Matthew 18:15-20

   If you’ve been around churches even a little bit, you’re probably familiar with verse 20 of this passage, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”  It’s usually trotted out when attendance at a church event is sparse.  You can almost guarantee someone will say, “There aren’t many of us here, but ‘Where two or three are gathered …” Usually, they don’t even need to finish the verse.  People know the rest.

   This is a fine way to use this verse, but there’s more to this passage.  The verses leading up to verse 20, including the formula for handling church disputes, are more challenging.  Confrontation doesn’t come naturally to many church folks, including me.  It’s easier to think something controversial is none of our business, or that we should bear everything in silence and turn the other cheek; we should just focus on God’s love and move on, and if you have to talk about it, then talk with folks who already agree with you, maybe over in the parking lot.

   When I read the passage carefully, what emerges is Matthew’s deep concern for community – honest-to-goodness, authentic Christian community.  Community is one of those feel-good words we tend to idealize, but community is made up of people, and people can be difficult, challenging, selfish, and unreliable.  They can have startlingly different perspectives and experiences. Community is messy. Wherever two or three human beings gather, Christ may indeed be among them but there’s also the potential for disagreement, hurt feelings, misunderstanding, or miscommunication.

   Authentic community takes work.  That is the point of this passage.  Authentic community takes commitment, honesty, humility, cooperation, compromise, collaboration and even courage: sometimes the courage to tell someone you’ve been hurt, sometimes to hear that you’ve hurt someone else and then, the courage to apologize.  It take the courage to listen as well as to speak up. In my congregations and in my work, I’d rather someone tell me to my face that they disagree with me, that something I did bothered or hurt them, than that they keep it to themself or worse yet, talk behind my back.  I don’t pretend to be perfect, but I can’t address a hurt or a concern if I don’t know about it.

   Another crucial piece of the work of authentic community is deceptively simple but vital: showing up.  If you go to church, you do not go to church just for yourself.  You go to church for each other.  If this is a surprise to you, you’re not alone.  We tend to think we go to church for our own personal reasons, because we get something out of it, because it’s where we reconnect with God, because it’s a good start to the week.  There’s nothing wrong with these reasons, and everyone else at church needs you.  The other families need your child so their children feel more at home.  The adults need the hope that your presence, and only your presence, conveys.  There are many reasons folks can’t make it to church on a given Sunday, and I’m grateful that COVID taught us how to include people in worship when they really cannot be in the sanctuary.  Still, something is lost when we aren’t in the same room together. Maybe it’s that the Body of Christ really is about human bodies. 

   Every morning when I tune into the news on my car radio, I’m tempted to quote humorist Dorothy Parker: “What fresh hell can this be?”  The challenges we face in the culture, the climate, the economy, and world geo-politics are difficult to deal with and even to think about.  That’s why we need community.  Community is where we contribute just by showing up, and by showing care for the others who show up.  Community is where we can find our voice.  Community is where we can feel supported, build resilience that helps us adapt to changes, recover from setbacks, and find the strength and hope to move toward the future to which we trust God is calling us because Jesus has us pointed the way. 

   Many churches will celebrate something they might call “Homecoming Sunday,” “Kick-off Sunday,” or “Back-to-Church Sunday” in early September.  It’s a good time to ask, “Just what kind of community do we want to be?”  There are plenty of other communities: social-media communities, work- and school-centered communities, fitness groups, and political action groups just to name a few.  How is a worshiping community different from those other communities?  How should it be different? Maybe it’s a good to ask: Do we want a community that’s largely social, like a club, which is certainly safe?  Or something more meaningful, where people are more vulnerable, which is riskier and harder?  Do we want a place that can encourage us but also hold us accountable?  Do we need everyone to agree about everything?  Are we looking for a place where we can be honest about our hopes and dreams, doubts, fears, and anxieties?  Do we want somewhere we can just blend in or are we looking for a place we can make a difference?  And what does it take from each person in the community to help create the community for which we long?

    There’s a story about an odd, old woman who lives on the outskirts of town.  Some children decide to trick her.  A boy holds a small bird behind his back where the old woman can’t see it.  The children ask her if the bird is alive or dead.  The trick is that if she says it’s alive, the boy will crush the bird, and show her she’s wrong.  If she says it’s dead, he’ll let it fly off – and again, she’ll be wrong.  The woman is silent for a long time.  Finally, she whispers, “I don’t know whether the bird you are holding is dead or alive, but what I do know is that it is in your hands.  It is in your hands.”

   Authentic Christian community is work.  And, my friends, it is in our hands. 

© Joanne Whitt 2026 all rights reserved.