Who is the church? This is a question I have wrestled with in recent years. Not in a condemning sort of way, as if I have some ultimate authority to determine who is in or out, but in a “Have we lost the plot” sort of way.
I grew up in vacation Bible school and Bible drills, Sunday school and Christmas programs, where I was taught over and over to love God and love my neighbor. I also grew up in multiple college ministries where I was taught to love God and love my neighbor. After college, I continued to grow up in seminary where I was taught, no surprise, to love God and love my neighbor.
Savannah Green
Clearly, an identifiable marker of the church is loving God and loving neighbor. However, at times, the church can feel more divisive than any political party or social club. At times, the church becomes its own political party and social club. In our modern political landscape, to love your neighbor is painted as a socialist tendency that threatens the very existence of our country as we know it. Or something like that.
For anyone in the church to model their life after the above morphed view of loving your neighbor is laughable. Wrong, offensive, totally missing the mark, yes, but also laughable. The message is clear in both the Old and New Testaments: We are to love God and love our neighbor.
“To love your neighbor is painted as a socialist tendency that threatens the very existence of our country as we know it.”
One of my favorite moments where this is addressed in Scripture is when the Jews wanted to “yeet” Jesus (Yes, you read that correctly).
In Luke 4:16-30 at the outset of his ministry, Jesus stands in Nazareth’s synagogue and reads from the Isaiah scroll (in our Bible, it is Isaiah 61). The reading of scrolls was a common practice in Jewish synagogues that Jesus upholds.
After the reading, the synagogue gathering is “amazed” by his “gracious words” and speaks highly of Jesus (Luke 4:22). In a time of Roman oppression, they assume the reading promises release and victory for Jews, leading to an earthly kingdom for their own benefit. This interpretation was not entirely off base. The events in Isaiah took place before, during and after the Babylonian exile, so understanding the passage as a reference to the Jewish people contextually (at the time) made sense. It was a traditional Jewish view of the prophecy in Isaiah.
Yet, as any reader of a Gospel will know, Jesus is a Jew who respects his tradition but is not above correcting it. At this point in Luke 4, he pushes the traditional assumptions of the Jewish people by recalling periods of divine judgment in Israel’s history. When God’s chosen people turned their backs to him, the prophets turned their attention to Gentiles. Through Jesus’ reading of the Isaiah scroll and callbacks to Jewish prophets, the Lukan theme of the good news being for all is brought to light.
This is a pivotal moment. Although the people initially were pleased by Jesus and the reading, their posture toward him changes when he includes “the other.” What was once an amazed gathering becomes an angry mob.
Although the Greek word “yeet” does not appear in any traditional translation of Luke 4, its meaning is the same as what we read in Luke 4 where the people want to hurl Jesus off a cliff. Today, in popular slang, to “yeet” something is to throw something with great force.
“Their posture toward him changes when he includes ‘the other.’”
One online Gen Z Bible translation tells the story this way: “They got mad mad, chased him to the edge of a cliff, and tried to yeet him off.”
The Jews’ misunderstanding of Jesus’ kingdom and reign reveals a wrongfully placed priority on societal and cultural separation. As Luke continues to show in his Gospel, the kingdom of God is for both Jew and Gentile. There is no longer “the other” because the phrase and all its connotations are redeemed through the fulfillment of these Isaian messianic prophecies.
As the church, it is our responsibility to accept the invitation to participate in the fulfilment. The gathering turned mob in Luke 4 chose to decline their invitation; or rather, chose to discard their invitation by an attempt to “hurl him off the cliff.” Or, as some of my Millennial and Gen Z seminary peers and I liked to say: They wanted to “yeet” Jesus.
To provide a sharp contrast to my “yeet” translation, Walter Brueggemann provides a summative yet precise explanation of Isaiah 61 in his commentary in the Westminster Bible Companion series:
If this mandate be taken seriously, then it concerns all kinds of acts of solidarity, both charity and public policy. It is to be noticed, moreover, that in our own time, the most zealous adherents of privatization also tend to exhibit loud devotion to “religion,” but it is a religion that completely misconstrues the social solidarity implicit in covenantal faith. As this text deeply contradicts such social practice in that ancient time, so it deeply challenges the temptations of an affluent, postindustrial society short on neighborliness.
Have we lost the plot?
“Love God and love your neighbor” is a long- attested command for the people of God. It was not left behind in the ancient Old Testament writings when Jesus began proclaiming his kingdom. The early church and later saints did not forget it years after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension.
Yet, somehow we are missing it. Somehow, the church’s most identifiable marker became an oft-forgotten way of life for those who claim to follow Jesus. Somehow, in some circles, it diminished entirely.
Who is the church? Well, if it means contentment with the possibility of being “yeeted” off a cliff for loving God and loving my neighbor, I know I’m included. I hope you are, too.
Savannah Green serves in theological higher education and enjoys writing on the Gospels, Acts and practical theology. She earned a master of divinity degree from George W. Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor University.