The Big Read - Hearing Luke 2013
Feasting with Jesus
Living in Luke’s Gospel:
These notes are intended to provide background information and an outline roadmap
to support this year’s communal reading of Luke’s Gospel; to assist us to listen with
well attuned ears, so as to have a richer experience of the Gospel reading.
Most people in the ancient world could not read, and those who could would regularly
read out loud to others. The Gospels are stories that were written to be heard;
stories the authors expected to be read aloud to a group of listeners, and not merely in
short sections such as we hear on Sundays, but also as carefully crafted stories to be
heard in their entirety. They were repeatedly listened to, probably often in
association with a shared meal. We know that in the early centuries of the Christian
era some Jesus communities met for this purpose especially as part of the celebration
of Easter, and it is good that we today can still join them in doing this.
The Gospels were intended to be heard as stories within which the hearers would
understand that their own lives were to be lived. This does not simply mean that
we are to see something of ourselves in the characters depicted, although it includes
that. Above all we are asked to immerse ourselves in a 1st century story in which
the Gospel writers claim we find the deepest meaning of the big cosmic drama
within which we are all living! This reaches back to the beginning of creation itself,
and concerns God’s plan to enable the whole creation to become all that God has
always intended it should be. It is this dramatic story that finds its turning point
and fulfillment in Jesus, and it is a story that still in the 21st century has yet to reach
its climax. This is the big story in which we are to see that our lives find their place,
and it is the drama within which we each have our own significant part to play.
The primary requirement for our reading of Luke’s Gospel is to listen intently and
prayerfully to the story. It will enrich our reading and hearing if as we do so we can
appreciate the overall shape of the narrative, and listen out for some of the many Old
Testament echoes and numerous inter-related themes, reflecting as we do so on the
implications of this amazing story for the calling and mission of the Christian
community in the 21st century. As we listen to the Gospel, the Spirit will be at work!
Who was Luke?
Luke’s Gospel is linked to the Acts of the Apostles, the two together forming volumes
1 and 2 of a combined work. The author of Luke-Acts is not named anywhere in
either volume, but there has been a very strong tradition since at least the second
century that the author was Luke, friend and companion of the apostle Paul.
Luke’s name is mentioned three times elsewhere in the New Testament (Col 4:14;
2 Tim 4:11; Philemon 24), and these texts tell us that he was a Gentile by birth, a
physician beloved by Paul, and a co-worker with Paul in his imprisonment.
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Part way through Acts, in 16:10 as Paul moves from Asia Minor (modern Turkey) to
bring the gospel to Macedonia (Northern Greece), the author of Acts changes from
describing events in the third person and begins to use “we” and “us”, the implication
being that the writer of Acts is a personal participant in most events from that
point on.
It may be that Luke came from Philippi of Macedonia, because a little further on in
Acts the writer drops the use of “we” temporarily when Paul leaves Philippi and
journeys south to Athens and Corinth, and then resumes using “we” when 2-3 years
later Paul returns to Philippi. The use of “we” is then continued right through to the
end of Acts. While we do not know its reliability, there is also a tradition that Luke
married Lydia of Philippi, Paul’s first Christian convert in Greece.
Assuming that the author of the Gospel was indeed Paul’s travelling companion, we
can conclude from the information given us in Acts that he would have spent an
extended period of time in Israel while Paul was imprisoned at Caesarea by the
local Roman authorities, probably during the years AD 57-59, before Paul was sent on
to Rome to appear before Caesar. This prolonged sojourn in Israel would have
provided an opportunity for Luke to undertake some of the field research he alludes to
in his introduction (1:1-4), and perhaps to meet with people such as Mary the mother
of Jesus, who could have provided him with the personal information he gives us in
the birth narratives.
As would be expected of a long-time companion of Paul, the writer displays
extensive familiarity with the Old Testament, and also with the characteristic
features of Hebraic literature. Although he is Greek, Luke adopts these literary
techniques in his own writing.
Luke’s Gospel was probably written within a few years either side of AD 70,
scholarly opinion being divided over whether it should be dated before or after the
destruction of Jerusalem in that year by the Roman army under Titus.
Who were the first recipients?
Both Luke and Acts begin with an introduction addressed to a certain Theophilus, a
character regarding whom we have no other information. This Roman name means
“lover / friend of God”, and while he may have been a Roman official known to
Luke who was interested to investigate the good news about Jesus, it is perhaps best
to understand these two books as intended for any reader who aspires to be a
Theophilus.
There are many indications in Luke’s Gospel that this document was originally
written in Greek, probably using Mark’s Gospel as one source and probably also
using other Jewish source documents in Aramaic or Hebrew that had been given to
Luke. His Gospel was written primarily in the expectation that it would have a
Gentile readership. The name Theophilus itself reflects that.
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Distinctive themes
1. Meals with Jesus
More than any of the other Gospel writers Luke is intensely interested in telling us
about meals in which Jesus participated and what happened at them. Food is
mentioned in one way or another in every chapter of Luke’s Gospel. For our reading
of the Gospel this year we shall highlight the meals with Jesus.
Luke records only two statements in which Jesus tells us what the Son of Man
had come to do. One states his goal – “The Son of Man came to seek out and save
the lost” (19.10). The second states what today would be called his mission strategy,
which Jesus contrasts with the very different style of John the Baptist, who he says
came “eating no bread and drinking no wine”. Jesus tells us that the Son of Man
however “has come eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look, a glutton and a
drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’” (7:34). Luke points us to a Jesus
who came as an “eating and drinking Son of Man”, and in so doing he gives us
much on which to ponder.
We live in a society where many families rarely eat together. In 1st century Middle
Eastern culture (and there still today) sharing a meal together was an intensely
meaningful and important daily activity; it was the primary expression of
relationship together in community. Our own contemporary culture increasingly
tends to commercialise hospitality (“eating out”) and to turn meals into culinary
performance art (exemplified in the “cooking shows” on television). Traditional
Middle Eastern hospitality in contrast, for both Jews and Arabs, was primarily about
welcoming into a home, creating space, listening and providing. Meals were
necessarily slow affairs, and required the host to be people-oriented rather than taskoriented.
In Jesus’ world a meal was not just a symbol of community; it was enacted
community. Humankind was seen by them as the only creature that ate face-to-face
with others of the same kind, and a meal should therefore never be simply about
filling your stomach as an animal would. Meals with Jesus also went beyond merely
enacted community, and were at the same time also powerful expressions of enacted
grace, enacted mission, enacted salvation and enacted hope.
Luke tells us in particular about eight meals in which Jesus shared. Some were
meals with his followers at which Jesus was the host. At other meals Jesus was a
guest with those such as tax collectors who were outside the bounds of respectable
society. On still other occasions Jesus was a guest with people such as Simon the
Pharisee, who deliberately betrayed the rich meaning of the Middle Eastern meal in
order to insult Jesus and indicate to the community that he was emphatically rejected;
Jesus had been invited to that meal only in an attempt to discredit him, but he knew
that and still went!
Luke uses these eight meals as one of his many literary structuring devices to
shape the story he wants to tell us. In early Christian thinking the number eight was
symbolic of resurrection and New Creation. For that early Christian community
the “eighth day” was the day when Jesus rose from the dead and therefore the
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first day of New Creation, initiating a renewal of all things in which, at the final
consummation, the whole broken old creation will share. Scholars have proposed
several ways in which this idea is reflected in Luke’s narrative, and one of these is in
the eight meals Luke invites us to observe and to participate in ourselves. The
eighth meal, as we would expect, takes place on that “eighth day” of resurrection.
1. Jesus eats in enacted grace as guest of honour with tax collectors and
sinners at the home of tax collector Levi (also known as Matthew), who Jesus
has just called to be one of his twelve close followers (Luke 5:27-32).
2. Jesus is guest at a meal in the house of Simon the Pharisee, where he is given
an insulting reception. He then affirms as a loving follower a woman of ill
repute whose behaviour towards him at the table is socially outrageous but
acceptable to him. He claims to forgive this woman’s sins himself – with
the implication that he is replacing the Jerusalem temple and its sacrificial
system; the woman no longer needs to make the journey there to offer her
sacrifice to seek forgiveness (Luke 7:36-50).
3. At the close of a busy day when a large crowd had gone out to the countryside
to listen to Jesus and receive healing, Jesus invited the people to “recline”
(the literal word) and then as host “took” five small loaves and two fish,
“blessed, broke and gave” them to the disciples for distribution,
producing from them a feast of bread and fish for five thousand. As at
any well catered Middle Eastern feast there is much left over, enough in fact
for all of Israel if they would only receive it, as symbolised by the twelve
baskets of broken pieces (Luke 9:10-17).
In this meal: a) Jesus is revealing himself to be the new Moses who is already
beginning Isaiah’s promised New Exodus, and where something even better is
provided for those who will receive it than the manna given to Israel long ago
in the desert. b) Jesus is revealing himself to be the new Elisha, who was
himself the replacement for Elijah. Elisha had miraculously fed a hundred
prophets at Baal-shalishah with twenty small loaves, normally enough for only
about four or five people (2 Kings 4:42-44). c) Jesus is also revealing himself
to be the appointed host for the great Messianic banquet for all peoples
foreseen by Isaiah eight hundred years earlier, a wonderful feast at which
death itself will be on the menu - “He will swallow up death forever” (Isa.
25:6-9). d) Jesus is teaching the disciples that they are called to serve.
4. Jesus is again guest at the house of a Pharisee, and causes further scandal
by not washing before dinner. Jesus is deliberately provocative in order to
challenge conventional views of “holiness” which actually undermine what
the Torah really requires. He tells what true “cleanness” involves, denouncing
the Pharisees in a series of seven “Woes”, and provoking great hostility
towards himself (Luke 11:37-54).
5.
Jesus is guest on the Sabbath at the house of yet another Pharisee. Jesus
first offends by healing on a day that the Pharisees thought was the wrong
day for such things. He tells a parable directed against those who had pushed
themselves forward to obtain the best places at table, and then tells his host not
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to invite to a feast those who could repay him with a reciprocal invitation, but
rather to invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind. Jesus then
tells the parable of the Great Banquet (Luke 14:1-24).
6. Jesus invites himself to dinner with Zacchaeus, the “short in stature” tax
collector in Jericho, a ceremonially unclean collaborator with the Romans,
who in the eyes of the Jewish leadership would necessarily be excluded from
the great Messianic banquet on the last day, but Jesus announces, “Today
salvation has come to this house” (Luke 19:1-10).
7. Jesus keeps a last Passover with his disciples, and in so doing again “took
bread, blessed, broke and gave it” and a cup of wine to the disciples, in so
doing inaugurating a New Covenant in his blood (Luke 22:7-38).
8. Jesus meets a disillusioned Jewish couple on the road to Emmaus, fleeing
Jerusalem after the disaster of Jesus’ crucifixion. They walk and talk together
and eventually invite Jesus to stay for the night. As they sit at table, Jesus,
very unconventionally for a guest in another’s home, assumes the role of
host, and is “made known in the breaking of the bread” (Luke 24:13-49).
It is significant that the largest part of Luke’s account of Jesus’ resurrection is
taken up with the story of the two Jesus meets on the Emmaus road. This is
another journey story, like the long story Luke has already told of Jesus’ journey to
Jerusalem (9:51-19:27 – see section 6 b), and the story he is about to tell in the book
of Acts about a journey in mission out from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth (6 c).
The two on the Emmaus road are not however leaving Jerusalem on mission;
they are leaving depressed, fearful and perhaps angry because their hopes that Jesus
was the Messiah have proved to be so disappointingly misplaced. They had seen
Jesus as “a prophet mighty in deed and word”; the promised prophet who would be
greater than Moses and the one who would “redeem” Israel; language reflecting the
anticipated New Exodus. When it came to the crunch, Jesus had however failed in
their eyes to do any of this and had been subjected to Roman crucifixion. Instead
of a Messianic king ruling as they had expected, the combined Roman and Jewish
authorities would no doubt already be beginning the usual clean-up operation after a
revolutionary leader has been executed.
Luke is also careful to tell us that these two travellers even already know the
whole story of Jesus! They have heard reports from some women that Jesus has
risen from the dead. They have also heard that other disciples had looked and seen
that his tomb really was now empty. Above all the risen Jesus is in fact walking and
talking with them, but still they remain blind and depressed!
Jesus first shows them the big picture presented in the whole Old Testament, a
story of Israel’s repeated bondage, exile and death, out of which YHWH repeatedly
brought restoration, release and life. Messiah’s story, as the one who was at last the
true embodiment and representative of Israel, could be no different. However,
even this Bible study by Jesus himself does not in itself turn them around! They are
still leaving Jerusalem and abandoning the mission initiated by Jesus.
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It is when they then sit at table and Jesus as host “took bread, blessed and broke
it, and gave it to them” that “their eyes were opened”. They now understand why
their hearts had “burned” within them when he opened the scriptures to them. The
two had urged their fellow traveller to stay with them because the day was nearly
over. Travel in the dark was dangerous, but now those who had been fleeing
Jerusalem hurry back there through the night to re-join the Jesus community, and to
wait for the Spirit to be poured out on them all when Jesus ascends to the Father.
The Passover each year was Israel’s annual freedom party, when the Jews once
again retold and celebrated the story of their deliverance by God long ago from
bondage in Egypt. The problem for Israel in the 1st century was that they were still in
bondage! They had been in exile in Babylon over 500 years earlier, and then
subjugated by the Persians, then the Greeks and now the Romans!
The sacrament Jesus inaugurated at the last Passover is the new freedom party with
which the new community that he has brought into being celebrates the kingdom
he has inaugurated and is bringing to glorious consummation.
For the earliest Christian communities this celebration was often a full meal together,
during which the words of institution were repeated and bread and wine exchanged.
This celebration has had many names, four found in the New Testament itself - “the
bread-breaking”, “the sharing / communion (koinonia)”, “the thank-you meal
(eucharist)”, “the Lord’s meal / supper”; and then when people began celebrating
in Latin rather than Greek it was often known as “the mass” because at the end of the
celebration those who had fed on the death and risen life of Jesus were usually urged,
“Go, you are sent out” (“ite, missa est”). All these five names have rich meaning.
At the heart of the Gospel is the claim that God was remaking a broken world
through Jesus, and that in Jesus’ death and resurrection God’s future of New
Creation has burst into this present world, and one day all creation will be
remade in the same way. Whatever name we use for the sacrament, its central
reality is that, as we participate by faith we meet with the risen Jesus who has
already entered New Creation. In him God’s future even now comes into our
present. In these in-between times, between Jesus’ last Passover and the great
Messianic banquet at the final consummation when death itself will have at last been
destroyed for us all, we relate the past and the future to our present and “proclaim the
Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Cor 11:26).
The bread and wine tell us that New Creation is not about escape from this world’s
concerns, but about this world renewed and transformed. Bread and wine are also
more than seeds and fruit; they are the products of human hands in cultural, social
and technological activity, all of which are to share in the renewal and transformation.
Our own mission is possible only because the risen Jesus is amongst us by his
Spirit, and we ourselves are equipped for mission only when we recognise him, and
we do this through the word and at the table. Luke is telling us that it is as we truly
encounter Jesus in the combination of word and bread that our eyes are opened.
The contemporary Christian community in New Zealand must fulfil its mission to a
complex society that is very different from the world of the 1st century Middle East.
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Discussions of “cultural contextualisation”, “boundary matrices” and “post-modern
hermeneutics” all have their value and place, but the breath-taking simplicity and
power of Jesus’ approach as an “eating and drinking Son of Man” in the context
of that ancient Middle Eastern culture should both challenge and encourage us. Can
we not find imaginative ways to relate to others in our own culture that are as
effective, and can we not see meaningful ways in which we too can still reach out to
others around a table and enact the realities of the gospel?
2. Gentiles too belong in the family of God’s people
Luke constantly emphasises that Jesus came to bring salvation to the whole world
and to create a new community joined in covenant with YHWH, the God of Israel;
a community in which the distinction between Jew and Gentile has become irrelevant.
Luke’s story begins in a very Old Testament setting with a priest offering prayers
in the temple, and Luke explains the Jewish customs and terminology for his readers.
The birth narratives of Jesus place this amazing story within 1st century world
politics, telling us how Caesar Augustus, the most powerful man in the world of that
day, was God’s unwitting agent when, by Caesar’s imperial decree, Joseph and Mary
were required to journey to Bethlehem where Jesus was born (2:1-7). The birth
stories announce the bankruptcy of that imperial power, and tell us that a child has
been born who will rule this creation in a very different way.
John the Baptist is similarly placed in the context of the Roman Empire and its
lackeys (3:1-3). In fulfilment of old promises to Israel, John announces a new work of
YHWH of significance for all – including those beyond the fringe such as tax
collectors and soldiers (3:12-14). He does not however proclaim this in Rome, nor
even Jerusalem, but in the Judean desert; and John’s prophetic ministry is quickly on
a collision course with what is driving the empire. John’s preaching is about
repentance and forgiveness to create new beginnings, a revolutionary approach
that the empire would not tolerate, resulting in John’s imprisonment by Herod (3:20).
Luke’s genealogy of Jesus (3:23-32) does not simply trace the line of descent back to
important Jewish ancestors such as King David and Abraham, but back to Adam who
was made in God’s image. Luke is telling us that Jesus is the representative of all
humankind, come as a new Adam to at last lead his followers into true humanity.
Jesus’ announcement in the synagogue at Nazareth of his manifesto (4:16-30),
quoting words from Isaiah, results in a dramatic interchange in which Jesus points the
angry residents of Nazareth to the fact that YHWH had long ago showed his grace to a
Lebanese widow and a Syrian military commander, both of whom had acted in faith.
In so doing Jesus confronts his narrowly nationalistic neighbours with the fact that his
mission as the Messiah of Israel embraces all peoples.
Luke alone tells us that Jesus does not call and send out only the twelve apostles
(symbolising the New Israel), but he also sends out another group of seventy (10:120), the number seventy deriving from the table of the seventy nations making up
the world following the great flood, as recorded in Genesis 10:1-32. It was probably
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for the same reason that the translation of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek,
made around 200 BC for Greek speaking Jews but also for interested Gentiles, was
traditionally regarded as undertaken by seventy scholars, with the translation known
as the Septuagint.
When Jesus is brought to trial, Luke’s main focus, unlike Matthew and Mark, is not
on the initial Jewish proceedings which Luke mentions only briefly, but on the
proceedings in the Roman court (23:1-25). Luke is concerned that his Gentile
readers understand that Jesus’ innocence was established before the bar of Roman
justice, before he was delivered to be crucified for reasons of political expediency.
Luke’s Gospel begins with old Simeon’s announcement that the tiny babe he held in
his arms would fulfil Isaiah’s vision of one who would be “a light for revelation to
the Gentiles”. The Gospel ends with Jesus telling the disciples that “repentance and
forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his (Messiah’s) name to all nations,
beginning from Jerusalem”.
3. Women within the Jesus community
Another of the distinctive features of Luke’s Gospel is the important and equal
place that he gives to women within the community of God’s people.
Luke tells in particular of the supportive participation of women as disciples of
Jesus in the Messianic community around him – “ .. he (Jesus) went on through
cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God.
The twelve were with him, as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits
and infirmities: Mary called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and
Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others, who
provided for them out of their resources” (8:1-3).
This was revolutionary! There is no comparable record of any Jewish rabbi at
that period with similar women followers. Luke makes clear that Jesus was a rabbi,
and the conventional view of the times was that a rabbi should never speak in
public with any woman, not even his own wife. Rabbi Jesus however spoke freely
with women all the time. The women Luke describes here are part of an itinerant
band travelling around with Jesus and also spending the night in strange villages,
which was again unheard of. In traditional Middle Eastern society even today a
woman can travel with a group of men, but must spend the night with a relative.
These women are also providing the resources for the group. Luke wants his
readers to know who paid to keep the earliest Jesus movement on the road!
Luke then tells us that Mary, the sister of Martha, “sat at the Lord’s feet and listened
to what he was saying” (10:39). Some years later Paul will describe himself as having
been educated “at the feet of Gamaliel” (Acts 22:3). This was a technical term
describing the official students of a rabbi, and Mary has become such a student.
That is why her sister is so upset. Women could not do that. “This is disgraceful!
What will the neighbours think! No-one will ever marry her now!”
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Luke underlines all this by the persistent use of “female-male pairing” in the way
his narrative is structured. Firstly an angel appears to Zechariah (1:5-20) and then
an angel appears to Mary (1:26-36). Soon Mary sings her song of praise (the
Magnificat, 1:46-55), followed by Zechariah’s song (the Benedictus, 1:67-79). As the
narrative unfolds this pairing is repeated again and again, so for example at Jesus’
provocative inaugural sermon in the synagogue at Nazareth he presents two examples
of faith, a Lebanese widow and a Syrian man. When we get to the prayer parables in
18:1-14 we are given a pair of parables, the first about a widow before a judge, and
the second about a male tax collector. There are in fact 27 instances of female –
male pairing throughout the Gospel, and this is something to keep listening out
for as we read it.
Luke’s emphasis continues in the book of Acts, and Dorcas is actually described as a
“disciple” (mathetria) with the word in the feminine (Acts 9:36).
4. Luke’s focus on prayer
Luke tells us that these are in-between times, when the Kingdom has indeed been
inaugurated through Jesus’ life, ministry, death and resurrection, but at the same
time the Kingdom has yet to come in all its fullness, and that if we understand the
realities within which we live, whatever else we do we will pray.
The Gospel begins with an old priest offering incense (a symbol of prayer) in the
temple while the community pray outside. An angel delivers the unexpected
message, “Your prayer is heard!” Soon Mary and Zechariah are bursting out with
their wonderful prayer-songs, and then old Simeon and praying Anna join in giving
their thanks to God (chapters 1 and 2).
Luke tells us of several occasions when Jesus prayed, seven of these being unique
to his Gospel. Only Luke tells us that:
1. It was while Jesus was praying following his baptism that the Spirit
descended on him and his Father spoke his glad approval (3:21-22).
2. Before choosing the twelve special disciples, Jesus “went out into the hills
to pray, and all night he continued in prayer to God; and when it was day
he called his disciples, and chose from them twelve” (6:12-13).
3. It was “as he was praying” when his disciples were with him that Jesus asked
them, “Who do people say that I am?”, and went on to reveal more clearly
than ever before his identity as Messiah (9:18).
4. On the mount of transfiguration, “he went up on the mountain to pray, and
as he was praying, the appearance of his countenance was altered…” (9:28).
5. It was in response to watching Jesus pray that one of the disciples asked,
“Lord, teach us to pray”, and Jesus gave his followers the Lord’s Prayer
(11:1-2).
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6. Jesus prayed for Peter in his moment of sifting by Satan (22:31-32).
7. It was while praying that Jesus died (23:45).
Luke also tells us that Jesus urged the disciples to pray as he himself entered his
own terrible prayer struggle on the Mount of Olives (22:41-46).
Luke alone gives us the three great prayer parables:
1. The friend begging bread at midnight (11:5-13).
2.
The tireless widow and the unjust judge (18:1-8).
3.
The Pharisee and the tax collector (18:9-14).
The Gospel ends with the Messianic community meeting in the temple to pray, now
with a note of both joyful fulfilment and continuing expectancy (24:52-53).
Luke continues his emphasis on prayer in the book of Acts.
5. Teaching in parables
Much of the background from Isaiah and elsewhere in the Old Testament is reflected
in Jesus’ teaching in parables as Luke records it. The parables are not simple
rustic stories to illustrate moral or spiritual ideas. They are a tool Jesus uses to build
up his kingdom. They begin with the familiar, but usually introduce a radically
different perspective that disorients the audience, challenging them to a clearer view
of God’s world, and asking for a response. The parables almost always address the
situation in front of Jesus at the time; they are about the events of his Messianic
ministry, and they are stories the hearers (including ourselves) are asked to
inhabit.
Often they retell familiar Old Testament stories in unexpected and dramatic
ways. The parable of the compassionate father and his two lost sons (15:11-32)
retells with unprecedented and very confronting changes, the foundational story
for all Jews of Isaac and his two sons Esau and Jacob (whose name becomes
Israel). It is told in response to the grumbling of the Pharisees about the tax
collectors and sinners who wanted to listen to Jesus (15:1-2). The father in this story
is not like any conventional father the audience would ever have encountered, and it
gradually becomes clear that the father of Israel is now Jesus himself, and that in the
older brother, Jesus is confronting the Pharisees he is talking to with a mirror in which
is revealed their own failed son-ship in relation to himself. He is calling them to
repentance.
Parables are at the same time used to veil the truth from those unwilling to hear it,
“so that ‘looking they may not perceive, and listening they may not understand’”
(8:9-10). These sobering and often misunderstood words, quoted again from Isaiah,
are found in the middle of the parable of the sower (8:4-18). The parable of the sower
is sometimes read as if it was just an illustration of how “spiritual seed” performs in
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the environments presented by different individual lives. Jesus is however taking up
the Old Testament prophets’ recurring description of Israel’s return from exile
in terms of seed sowing, where the sower is YHWH, the seed is Israel as the fruit of
God’s creative word, about to be sown anew in the land of promise.
The problem is that Israel appeared to have been re-sown with the return to the
land from Babylon under Ezra and Nehemiah, and plants had sprung up, but for
various reasons soon withered. In the parable Jesus reveals himself to be
undertaking a new sowing that will produce an abundant harvest in receptive
soil, yielding a New Israel, even beyond the bounds of national Israel.
Refusing to accept the Messiah-ship of Jesus as providing the context for the story,
his enemies could merely hear a simple story about farming; illustrating how different
people respond to the teaching they hear. Heard within the reality of Jesus’ ministry,
it has a hidden meaning for those with ears to hear about who Jesus really is, the
reasons for the failure of earlier sowings, the return from exile to Zion that is
already underway, and the coming harvest Jesus will reap.
6. The journey to Jerusalem
a) Reading Isaiah
For the first years following Jesus’ death and resurrection, when the Christian
community met each week to read and to expound the “scriptures”, none of the New
Testament had as yet been written and it was the Old Testament that they were
reading. Isaiah seems to have been the scripture above all others that informed
the early Christians’ understanding of Jesus and what God was saying and doing
through him; it was this text that told the fledgling Christian community who
they now were. The book of Isaiah is quoted, paraphrased or directly alluded to over
400 times in the New Testament (on average approximately twice on every page of
most of our modern English versions).
Luke’s story begins in a richly “Old Testament” setting. Luke constantly relates his
story to many different parts of the Old Testament, but with a particular focus on
the book of Isaiah, especially chapters 40-66.
Isaiah 40-66 is addressed to Israel in her 6th century exile in Babylon. It promises a
New Exodus in which YHWH will one day return to Zion, bringing his covenant
people back with him. It tells of an Anointed One (Messiah / Christ) who will be
revealed, when YHWH’s promise of salvation will be fulfilled; when God’s
righteousness will be vindicated and evil will be brought to judgement; when, as was
always intended, the Gentiles will be brought into the covenant community; when
there will be a vast creation-embracing reconciliation and restoration..
Central to all of this is the mysterious figure of the Suffering Servant, celebrated in
Isaiah’s four great Servant Songs (42:1-9; 49:1-13; 50:4-11; 52:13-53:12). These
tell of a Servant who in some sense seems to be both suffering Israel herself acting
for the sake of the world, while also one who is suffering for Israel. The New
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Testament writers understand Jesus to be both the Anointed One and the Suffering
Servant, and as such the embodiment and representative of Israel, doing for Israel
and for the whole world on Israel’s behalf what Israel had been called to do from
the very beginning of God’s covenant with Abraham.
Luke’s claim in both the Gospel and Acts is that in Jesus, the fulfilment of Isaiah’s
vision has been inaugurated and is even now being brought to its full
consummation. The great central section of Luke’s Gospel tells the story of Jesus’
journey to Jerusalem, and Luke clearly wants us to know that in Jesus’ journey to
Jerusalem, Israel’s God YHWH is at last returning to Zion, though not in the way
anyone had expected.
This journey dramatically enacts the New Exodus spoken of by Isaiah and
announced by John the Baptist at the River Jordan - “Prepare the way of the
Lord; make his paths straight! … All flesh shall see the salvation of God”. It is
this journey and its culmination that is the “Exodus” (as literally in the Greek) Jesus
discusses with Moses and Elijah on the mount of transfiguration (9:31).
b) The big picture of Luke’s Gospel
It recent years it has been appreciated that much of the New Testament displays
structures shaped by literary techniques similar to those employed by the
Hebrew prophets. This employs various forms of parallelism, and is different to the
more linear narratives familiar to us in most Western literature. Listening for the
parallel relationships, and in the case of inverse parallelism also for the central pivot
which informs the whole text, and reflecting on what it all might mean for the hearer,
would have been instinctual to any first century audience in a Semitic culture. That
was the usual way in which most stories were to be experienced.
Luke himself wrote with Gentile readers in view, but his Gospel displays many
examples of this kind of Semitic literary structure. This is true for many component
texts, and the same principles apply on a large scale to the Gospel as a whole.
A Birth and Childhood of Jesus
B A New Exodus
C A New Adam / the Devil restages Eden
D Jesus’ teaching and ministry in Galilee
E Transfiguration - Moses and Elijah discuss Jesus’ Exodus
X Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem
E’ Coronation procession / the Temple will cease to function
D’ Jesus’ teaching and ministry in Jerusalem
C’ Satan initiates his master plan through Judas
B’ A New Passover and a New Covenant for the New Exodus
A’ New Creation, through Jesus’ passion, death and resurrection
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1:1-2:52
3:1-22
3:23-4:13
4:14-9:17
9:18-50
9:51-19:27
19:28-48
20:1-21:38
22:1-6
22:7-38
22:39-24:52
Luke’s Gospel follows a broadly chronological sequence, but with key components
put together in parallel so that they inform one another (“inter-textual resonance”).
The central core of the Gospel is an extended account of Jesus’ journey to
Jerusalem, where the whole purpose of his life will find its fulfilment. The journey to
Jerusalem is however enclosed by concentric parallel sections telling of a New Adam,
who in fulfilment of Old Testament expectation is leading a New Exodus, on the
basis of a New Covenant, into New Creation.
There are numerous inter-textual links to listen out for between the parallel outer
sections.
For example, the only story we have about Jesus’ boyhood tells us how at the age of
twelve (when a boy had lived a year for each of the tribes of Israel and was now
expected to be a responsible adult member of that community), he journeyed to
Jerusalem for Passover (2:41-52). In this boyhood story, Jesus stays in the temple,
discussing Torah with the scribes and priests who are astonished by him. He is so
focused on the temple and its meaning that he becomes lost for three days to those
who loved him. They then find him and are overjoyed, but struggle to understand
what it all means.
Jesus next trip to Jerusalem in Luke’s story, again for Passover, is the journey that
will result in his crucifixion. His visit at twelve foreshadows his later journey, his
arrival in Jerusalem and teaching in the temple, his arrest, trial and crucifixion,
his resurrected appearance three days later, and the struggles of his followers to
understand what has happened.
In the great central account of the Jerusalem journey (9:51-19:27) Luke repeatedly
reminds us that this journey is the context within which we should understand the
many events he describes: 9:51-57; 10:38, 13:22; 17:11; 18:31.
Within this huge and intricately composed central structure there is again much to be
learned by putting the numerous parallel sections together and letting them
inform each other, for example sections C / C’ which both consider the question,
“What shall I do to inherit eternal life?”, or sections D / D’ on prayer (see below).
At the very centre of the account of Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem we find the
fulcrum spelling out the heart and core of the story, the meaning of which flows out
over the entire narrative. This inner core takes up the same themes as the opening and
closing sequences of the Jerusalem journey – eschatological events in Jerusalem
that deal with salvation, judgement, death and fulfilment.
It is common in literary structures similar to this in the Old Testament to find right at
the centre the “riddle in the middle” - an enigmatic statement demanding our
questioning and reflection as we ask, “What does it mean?” We find just such a
“riddle” here in words Jesus asks to be passed on to the counterfeit King of the Jews,
King Herod, “Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today,
tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Yet today, tomorrow, and the
next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed
outside Jerusalem.” (13:32-33)
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A Jerusalem - eschatological events:
Death / fulfilment / judgement / salvation
B Following Jesus:
People offer to follow
Jesus reaches out through the seventy
C What shall I do to inherit eternal life?
Keeping the law
Loving neighbour - the Good Samaritan
Loving the Lord - Mary and Martha
D How to pray:
Right themes / content - the Lord’s Prayer
Right confidence - the friend at midnight
E Signs and the present kingdom:
Signs of the kingdom
Signs and the Son of Man – Jonah and Solomon
F Conflict with Pharisees - using wealth rightly:
Seven woes
Money – the rich fool
Don’t be anxious – treasure in heaven
G The kingdom is not yet, but is also now:
Not yet – be like men waiting
Now – fire / interpret the time
H The call of the kingdom to Israel:
Repent or perish - Pilate and Galileans
Produce or perish – the unfruitful fig tree
I The nature of the kingdom:
Love that restores and frees fulfils the law
/ healing on the Sabbath / ox and donkey
Humility - mustard seed and leaven
J Jerusalem - eschatological events
I’ The nature of the kingdom:
Love that restores and heals fulfils the law
/ healing on the Sabbath / ox and donkey
Humility - sit in the lowest place
H’ The call of the kingdom extends to the outcasts:
The great banquet
The lost sheep, lost coin, and two lost sons
G’ The kingdom is not yet, but is also now:
The unjust steward
F’ Conflict with Pharisees – using wealth rightly:
God or Mammon?
The rich man and Lazarus
Radical forgiveness – faith as a mustard seed
E’ Signs and the coming kingdom:
Sign of the kingdom - ten lepers
Signs and the Son of Man – Noah and Lot
D’ How to pray:
Right confidence – widow and unjust judge
Right attitude – Pharisee and tax collector / child
C’ What shall I do to inherit eternal life?
Keeping the law
Loving neighbour - the rich ruler; give to the poor
Loving the Lord - costly discipleship
B’ Following Jesus:
A blind man seeks Jesus
Jesus reaches out to an outcast - Zacchaeus
A’ Jerusalem - eschatological events:
Salvation / judgement / fulfilment / death
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9:51-56
9:57-10:24
10:25-42
11:1-13
11:14-36
11:37-12:34
12:35-59
13:1-9
13:10-21
13:22-35
14:1-11
14:12-15:32
16:1-9
16:10-17:10
17:11-37
18:1-17
18:18-34
18:35-19:10
19:11-27
c) Acts and the journey of the word
Acts too was written to be read as a whole, and read together with the Gospel,
and it would be good as individuals to try to read through Acts as well as Luke’s
Gospel over Easter.
We are given to understand at the outset of Acts that this book will tell the story of
the continuing work of Jesus, and in typical Hebraic style the two books of the
Gospel and Acts are structured in parallel.
For example, the Gospel begins with an emphasis on the work of the Spirit: John
the Baptist is filled with the Spirit even in his mother’s womb (1:15). The Spirit
comes upon Mary (1:35). Elizabeth, Zechariah and Simeon all praise God in the
Spirit (1:41; 1:67; 2:25-27). Jesus is anointed with the Spirit at his baptism (3:22). It
is then the Spirit that drives him into the wilderness to be tempted like Israel of old.
The Spirit then drives him back to Galilee. In Nazareth he announces his ministry by
reading from Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me” (4:18).
Similarly, at the beginning of Acts the Spirit descends on the Jesus community
on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2).
Looking at the complete story told by the two books in combination there is this
repeated pattern of first Jesus and then the Jesus community. Jesus receives the
Spirit, then the community. Jesus comes with joy, followed by the community. Jesus
preaches in the power of the Spirit, so does Peter. Jesus’ Galilean ministry described
in Luke chapters 4-9 is paralleled in several ways by the apostolic ministry in Acts
chapters 1-6. For example Jesus heals a paralyzed man let down by his friends
through the roof (5:17-26), and Peter and John, in Jesus’ name, heal a man lame from
his mother’s womb (Acts 3:1-10); Jesus raises a dead girl (8:40-56), and Peter raises a
dead woman (Acts 9:36-43). At least thirty parallels of this sort can be identified
between Luke’s Gospel and Acts.
A particularly important expression of this structural parallel is the two long
journeys that are recounted in the two volumes of this combined work, both
rooted in Isaiah’s vision of the New Exodus. The first is Jesus’ journey to
Jerusalem; the second is a journey out from Jerusalem.
Isaiah 40-66 pervades the book of Acts in many ways. For example, the first name
given to the Jesus community in Acts is the people of the Way, and this name recurs
several times. The “Way” in question is the road of Isaiah’s New Exodus that John
the Baptist had announced and along which Jesus had led.
Acts begins with Jesus setting out the mission that should direct the fledgling
community, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and
you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends
of the earth” (Acts 1:8). We should not read this simply as a reference to the
sequential geographical movement of the community out from its beginnings in
Jerusalem; it is saying that a fulfilment should be expected of Isaiah’s vision of a
single community coming into being in covenant with YHWH, embracing those
from both polarised sides of an Israel that had fractured 900 years earlier into
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the Southern Kingdom (Judea) and Northern Kingdom (Samaria); and then
beyond them to include all the Gentiles.
An important idea in Isaiah is the conquering journey of “the word of YHWH”, by
which his purposes are accomplished: “Many peoples shall come and say, ‘Come, let
us go up to the mountain of YHWH, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may
teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.’ For out of Zion shall go
instruction, and the word of YHWH from Jerusalem.” (Isaiah 2:3) This thought
recurs many times in the book, including in chapters 40-66. YHWH will return to
Zion in a New Exodus, which will result in the outward journey from Zion of His
powerful word making all things new.
The phrases “the word of God” and “the word of the Lord” occur many times
throughout the book of Acts, often in an Isaiah-related context. This “word” is the
word about Jesus and his fulfilment of Old Testament expectation, delivered by the
people of the Way, in the power of the Spirit.
A large part of Acts also presents travel narratives, including the account of Paul’s
famous three missionary journeys. The main travel story Luke is telling however is
not about Paul’s journeys except in so far as he is a servant of the word. Luke’s
interest is the journey of the word of God itself. Luke frequently notes the
progress of the word with statements such as, “But the word of God continued to
advance and gain adherents.” (Acts 12:24); “Thus the word of the Lord spread
through the region” (Acts13:49). It is a fascinating study to examine the journey
of the word and trace its path as set out in the narrative in Acts. We find a word
that achieves many triumphs while also encountering much opposition, and that
makes an always on-going journey in which the word is never described as visiting
any location twice, even when the characters themselves such as Paul do.
Just as we are told of Jesus that “the child grew and became strong, filled with
wisdom” (Luke 2:40), so we are also told that “the word of the Lord grew mightily
and prevailed” (Acts 19:20). We are even told that “When the Gentiles heard this,
they were glad and praised the word of the Lord” (Acts 13:48). There is an intimate
connection between Jesus and this word, and it is in the word (and bread – see section
1), and by the Spirit who indwells his people that he continues to be present in his
world, now taking the good news of New Creation out from Jerusalem to the ends of
the earth.
Steuart Henderson
Martinborough, Easter 2013
Note: This document does not pretend to be a properly referenced research paper. It
is heavily indebted to many sources, although the content is of course the author’s
responsibility, including its deficiencies. These notes have been produced simply to
provide some background information for a communal reading of the Gospel of Luke
by a local Christian congregation. Others are very welcome to use this material on
that basis.
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