The Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee



Proper 18, Year A, 2008 (BCP), September 7, 2008, Church of the Messiah Pulaski

“Truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them” (Matt. 18:19-20).

When you’re in the Fifth Grade, part of your education is about “product” and part is about “process”. The “product” is what you learn; the “process” is how you learn it, and also the tools for learning that you acquire along the way. In the Fifth Grade, apparently, the “process” is at least as significant and perhaps even more important than the “product”; that is, it may be very useful to know that Nashville is the capital of Tennessee, but even more important to have learned to do your homework each evening. The “product” is what you have at the end, but learning the “process” is what you come away with.

Jesus’ teaching in our Gospel today gives us two parts of a similar puzzle. He’s offering a teaching to the Church, a quite extensive one if you look at the totality of Matthew’s Gospel: a teaching about how we are to treat each other and how we are to build up the life of the community. The word “Church” appears only in a couple of places in Matthew’s Gospel, and this is one of them: it’s a word that means “congregation” or “assembly” or even more plainly “gathering”. So when Jesus says “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them” we are meant to prick up our ears and take notice: he’s talking about the Church.

But there’s another part of the teaching that we should not miss, and that part is not about “gathering” but about “agreeing”. “Truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven.” The two or three that gather are meant to agree; and even more fundamentally, the two or three will not gather unless they can at least agree to come together. If the “gathering” is the product, then the agreement in faith is the crucial process that we learn along the way. If the gathering of Christians together so that Christ may be present is the end result, a common turning toward Christ is what we come away with.

Here we are today, gathered as the Church to pray and celebrate; to baptize new people into relationship with Christ, to welcome others as confirmed members of the Church, and to celebrate the Sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood. We do not agree about everything, but we have agreed to gather and to turn to the Lord in prayer. In our prayer and in our celebration of the sacraments we are deepening our agreement in faith, coming to be of one heart and mind within God’s Holy Church. The prayer and celebration we share today in this gathering has the power to shape us for good, to turn us toward each other and toward Jesus Christ himself. We are learning, in fact, the “mind of Christ”, and our gathering as the Church is still in process until we have been fully formed.

We gather, even though there may still be disagreements, because Church means “gathering” and not “division”, and failing to gather means we will never learn how to agree. On the other hand, it would be scandalous for us to be content with only agreeing to gather and not with the deeper agreement that comes as we learn the process. Whether we are bishops of the world-wide Church or members of the local parish, we are learning how to agree in faith; that’s the lesson of real value, and for our soul’s health we need to learn it.

So take heart, our confirmands and our baptismal families: we are a work in progress, fellow disciples who are still learning what we need to know. We are all still in the elementary school of faith (well, maybe some of us are still in pre-K), and there is more shaping and forming ahead of us. But for those of us who are gathered, Christ himself is present, and prayer is heard.

- The Rt. Rev’d John Bauerschmidt, Bishop of Tennessee

Back to Bishop's Forum