Y'all Means All

​Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
Easter VI
May 9, 2021
 
“The Lord be with you” should be “The Lord be with y’all.”  You see what I did there?  I took that pesky indeterminate you and made it plural as it ought to be.  I used to say that phrase is the polite Episcopal way of saying: Y’all hush.  Nowadays, I reflect that it has a deeper meaning – one of those deeper meanings that familiarity and frequency tend to obscure.  Back when we used the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, the call was the same, but the response was “And with thy spirit.”  My grandfather Taliaferro declared that the 1928 book was God’s Prayer Book and despite the change in our most recent prayer book, he just continued to respond with what he knew. 
 
When I first began to learn Biblical Greek in seminary, after we learned the alphabet, we moved on to the basics of verb tenses and all that.  Now, I know that whenever the preacher starts talking about seminary Greek class, the congregant eyes begin to glaze over.  I assure you that this is not some erudite attempt to prove some elite smartness.  I have forgotten most of the Greek I learned, so whatever I tell you comes from careful Google searching to try and remember what I may have known at one time.  Bear with me here.  I promise there is something in here for us to consider in our understanding of what Jesus is telling his disciples as recorded in John’s gospel.
 
So back to those verb tenses.  We got the singular stuff straight:  I, you, he she or it and all that.  Then to the plurals: we, you, and they.  Don’t tune out yet, it is getting more pointed here.  Our professor, who was old enough to claim that he was there when it was all written, asked us the important question: “How do you refer to others, familiarly, in the plural, like in the phrase “How are you doing?”  The southerners all said “How are y’all doing?” Folks from other places inserted you guys, yous or youns.  And then, Jimmy, from inner city Philadelphia, said “In the city of brotherly love we just say “How ya doin?  Singular, plural, who cares?”  And the response is “How you doin?”
 
The method in this romp through regional parlance served as an important lesson.  Whereas our language is a bit imprecise, and has necessitated slang additions, Greek is not.  The you in the plural has its own word, best translated as y’all.  A contraction of the words you all.  Y’all means all.  And most of the time, when Jesus says you, he really says y’all.  Y’all means all.  That same old Greek professor proclaimed that we did not have to know Greek to get to heaven, however, it might prove really helpful to know what is going on when you get there.  
 
It turns out that this particular detail is kind of important.  “The Lord be with you” is a declarative statement.  Maybe it is best translated “God is with y’all,” and the response might be the affirmative, “God is with you too.”  In saying this, we are not making some isolated or individual claim.  Remember, y’all means all, not just the good Episcopalians, not just the fervent faithful, but everyone, everywhere, always.
 
In the lesson from Acts of the Apostles, Peter has been telling Jesus’ story to some Jews, a group of Italians, and other hangers on.  This group has a little of everyone in it.  They are more folks from the edges of groups than the centers of power.  Right there, the Holy Spirit inspires their belief, and Peter baptizes the whole lot.  All of them.
 
When we read this portion of John’s gospel, where Jesus says “As the Father loves me, so I have loved you.”  That love is a verb, not a noun.  It is an action.   And that is another whole sermon that I will spare you, for now.  And even more crucial is that the “you” that Jesus says he loves are really “y’all.” And, again, y’all means all.
 
In this crazy time of pandemic and vaccination and the politicization of science, many have veered or retreated sharply toward individualism.  This is not new.  It has some claim on the particularly American ethos.  It has been rampant in other times of stress, anxiety, and challenge.  First, we take care of our own: ourselves, our families, and closest people in our orbit.  The fight or flight response we have to real or perceived threat is embedded deeply in our biology.  And whatever conflict that pits us against them, is the root of division.  It drives suspicion of whoever the other is, and helps us lump them into some amorphous blob of wrongness as opposed to our rightness. 
 
The good news and the hard news is the same.  Jesus comes among us to blow up whatever divides us.  “Love one another as I have loved y’all.”  He doesn’t say this to lead us all to holding hands and singing kumbaya, forgetting the differences or ignoring the challenges.  He does this, he says, so that y’all’s joy may be complete.  It is a nice thing to say, but this part of the story does not give us anything about what this joy really is. 
 
Later, John gets into joy, which he makes clear is not the same as happiness.  Appropriately for this day, John points to women who go through the pain and difficulty of childbirth, saying they do not dwell on the anguish because of the joy of bring new life into the world.  Joy is rooted in co-creating, and finding the depth and breadth of self-giving love.  The word he uses for love is not transactional, rather it is self-emptying.
 
My friend, David’s, mother was not all that fond of Mother’s Day.  While she loved the Church, she was a rare church goer, and if she came, it was cause for notice.  But she never came on Mother’s Day.  As I got to know her, I learned that she had lost a son in childbirth and she had a running argument with God over the pain that she said never healed.  Being a complicated woman of fierce love and a hidden, but tender heart, I came to see her faith as real and visceral and argumentative.  Mother’s Day she proclaimed, is not a thing.  She would say “Every day is Mother’s Day for me.”
 
Joy can be wrapped in pain and difficulty and, even, unresolved grief.  As we dig a little deeper into what seems like straightforward life instructions -- love God and love one another -- It is not all that straightforward, and for sure, not all that easy as the world wears on us.  What Jesus proclaims for us today is that whatever we have to let go of, whatever we have to undo in our ways of seeing and being, whatever we have to forgive or bless or birth for the sake of new life, it is worth it.  Jesus’ love is complete.  Already there, abiding.  We are beloved so that we can love.  And y’all, that is a big deal.  God is with y’all.  All of y’all.  Amen.