Beloved in Christ,
St. John Chrysostom tells us that "Churches came into being, not so that we who come together should be divided, but so that we who are divided should be united."
The Church is the gathering of God's holy people. It is the place where a scattered people come out from their individual homes, their individual lives, and gather together in order to express their unity in love. When the early Christians gathered together liturgically as the Church, they referred to these gatherings as 'love-feasts'. They understood that they were gathering together not simply as a social club, not simply for fellowship, but so that they could be transformed by Christ into his one body.
Without the presence of this unity in love, the gathering of God's holy people cannot express the truth of the Church. St. Paul tells us in today's Epistle reading, "if any one has no love for the Lord, let him be anathema," (1 Cor. 16:22). To be "anathema" means to be removed from the Church. The absence of love, then, is not compatible with the nature of the Church, which is always "without spot or wrinkle," (Eph. 5:27).
When we as the Church gather in love, we discover that Christ presents himself to us in our gathering. St. Paul today uses a unique Aramaic phrase to describe Jesus' presence with us: "maranatha," "the Lord has come," (1 Cor. 16:22). This phrase "maranatha" expresses both our yearning for Jesus' presence among us and our assurance that Jesus has answered our yearning, that "God is with us," (Matt. 1:23). As long as we persist in our isolation, we find the absence of God, but in the gathering of the people of God we find that "Christ is in our midst," and that "he is and ever shall be."
The Church is the place where all humanity is brought together, and at our gathering place we find that "God is with us," that "the Lord has come." When we discover the presence of the Son of God with us, let us not reject him like the unrighteous tenants in today's Gospel reading. These men killed the son of the master when he came to visit them. We, on the other hand, when we encounter the Lord in our gathering, when we encounter the Lord in our neighbor, when we encounter the Lord in the Chalice, are called to embrace him and to cry out with St. Paul and St. John Chrysostom: "Maranatha, I saw the Lord; behold, the Lord has come, behold where he is!"
In Christ,
Fr. Jeremy