Pentecost 17 A A

Where two or three are gathered truly I am among them. This is a great saying. we use it often to comfort ourselves when we have only a few present for something, low attendance, few people at a meeting, not many people at a funeral. And in those cases it is comforting but have you ever wondered about the phrase?

I mean it is great if God is present when we gather together but what about when we are alone? Aren't we assured that God is always with us? Maybe especially when we feel the most alone, the most without help or hope? So what's with the gathering of two or more?

I have a story to start with that might help us figure that out. It is about a popular topic this week, school! Ah...the beginning of the school year...filled with...tension! I know not everyone here has school aged children in their homes, I certainly don't but you didn't need to this week in order to pick up on the tension in the air. I could actually hear it out my window, now keep in mind that the area around the parsonage is a popular pathway for many school kids of all ages. Well as the day that school started got closer the noise outside my window got more and more interesting. All summer long we could hear kids at all hours but now there was a lot more little bickering.

Kids fighting over skateboards, quarters, basketballs, dirty looks, you name it. But the funny thing about these bickering kids is that for the most part they were self-regulating. The fights never got very far. Most times it was because a third or fourth party would step in. not another parent, not an authority figure per se but another kid, a peer. This other kid would walk up and be a mediator or a distraction, in some cases a tie breaker. What really happened is that the extra kid coming out to play reminded the first two what they were doing there in the first place. They were playing, together, because they were friends because they love and enjoy one another.

It worked in positive ways too, sometimes two kids would just be bored wandering around outside clearly with no real plan but hoping to soak up the rest of summer, when a couple more kids would wander up and suddenly they would have enough for a game or an adventure of some sort. Just the presence of the other kids would bring them back to themselves and their kid nature, ready to have fun and be creative.

This third kid idea is straight from the bible, at least in a sense. Our text today is, strictly speaking, all about conflict, discipline and forgiveness. But on a deeper level it is about the idea of community. It starts out by telling us how to handle conflict and make peace within our communities. If we have a conflict with someone it says that we should name that conflict, tell the person. But if we continue to have trouble we should bring one or two witnesses with us and to help sort it out. The third kid idea. Bring someone in to remind everyone of the bigger picture and see what happens. In this case the bigger picture is God and the Christian community.

And then a little later we are reminded that this is because: "Where two or three are gathered truly [God] is among them.

Which could mean of course that God is present when there are more of us than one. It could mean that we have special power to punish or forgive when we are in bigger groups, that would be related to the text. But it isn't just letting us know that it is okay to have two or three gathered together but indeed we need to be gathered and have fellowship with each other. Our community needs it. We need each other! Which is certainly why we worship and spend time together, why we are taking special time to eat and play together after this service.

But today as we people from two congregations across Schodack worship together for the first regular worship service in nearly a year I think of how we need each other as congregations, like those kids outside this week.

We remind each other of our very nature. We remind each other what it is to be church. I missed the very early relationship between you two congregations but I suspect that it was a bit awkward. No one knew just where to be or what to say. Then names started to be remembered. A pastor was called. Then came time to actually work together.

An activity for the kids here, a visit to one another's place for a fund raiser there. And now we have gotten to a point where we revitalize one another. We feed each other.

A great example of that is operation Christmas Child, something that St. Stephen's does very well. The kids from Trinity were invited last year and it was a wonderful event, a record number of boxes were packed to be sent away. Kids got to see what it means to give and to share and they were excited about it, people talked about it for weeks. Somehow pictures of it made it into the paper twice! And there must have been some special blessing there too because for the first time ever children who received the boxes responded as you heard earlier. Where two congregations are gathered together God is truly present.

So now we have a new tradition, something that we will do together with each side collecting items and money and then pooling their resources to share in fellowship and do a great thing for children half way around the world.

And St. Stephen's has borrowed from Trinity too, Trinity has a great system for worship planning. Where a group of five or six musically minded people and one pastor get together and look over the upcoming season. Together we all choose hymns, share input, sing little bars, get someone to play a piece on the piano once in a while in order to convince the crowd of a choice. It is a great system, fun, orderly sometimes and a little chaotic at others but it gets the job done and with fellowship. Recently St. Stephen's has participated in this. Leslie, jumped right into the fellowship and chaos and was welcomed warmly. Now because of that both places have just ever so slightly more diverse worship music and they share it! So sometimes that hymn that makes you tear up just a little might have been chosen by a brother or sister at the opposite congregation. And on most mornings though our worship is separate we are singing the same songs in the same spirit. What a lovely way that we can participate together in worship at both places!

These are not huge things, they are little baby steps but they are also just examples. I hear two things most commonly when these two congregations talk about each other. Number one is "how is the other congregation doing, we should get together more" and the other is "Hey! Why is St. Stephen's doing that and we aren't or why is Trinity doing that and we aren't! We want to do that too!" And so new ministries are born and the love of God is shared in new ways!

We need each other, not for financial reasons, not for support, not in order to share a pastor but because Jesus tells us that where two or more are gathered in his name there God is truly present. We make God present for one another, like that third kid wandering out on to the Street to remind the others how to play like kids. Trinity reminds St. Stephen's of it's very nature as a part of the church of Christ and St. Stephen's reminds Trinity of the gift of God's love that it was created to share.

Just as we need each other, as our Sunday Schools need their students and teachers and parents, as our congregations need our singers and musicians, and vice versa, as our buildings need our property people. As our families need one another. We congregations and people alike need each other. And because we have each other and are gathered together, Christ is truly present with us in new, different and exciting ways all of the time. This is good news, thanks be to God!