‘Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst.’ (Matthew 18:20)

Janet Scott reads from the gospel of Matthew

Detail from photo (by John Hall) of a print of ‘The Presence in the Midst’ at Beccles Meeting House. | Photo: John Hall / flickr CC.

Matthew’s gospel sets out to show how the risen Christ is present in and with the church (though the word ekklesia is better translated as ‘assembly’, or indeed ‘Meeting’). We see this at the beginning and end of the gospel. In 1:23 Matthew quotes from Isaiah, ‘they shall call his name Emmanuel’ which is translated ‘God with us’. And the final verse, 28:20, says, ‘and see, I am with you all the days until the fulfilment of the age’.

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