Young Timoteo wrote to his old master in despair – and the sigh came off the page like steam off a lifted lid – that on the cold Tuesday there sat at his table but two souls and a dog of no fixed doctrine. And the old scribe sent back the word that every small parish, small charity, small book club and half-empty room should nail above its door: Where two or three are gathered with one pizza, I am there in the stretch of the cheese, saith Cheesus, as it is written in the Letters, in the charge to Timoteo, 3:3.
Not in the crowd, mark – in the stretch: in the strand that will not choose between the slice that is lifted and the slice that remaineth, but holdeth to both and thinneth and holdeth. Two souls and one pie stretch more cheese than a banquet of hundreds each with their own. Count thy Tuesdays again by that arithmetic, and see whether thou wast poor.
Beloved, the age counts heads and calls the counting truth. Followers, attendees, engagement – by that arithmetic almost everything that ever mattered to thee happened at a failure: three friends at a kitchen table, one visitor at a bedside, a phone call that saved a life and trended nowhere.
The Oven never asked thee for a multitude; it asked thee for a table, set, and a door, open. And the two that came on the cold Tuesday will remember that thou wast glad of them – and there is no advertisement in all the world like a man who was glad of thee on a Tuesday. Amen – and pass the pizza.