Something is off in today’s Scripture readings. There are grammatical inconsistencies that would have displeased my high school English teachers. Biblical scholars have puzzled over them. These Scriptural oddities grabbed my attention. Did they grab yours? They are quirky texts that need a little help, perhaps. Let’s rephrase them for our modern ears, a revision we might call the Modern Individual Version (or MIV, for short). The idiosyncrasies of these texts should now sound more pleasing to our individualistic ears. Have a listen.
Let’s start with the reading from the Acts of the Apostles. “A vision appeared to Paul in the night: a man of Macedonia was standing beseeching him and saying, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.’ And when he had seen the vision, immediately he sought to go on into Macedonia, concluding that God had called him to preach the gospel to them. Setting sail therefore from Troas, he made a direct voyage to Samothrace, and the following day to Neapolis, and from there to Philippi.” Ah, that’s much better. We corrected that strange shift from the third-person voice to the first-person voice.
Now, let’s jump ahead to the baptism of Lydia. In our Modern Individual Version of the Bible, we might rewrite the end of the story: “And when she was baptized, she went on her way rejoicing.” That’s a bold move because we rewrote the end of the story, but after all, we needed to eliminate that ambiguous “us” pronoun.
Next up: John’s Gospel. “Jesus said to Judas (not Iscariot), “If a man loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and I will come to him and make my home with him. He who does not love me does not keep my words; and the word which you hear is mine.” Once again, we changed that strange “we” to the first-person singular. Don’t you feel so much better?
In this MIV translation of the Bible, an initial reading would probably not seem unusual to someone unfamiliar with the original texts. Our hypothetical edits would be consonant with the headstrong, independent strain of Western culture. An odd shift from the third-person singular to the first-person plural in the account of Paul’s travels to Macedonia would placate our sense of grammatical unrest. And likewise, Jesus’s words about inhabiting a place in the faithful believer’s heart who keeps his words might not seem odd or heretical to the superficial reader of John. We managed to get rid of that vexing ambiguous we that appears out of nowhere.
But all these changes in the Modern Individual Version of the Bible are fundamentally wrong, not only because we have no business altering this sacred text but because our presumptuous edits make no theological sense. They’re wrong because they destroy the essence of the Gospel.
Changing a we to an I might not seem like such a big deal to us. We’ve become rather good at inverting a theologically-proper order of things, and this permeates even our spirituality. God’s salvation of the entire world has become a matter of personal concern, a matter of my salvation and you can just fend for yourself, thank you very much. Our reading of Scripture has become my own individual quest to crack a perceived moral code of ethics in its pages. The Church’s shared ministry has morphed into one person’s job or someone else’s job. Our collective responsibility to be a visible witness of Christ’s love has been glibly foisted onto specific individuals while the rest of us sit by and watch.
But Paul’s mission to Macedonia is potentially harmful when we subtly shift that pesky “we” pronoun to “he” in our facetious translation. This mission is not even Paul’s mission. It’s God’s mission, and it’s a shared mission. Paul doesn’t decide on his own to go to Macedonia; he’s called by God in a vision. Nor does Paul undertake the mission alone. And after Lydia, and her entire household, mind you, are baptized, she doesn’t suddenly return home. That was the silly ending of our experimental translation. Lydia’s induction into a larger family of God—the Church—becomes the impetus to extend generous hospitality to Paul and his companions. She doesn’t merely invite them into her home. She invites them to stay, to abide with her household. She now has some responsibility for them because they have assumed responsibility for her.
And this should bring us back to that reading from John’s Gospel. To anyone who understands John’s theology, it’s unthinkable that the Son of God would claim his words simply as his own. It’s unthinkable that Jesus’s mission wouldn’t be a loving response to the Father’s sending of him into the world in love. It’s unthinkable that anyone who keeps Jesus’s words wouldn’t be swept up into God’s love and that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit wouldn’t come and make their home within that person.
It should be equally unthinkable to us to conceive of the Christian life as mine or yours singular. It should never cross our minds that we could keep Jesus’s words on our own without gathering together on the Lord’s Day in this paschal celebration of his victory of life over death. It should seem a heresy to imagine that ministry can happen effectively with only a few people giving their time while everyone else watches and reaps the benefits. And it should seem blasphemous to gather here for the breaking of bread and the prayers and not go forth from this place to invite others into the household of faith, where they can come and abide with us, basking in the infinite love of God. It should seem inconceivable that their wellbeing wouldn’t be bound up with ours and vice versa.
Something has happened among us to change the royal we of the Gospel into a self-centered I. We will probably never be able to trace its exact origins, but it has subtly insinuated its way into our lives like a serpent who has escaped from the garden. The power of sin has used fear to narrow our collective we into a fearful I. And it explains everything.
But Lydia’s fear is a holy fear of God, and it leads her, as a worshiper of God, to the riverside on the sabbath day. Operating from an assumed we, where else could she be on that day of the week? How could she not be in community with others on the sabbath? Her only fear is of God, a righteous fear, a fear not of condemnation but a reverent awe of God’s majesty. Lydia is no idler, and yet she finds time for God. Not even a fear of too many commitments or of making money or of wasting time has kept her away from the riverside on that sabbath day.
And Paul, too, has no fear of changing course and heading to Macedonia. His fear, too, is only of obeying God, a holy fear, that enables him to respond to God’s guidance in creating yet more community in the early Church. Paul doesn’t even fear a prolonged stay so that Lydia’s invitation of hospitality can take hold of him.
The love between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit that spills out into the world and draws us into it drowns out all fear. This love precludes a fear that when Jesus ascends to the right hand of his Father in heaven, we will be left alone, depressed, lonely, and forsaken. This love assuages all fear of not having enough or losing our security. This love moves us from worshiping God simply to avoid hell to worshiping him out of thankful joy.
If we keep Jesus’s word, we will have no fear of giving our precious time for the sake of Gospel work or of reprioritizing our lives so that God is at the center. When love reigns, the only fear remaining is a holy fear of a God who chooses not to remain isolated in the Godhead but comes to us, whose movement towards us is always first. God’s love is a proactive love, boldly seeking our wholeness at all times and in all places. And this love summons us to be proactive, too.
There’s undoubtedly a direct correlation between our modern individualism and the struggles of the contemporary Church. But we can learn a lot from a few pronouns in a handful of Scripture passages, which remind us that if we choose love and live love, we have nothing to fear. We is still our identity in Christ. We are meant to be here, together in praise and fellowship, and our collective response to the hospitality of God is to welcome others into our true home, the heart of God, not to visit for a time, but to abide and stay there forever.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Sixth Sunday of Easter
May 25, 2025