"Youse Guys"

Hey everyone, my apologies for not posting a Preparing for Worship blog last Friday. IT'S NOT MY FAULT THIS TIME! The Blogger website was experiencing technical difficulties and I could not post any new material!

I think we had a great weekend together remembering Christ's death and resurrection together; and I think God was honored by the time we spent reflecting on the cross, and what it means to have new life in Christ.

I wanted to share a quote from a book I'm reading that reveals an interesting perspective on the plurality of the local church; meaning that we are not just a bunch of individuals, but together we are one collective body...

This quote is from a book called "Why Church Matters: Worship, Ministry, and Mission in Practice" by Jonathan R. Wilson. He's talking about the corporate witness of the church community to the community in which it exists:

"I begin with the importance of community not because it is the first or most important part of the commission that Jesus gave, though both may be argued. Rather I begin with community because this aspect is the most neglected and least recognized. When Jesus commissions his disciples, he commissions them as a whole, not as individuals...

This plurality of commissioning and indeed of the new Testament is obscured for us today by the limitations of contemporary English. In the English that we use today, we have no clear second person plural. "You" refers both to a singular "you" and a plural "you." Now, having grown up in the southern United States, I am quite familiar with the possibilities of "y'all." And I've also heard "youse" and "youse guys." But none of those colloquialisms will ever be sufficiently recognized to help us recover the you-plural...

This limitation is extremely unfortunate, because most of the New Testament passages that are addressed to "you" are plural in the original Greek...

[The King James Bible uses the word "ye" for the plural "you"]

Consider the following verses:

'But seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these things shall be added...' (Matt. 6:33)

'Go ye therefore, and teach all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.' (Matt. 28:19)

'And ye are witnesses of these things.' (Luke 24:48)

'But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you, and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.' (Acts 1:8)

These promises and commands of Jesus are given to "you plural" -the community that is the people of God...

...the very nature of the gospel requires community for witness by living out the practices and language of the gospel. Reconciliation, forgiveness, restoration, praise, thanksgiving, and so much more have their beginnings in God's gracious act in Jesus Christ. But as human beings are called into Christ, none of these actions can be contained in a relationship merely between God and the individual. In every part of the Old Testament and New Testament, the call of any individual is to and for the community."

So what do you ("youse guys") think?