by Dr. Lani Wilson

Good day, prayer and fasting faithful. We are mid-way through the year already. Mercy. We have no choice but to push forward and believe and trust that God will continue to work with us as we hold up His church to the Light and vigorously seek peace for Her world. It is not a small thing.

We have been asked to consider the word they. Innocuous enough, isn’t it? It’s used as a singular pronoun in spite of the fact that it is supposed to refer to at least two people because in English it is actually a pronoun in the third person plural (Apple online dictionary), a pronoun for anyone, anything. The dictionary also mentioned the “counterparts” to they: Themselves, their, and them. So what’s so important about they?

Strange thing happened when I typed in they to search for how it was used in the Bible in lumina.bible.org: Nothing came up. Zip. Zero. Goose egg. In these cases the site always asks if you might have meant another word and it suggested they’d. When I click on they’d, I got eight (8) New Testament (NT) uses and a total from both the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh and NT of just 36. In actuality, it just presented verses that used the word but not in the contraction form; they’d became they had, for example. Apparently, our English translation of the Bible (at least this particular website) won’t recognize they unless it is attached to a verb. Huh.

The sheepherders returned and let loose, glorifying and praising God for everything they had heard and seen. It turned out exactly the way they’d been told!
Luke 2:20 (TMB)

"Doom, Chorazin! Doom, Bethsaida! If Tyre and Sidon had been given half the chances given you, they’d have been on their knees long ago, repenting and crying for mercy.
Luke 10:13 (TMB)

The first verse from Luke recounts the shepherds’ reactions who, after being visited by angels, saw Jesus as a newborn. The second verse is Jesus famously condemning the “evangelical triangle” of Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, all Jewish cities who never responded to Jesus’ miracles during His public ministry. Capernaum didn’t escape Jesus’ pronouncement.

And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted up to heaven? No! You will be thrown down to the depths! Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever refuses to accept you refuses to accept me. And whoever refuses to accept me refuses to accept the One who sent me.
Luke 10:15-16 (New Century Version)

These three towns - they – were condemned or “cursed” as some sources say because they didn’t respond to Jesus’ attempts to bring the stray Hebrews back into the covenant with their God.

Although the early church began with great purity of doctrine, it was not long until pagan ideas even crept into Christianity. We see Jude writing to early Christians with this exhortation: “I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints” (Jude 1:3). In a very few centuries the mother goddess, so prevalent in paganism, was introduced into the church through Mariolatry. Her images continue everywhere in Catholicism today. Even our great Christian celebrations such as Easter can be traced directly to the pagan worship of the mother Goddess Ishtar.
Jim Gerrish, 2004, wordofgodtoday.com

According to Mark, Jesus sent out His twelve disciples to retrieve the “lost sheep of Israel” and these three towns were prominent in His ministry to the Jews.

These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
Mark 10:5-6 (NRSV)

Mr. Gerrish’s perspective in wordofgodtoday.com is reflective of American Evangelicals, regardless of denomination or race. In this same article on Chorazin cited above, he makes it very clear who they are, and he leaves no doubt to whom he is speaking in his apologia.

In our day neo-pagan ideas of Humanism, New Age, and eastern influences are often evidenced in our assemblies. Christian books and teachings often reinforce these strange concepts. We need a warning about all this lest we end up in a situation similar to that of Chorazin. When we take the name of God; call ourselves Christians and present ourselves to the worls as God’s covenant people, we are placing ourselves in a peculiar and dangerous position. If we fail to be true to God and his word he will surely judge us and our judgment will exceed that of pagans who know no better. In Amos 3:2, the prophet reprimands Israel in stern words that certainly apply to believers today: “You only have I chosen of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your sins.”
Ibid.

As free Baptists, we are taught to know and adhere to the principles of our faith, especially the two ordinances of baptism (immersion) and communion. Just as Christian doctrine developed over the First Millennium after Jesus’ resurrection, so did all of the peculiarities grow within the burgeoning body of Christ in the Second: The Trinity, sanctification, salvation, justification, excommunication, to name a few. All of these complexities aside, what does the Third Millennium hold for His church and does anybody really know?

Perhaps if we consider they a reflexive pronoun rather than just simply a pronoun, we can swim in deeper waters with The Christ.

A reflexive pronoun is a type of pronoun that is preceded by the adverb, adjective, pronoun, or noun to which it refers, so long as that antecedent is located with the same clause. In English grammar, a reflexive pronoun indicates that the person who is realizing the action of the verb is also the recipient of the action.
www.gingersoftware.com/content/grammar-rules/reflexive-pronouns/

In other words, a pronoun is reflexive only if whomever or whatever is administering the action is also the object of that same action. Of course, we are taught by Jesus that we should hold ourselves accountable to God first before we look elsewhere.

Do you have the nerve to say, “Let me wash your face for you,’ when your own face is distorted by contempt? It’s this I-know-better-than-you mentality again, playing a holier-than-thou part instead of just living your own part. Wipe that ugly sneer off your own face and you might be fit to offer a washcloth to your neighbor.
Luke 6:42 (TMB)

Whew. The Message translation is pretty straightforward, isn’t it? So, even in Jesus’ day, there were those who got off track, who were using judgment of others rather than justice for others to fend for themselves, their family, their tribe. Luke 6:42 seems to be obvious in its implication, right? We shouldn’t be concerned with others’ issues when our own loom so obviously, at least to Jesus. We assume that He must have been talking about the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Except the Golden Rule didn’t begin with Jesus. Oops.

Here is a simple, rule-of-thumb guide for behavior: Ask yourself what you want people to do for you, then grab the initiative and do it for them. Add up God’s Law and Prophets and this is what you get.
Mathew 7:12 (TMB)

Treat other people exactly as you would like to be treated by them—this is the essence of all true religion.
Mathew 7:12 (PHILLIPS)
J.B. Phillips’ New Testament

Shocking? Not really. Heretical? I hope not. All religion is an attempt to explain the unexplainable and find reason and safety in an unreasonable, unsafe world. But Pastor E has shared that we “believe to understand, not understand to believe.” There is no formula to faith, to belief; we can’t approach God by describing, measuring, quantifying Her. We have to believe that “God is” and there begins our journey of understanding, as best our limited human minds can tolerate and sustain.

So, what of this reflexive they? Could it be that Jesus told His disciples to go to these Jewish communities, knowing full well that they would be rejected? What if Jesus wanted the disciples to experience rejection by their own people for a deeper purpose? When Jesus condemned these cities, was it permanent or was there a potential for forgiveness and deliverance? And besides the obvious, what might be the difference between Christianity and other religions? We have to remember that Jesus and His earliest followers were absolutely not Christians and were considered a Jewish cult by both the Romans and the Jews.

A deep spiritual longing has emerged over the past twenty-five years that can take great advantage of A New New Testament. Innumerable people are searching for alternative spiritual paths while still holding on to traditions of the past. Generations that have come of age in the past two decades want to integrate the traditional and the new. They seek something rounded in the familiar that they can nonetheless reinvent to call their own.
A New New Testament, 2013
Hal Taussig, Preface pg. xviii

Christianity evolved. Is it possible that Christianity is still evolving? It does not necessarily mean that we are going to water down our beliefs, our praxis to accommodate the world. What it might mean is a fresh look at what we do believe and asking God, The Master, The Nazarene, the Unblemished One to help us dig deeper. What if that is all that these non-denominational, young people are looking for? What if The Christ is trying to talk to us, get our attention, and we’re so busy defining our doctrine, defending ourselves against everything, everyone (even within our own churches), we miss the evolution of His message? They becomes anyone who doesn’t walk in lockstep with our expression of how we “do god” (small g intended). What if what makes Christianity real and alive 2000 plus years later is that Jesus Himself is the Reflexive Pronoun that other beliefs don’t have and requires us to be that to ourselves and others?

Remember that a reflexive pronoun is a word that is both the actor and the acted upon, regardless of the nature of that action. What other belief system has a god that is both the subject of Her own power as well as the Source of that power? What other faith tradition has a god Who took the place of the sacrifice by passing judgment and rebirthing Himself all in same action? What other god was simultaneously they and solely Herself in the action of dying and re-living in the same Body? As Christian believers is it possible to talk about Jesus the Christ without acting upon His talk, His words, His commands? Are we simply following a spiritual tradition of a group of ancient Mesopotamian nomads that was enhanced a couple millennia ago or is there something truly different about this reflexive God Who became both Himself and us at the same time? If the latter is true, what does this mean in terms of Pastor E’s “believe to understand, not understand to believe” in the 21st Century African-American church? And are we even ready to ask ourselves that question? Are we not reflexive enough in our dealings with each other, not seeing God in others and therefore in ourselves but simply defining who they are and who we are not?

LORD Jesus, these are weighty questions that make us wonder if we “got it right” the first time around? Were we supposed to “get it right” once and for all or is loving You and worshiping You a reflexive act of faith for ourselves and others despite our fears? Do we even know how to ask You the question? And will you continue to put up with our impatience about our own behavior, as if You would choose to do anything else? Our continued existence, our breath even as we read these words, is proof that you cannot deny Yourself. You promised to be with us, to love us – especially when we mess up – and then forgive and welcome us back from our own reflexive exile. Help us reach for You and grab hold as we follow Your Searchlight into the lives of Your people, especially the young. And thank you for not leaving us at the corner of our own despair but lifting us up out of the congestion and giving us life, Pneuma, in Your Son, the Christ.

Breathe on me, Breath of God,
fill me with life anew,
that I may love the way you love,
and do what you would do.

Breathe on me, Breath of God,
until my heart is pure,
until my will is one with yours,
to do and to endure.

Breathe on me, Breath of God,
so shall I never die,
but live with you the perfect life
for all eternity.
Edwin Hatch, D.D.
1835-1889

Amen.