Y'all Come

Y'all Come seeks to understand G-d's call to Jesus the way that Jesus understood it-to see the Jesus that Jesus saw. The Jesus of Y'all Come was inviting Israel, the religious community, to join him as residents of G-d's neighborhood. He did so by teaching and modeling what life looked like in that neighborhood. By accepting Jesus's invitation, Israel would live into her "chosen" status as established by the Sinai covenant. She would become the "holy nation" of Exodus 19:6 and the "light to the nations" of Isaiah 49:6. She would do so by sharing the same holy light with other nations that Jesus had shared with her; she would teach and model the lifestyle in G-d's neighborhood. The journey that Jesus and Israel would share was strange and difficult. It ended in a way that neither side would likely have predicted when Jesus left Nazareth, bound for Jerusalem. Modern readers will likely find the journey to be equally strange, equally difficult, and equally unpredictable.