Today I get to talk out of both sides of my mouth at the same time, with a positive reflection as well as a negative reflection. I will delineate them so that you know which one is which.

POSITIVE: At the core of the Hebrew faith throughout classical and contemporary Judaism, and foundational to all aspects of Christian faith is community. There is very little about anything and everything Judeo-Christian that is individual, personal, and private. WE always supersedes ME. What individuals think, feel, and believe is less relevant than the communal understanding and impact of our faith. For Wesleyan Christians, scripture is the guidebook for God’s people/God’s children and it leans much heavier on how we treat each other than what any one of us might believe. WE are defined by shared tradition, shared experience, shared reason. At least, this is how it was intended to be. Modern, Western, U.S. of A. believers have exerted incredible creativity to make faith all about the individual and the relationship a person forges with their buddy Jesus. That’s okay, I guess, as long as you ignore the Bible, God’s will, and an accurate understanding of church.

But what an opportunity! Think about it for a moment. Were Christians in the U.S. able to remember that our faith isn’t about me, me me, but about God, God’s desires, God’s vision, and God’s plan, we could change the world – and for the better. Were I to remember that our faith is only as valid and valuable as the way I treat, include, and engage the most vulnerable among us, I would be able to truly take my place in the body of Christ. And a body is not a random mess of disconnected parts; a body is essentially and irreducibly interrelationship. The only validation of any “I” in the Christian faith is made through our engagement in the “US.” Our faith is not measured by how much we love God, but by how much we actively show that love by loving family, friends, neighbors, strangers, immigrants, refugees, the sick and differently abled, the prisoner, the non-believer, the enemy, as well as the hungry, thirsty, unhoused, unstable, and unlovable in our world. When the church (as an institution) reflects on what our FOCUS should be, it should include the global, universal, essential, and eternal US. The church has no FOCUS without US (cute, right?).

I have an ambivalent relationship with St. Augustine (we hardly see one another anymore) but one of his most brilliant framings was to define sacrament as “the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.” O.M.G.! This should actually inspire us to ask, “were I to make my life a sacrament, how would this change my thinking and behaving?” Whether you are a devout Catholic with seven, or a sleek and slimmed down Protestant with only two, there is one aspect of sacrament that cannot be denied: all sacraments are relational. We don’t baptize ourselves, celebrate the Lord’s Supper alone (come on, the very name communion implies more than one), marry ourselves, confess, ordain ourselves, confirm ourselves, and to anoint or reconcile there has to be someone to do it with!

So, yes, there is an individual and personal aspect to the Christian (and Jewish) faith, but it is the learning, understanding, development, and application of relational engagement with OTHERS! Our FOCUS IS US.

NEGATIVE: (Note: The US of authentic Christian faith is different from the U.S. of Christian Nationalism in all its various forms). But, herein lies the trap. We take the capital, all-inclusive US and turn it into the tribal, provincial, inbred

us

See the problem? Too often we of the Christian faith spend more time trying to figure out how to keep the wrong people out instead of making space for everyone God loves. We take the “God so loved the world” frame and try to reduce, restrict, constrain, and convolute it so that it only applies to the select few. Shame. On. Us. Jesus wept.

The US in FOCUS should never be minimized to our satisfaction and contentment. The moment that happens we are no longer included in God’s US, but we end up trapped in our own

us

and this is not the place we want to be, God wants us to be, or our faith tradition intends us to be. An inward FOCUS is simply FOC, because God’s US is absent. And the FOC of church without US simply means For Our Comfort, not Followers Of Christ.

Our ravaged, suffering, and divisive world needs more love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. It cries out for more justice, mercy, and humility. It longs for healing, hope, and security. Those of us calling ourselves Christian need to wake up to the fact that God has provided us with everything we need to make these longings a reality. God has given us US. Isn’t it time we acted like the US God intends and bring our faith and life more fully into FOCUS?