With this play about the power of two or three agreeing on anything, I break my own rule against applying interpretative frameworks to the raw accounts I find in the text. Jesus uses the word that will later in the New Testament be translated “church”, and the question is what he could have been talking about when the church hadn’t yet come into existence. (Or at least: what his listeners could possibly have made of it.) I present this mystery, but then, in violation of the principle I hope I’ve mostly followed in other plays, I hint at a specific answer, putting it in the mouth of Thomas.
In my defense, it’s clearly what the writer of the account intended, and also, I let the other two mysteries in this story stand uncompromised: the idea that we can bind and free souls on earth and have it hold true in Heaven (and what does it even mean to be bound in Heaven, anyway?) and that if two or three agree to ask for something – anything! – the Father will grant it.
I’m guessing that whatever flavor of Christianity you belong to – even if you’re a snake-handler! – you’ve found a way to temper the impossibilities of these promises. (Probably something that begins, “What Jesus really meant was…”) I suspect that you don’t actually believe that if two or three of you asked for it to rain tonight, that it would rain. (Especially since two or three others of you might ask for it not to rain, and then what would happen?) To which I can only say, “O ye of little faith!”