Our

Maybe it is the high school English teacher in me: when I see a pronoun, I need to know the antecedent--what is the thing the pronoun refers to? In this case, who is the group our refers to? Or, as Pogo Possum might say, "Who is us?"

This group, this we, must include at least one person for certain--the speaker. That is, whenever anyone says our, us, or we, he or she is including himself/herself in the group. The speaker of this line is, of course, Jesus Christ. This collective pronoun, then, at least includes Jesus. Moreover, this group also includes anyone who follows Christ, for the admonition from Christ is that this is how his followers are supposed to pray. So, anyone who says the prayer, anyone who follows the directions of Christ, is part of the us.

The way I see it, this information has two implications: first, we are in a group which includes Jesus Christ, and, second, anyone can be in that group. Both of these are staggering realizations which suggest some pretty important ramifications.

The first idea, that we who say the prayer are in a group with Jesus Christ, is a pretty overwhelming concept, especially for someone like me. Groucho Marx said that he did not want to belong to any group that would have him as a member. I think that a lot of us probably share something of this outlook--and the idea that we, as individuals, can be considered a part of a group that counts as one of its members Jesus Christ might seem too frightening. In our culture, we stress the importance of equality, but we do not always understand equality. Being in a group with someone does not automatically mean that we are identical to that person--or even that we are on the same level. It means we have something in common with that person. We may belong to the same political party as the President of the United States, but that does not make us president; it means that we share a set of beliefs, more or less. In the same way, being included in a group with Jesus does not make us perfect; it merely means that we profess the same beliefs.

This us, then, is open: it is whoever wishes to be a part of it. There is no lottery, there is no engraved invitation, there is no exclusive offer; anyone can join. Again, our society pushes us to have a conflicting set of responses to this kind of open invitation: on the one hand, we expect things to be open to everyone and to have no restrictions; on the other hand, we want to feel special and we want to think that somehow we have won. The miracle of God's mercy and grace and love is that these two seemingly exclusive ideas are bound up as one: we each have our own individual invitation to join the club, we each have been chosen out of all the possible candidates for this honor, and we are all in this together, each sought out one by one.

We, then, by our choice can enter into a group that counts among its members Jesus Christ. We then have to think about the import of that membership. Not only are we in the group with Christ, we are in the group with every other person who professes belief in Christ. This gets at the heart of the second implication: anyone can be in this us. Once we are past the shock of being included with Jesus, can we then accept that all those people around us are also in the group? Jesus accepted all those around him: tax collecters, prostitutes, invalids, and even the Pharisees (if they had wanted to be in). Can we be that accepting? Can we embrace the others in the group? How can we not?

If we are truly a part of this group--and not apart from this group--then we have decided to share the beliefs of the group, beliefs embodied by Christ. We cannot be in the group if we don't buy into what the group is about. We cannot be in the group if we pick and choose the ideas we want, discarding or ignoring the ideas that we just aren't comfortable with. Central to these beliefs is the idea that we are all in this together. Love your neighbor. It may have come in second in the commandments race, but that means it still made it onto the platform--and besides, all of the commandments, all of the beliefs of the group, are important. It's just that, for whatever reasons, many of us have a hard time with this idea of accepting all the others in the group.

In The Ragamuffin Gospel, Brennan Manning points out over and over that we are all ragamuffins, we are all flawed. God loves us anyway. God embraces us just as we embrace our own children--and just as we usually don't embrace ourselves. Maybe it is because we have so much trouble accepting ourselves that we have so much trouble accepting others. No matter. We have to open ourselves to the idea that everyone who accepts Christ is in our group, is part of the our. Because if Christ can let us in. . . .