic)
Scripture: Matthew 18:15-20
I’ve been thinking a lot about food this week, and what an appropriate week to be thinking about food, with the best potluck of the year happening today!
I’ve been thinking about all of the meals that Jesus shared with people. We’ve got the Last Supper which happened on the night before he died – an intimate meal with his closest friends, when Jesus offered them his body and his blood in the form of bread and wine.
Jesus accepted dinner invitations from anyone who invited him, so we also read about him eating with the elite of his time and place, as well as with people who were despised like Zacchaeus, the tax collector.
We also have stories about Jesus feeding a crowd of thousands of people with just a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish – a miracle of abundance in a place of scarcity.
It seems as though Jesus is always eating with people!
At that last supper that he shared with his disciples, as Jesus takes the bread, blesses the bread, breaks the bread, and gives the bread to his friends, he says to them, “Do this in remembrance of me.”
Whenever we celebrate communion, whenever we share the bread and the cup as a sacrament, we are doing it in remembrance of Jesus. And yet I wonder if we can interpret this more broadly. I wonder if it is possible to remember Jesus, if it is possible to re-enact this particular breaking of bread every time we break bread together?
Which means that we will be remembering Jesus in the breaking of bread twice in this gathering. When we share the communion bread and cup, we will remember Jesus; and when we share all of the food that we have brought to this lunch, we will continue to do this in remembrance of Jesus.
Which brings us to the teaching of Jesus that Cindy read for us this morning – the reading that ends with Jesus’s well-known words, “where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” Jesus is with us when we gather to worship. Jesus is with us when we break bread together. Jesus is with us when one member of the church offers to pray for another member of the church.
I know a pastor who used to joke on a Sunday with low attendance, that Jesus said where two or three were gathered he would be there, and it’s a good thing that Jesus set the bar so low! But I think that this saying of Jesus holds a deeper meaning than this. It is all about community.
We, as the church, are a community. We are a communal people. We celebrate with each other. We mourn together. We share with one another and lend a helping hand. We do all of this together so that nobody has to be alone. And where two or three are present, where two or three are in community with one another, then Christ is right there in the center of the community. This saying about where two or three are gathered is all about being present to one another.
Which is why I think that this teaching follows immediately after instructions for how a community can be reconciled to one another after the relationship has been broken. Being in community means being open to forgiving another member of the community. Being in community means being open to changing our hearts and lives when we have been the one to harm another.
But when it happens, it is a beautiful thing! When we are a community that gathers around the breaking of bread, with Christ at the heart of who we are and what we do, then I don’t think that there is anything more beautiful than church, celebrating Christ’s presence among us, and reflecting Christ’s presence to the world around us.
And may we, the people of Two Rivers Pastoral Charge, be just such a church – not just today, but always! Amen.
Part 1 of our Gathering: Worship
(Part 2 was the potluck lunch)
Photo Credit: Margaret Stackhouse
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