I AM GRATEFUL that during the COVID-19 pandemic, I never caught the virus. But as I mentioned in the previous post, the months of isolation and inactivity affected me in other unhealthy ways that needed correction once the pandemic was over. Other things changed too, ushering in what still feels like a strange new world.

As an educator, I watched our campus close in the spring of 2020, with everyone forced to pivot quickly do their work online — students, staff, and faculty alike. Classrooms, lecture halls, and offices stood vacant for months. What was once a lively campus, like other public spaces where people gathered, became like a ghost town. The campus reopened in 2021, then quickly closed again when there was another surge in COVID cases. Thankfully, as of this writing, we have now been open again for a couple of years. Lord willing, we will stay that way.

But things haven’t returned to their pre-pandemic state. Many of the staff and faculty who moved away haven’t returned; they now work entirely from home, often in another state. Courses and degree programs have gone increasingly online, resulting in a drastic reduction of the number of students physically on campus. Many classrooms see little if any usage. Many offices remain empty. Faculty meetings are still conducted mostly online, even when people are physically on campus.

And sometimes, the hallways seem almost eerily quiet.

For me, being a strong introvert with a long commute, the campus closure wasn’t all bad. I didn’t wither for having to stay at home, nor did I miss the hours I used to spend on the freeway. What I didn’t realize until the campus reopened, however, was how much I missed being in the classroom, interacting with students face to face in real time. And now, on those few occasions when our department spontaneously decides to meet in person, the difference in enthusiasm and energy is palpable.

Don’t get me wrong. I am grateful for Zoom and similar technologies; what would we have done with them? I am also firmly convinced of some of the benefits and opportunities of online education. But interacting with little thumbnail videos of my students and colleagues is not the same as being in the same room together, where hugs and handshakes are possible, where we can better read each other’s body language and riff on each other’s humor.

And if you feel the same way, then imagine this: what would it be like to go back to a world without Zoom, without cell phones or phones of any kind, without email or any form of electronic communication? You interact regularly with the people who live in your community, of course, but the only contact you have with friends and family who live somewhere else is through an occasional handwritten letter. Would you wish for something more?

WE COME NOW to the end of 2 John. We’ve already seen the very last verse, in which John refers to his own community as “the children of your sister, who is chosen by God.” In the first verse, remember, John addressed the letter to “the lady chosen by God and to her children,” a metaphor for the church community and its members. Thus, John closes his letter with greetings from his church to theirs, as if from one sister to another.

But before that final greeting, John speaks hopefully about wanting to meet in person. Here are the final two verses of the letter:

I have much to write to you, but I do not want to use paper and ink. Instead, I hope to visit you and talk with you face to face, so that our joy may be complete. The children of your sister, who is chosen by God, send their greetings. (2 John 12-13)

One can imagine how much John might have to say, especially if he felt a strong sense of apostolic responsibility toward church communities that might be affected by the heretical teaching of those who left his own community. The immediate situation calls for a short letter that can be written and sent quickly, in the hopes of heading off trouble before it comes — thus, 2 John.

John, however, doesn’t want to do everything in writing. Part of the reason may be practical. Today we buy paper by the ream and pens by the dozen, but I doubt that John had such an ample supply of writing materials. But the main reason is personal. However long the commute, John wants to meet his readers face to face.

Like many of you, I’ve had the privilege of worshiping with other Christian communities beyond the congregation where I am a member. Some of these have been in other states and countries; occasionally, the worship or prayer was in a language I didn’t understand. There is a strangely transcendent joy that comes from this, in which you sense how big the family of God really is, how it stretches across distinctions of culture and place.

This, I think, may be similar to the sentiment John expresses here. He’s seen how the gospel has spread in his lifetime. If, as many believe, John wrote from Ephesus, he would have been familiar with Paul and his evangelistic work there and in neighboring cities. Note, for example, that the seven churches John names in Revelation 2 and 3 — beginning with Ephesus — were all in the same region, what we would think of today as western Turkey. But he may not have had direct relationships with all of them. And who knows how much contact he had with the believers in Judea, in the places where he had walked with Jesus? Who knows how much he may have longed to see these people and places again?

Thus, when John speaks of here “our joy” being made “complete,” this is not the joy of being reunited with long-lost friends. It’s a two-way, shared eschatological joy, a joy tinged with wonder at what God is doing to create sister churches in a gospel-believing family that stretches across time and space.

John has already had his own community disrupted by heresy. He doesn’t want to see the same happen elsewhere. And he doesn’t want to be robbed of the joy of one day being able to meet the other members of his adoptive family face to face.

Think of it: in Jesus, we have brothers and sisters we have never met, who live in places we’ve never been. We are one family under one Father. Let us pray for all our family, everywhere, and look forward to a time in which we will have the joy of meeting again — for the first time.