In this video, we dive into an intriguing passage from Luke 22. Clint Loveall and Michael Gewecke discuss the difficult-to-interpret section where Jesus talks about taking a purse, bag, and sword. They explore various interpretations and offer insights into the broader themes of trust, fulfillment, and the changes that lie ahead for the disciples. Join us as we grapple with the mysteries of this passage and seek to understand its deeper meaning.
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Transcript
00:00:00:12 – 00:00:31:23
Clint Loveall
Hey, everybody. Thanks for being with us. We close out the week here in Luke 22, moving again through Holy Week. Jesus has been visiting with the disciples and we continue that conversation today in an in a kind of an odd passage. This is one of those that, to my knowledge, nobody knows exactly what to do with. There are versions of this, but Luke’s is probably the most difficult.
00:00:31:28 – 00:00:58:27
Clint Loveall
So let me read it for you and then we’ll do our best with it. Jesus said to them when I sent you out without a purse, bag or sandals, did you lack anything? They said, No, nothing, he said. But now the one who has a purse must take it. And likewise a bag. And the one who has no sword must sell his cloak and buy one For I tell you, the scripture must be fulfilled in me.
00:00:58:31 – 00:01:25:41
Clint Loveall
And he was counted among the lawless. And indeed, what is written about me is being fulfilled. They said, Look, Lord, here are two swords. He replied, It is enough. So until you get to this last verse, you could think, Jesus is saying something like, The last time I sent you out, I told you that it was a benefit to have nothing.
00:01:25:46 – 00:01:51:13
Clint Loveall
But now you have to be prepared. You have to be protected. You have to be aware, You have to be careful. You know that things are changing. The Scripture is being fulfilled. He was counted among the lawless. And so you’re going to be hunted. This could be a prediction of all of that kind of stuff. But then this sword business comes up.
00:01:51:18 – 00:02:15:48
Clint Loveall
There’s two swords. And he replied, It is enough. And Michael, to my to my knowledge, I’ve never seen an explanation of this that I thought, that clears it up. There’s lots of guessing, there’s lots of speculation. There’s some people that say maybe the translation thing is, I’ve even heard that somebody tried to make the case that what Jesus really says is that’s enough.
00:02:15:48 – 00:02:41:04
Clint Loveall
As in quick talking about swords, but Jesus brought it up. So that seems unlikely. This is one of those head scratchers that if there was ever a clear message in it, I, I think we’ve lost it and I don’t know what we should do with it. I do think there’s some guidance in the rest of the passage. But as for that particular line, I think is a mystery.
00:02:41:09 – 00:03:03:09
Michael Gewecke
So we’ve had this already in our study. Luke, Clint, I’m just going to read the short descriptive sentence from my commentator that I have here. This short passage is difficult to interpret, and that’s a Ph.D. who spent their entire career studying Luke. So I just want to make it clear you’re not going to hear the short answer to what’s happening.
00:03:03:10 – 00:03:06:42
Clint Loveall
I like that. They say difficult to interpret and then don’t interpret.
00:03:06:46 – 00:03:29:03
Michael Gewecke
While they’re good. I mean, there’s a lot of paragraphs to follow, but yeah. So here’s the the things that we hold in tension, right? On one hand, what you have is Jesus giving the disciples explicit instructions. You know, the stuff that I told you to do previous and we had in this study, Jesus saying, you know, go out, don’t take anything.
00:03:29:07 – 00:03:49:30
Michael Gewecke
We talked at that time about how it’s a measure of trust and it’s recognizing for the disciples that God will take care of their needs, that when they’re called to do a task, God will give them enough to accomplish that task. Now, Jesus is literally turning that on its head. He’s now saying at this place, remember when I said that?
00:03:49:35 – 00:04:08:15
Michael Gewecke
Now you need to take it, take the purse, take the money, take the resources, take the bag. And if you have a cloak, sell it and get a sword. And then the disciples, hey, say, hey, here’s two swords. And if that’s strange and by the way, that is strange enough. I mean, reading Luke coming through here, that that’s a weird kind of reversal.
00:04:08:27 – 00:04:32:29
Michael Gewecke
Then I want to point out is just be reminded in a few short verses when Jesus goes to the garden and is ultimately arrested when it comes to actually using those swords, Jesus forbids it. He says, You know, don’t put that away. You don’t need that. So there’s a lot of tensions and attacks like this. I mean, the point is we’re not going to resolve them all up.
00:04:32:38 – 00:04:57:43
Michael Gewecke
This surely meant something. When Jesus said it, it surely meant something that Luke understood it and included it. And whatever that is, we’re not certain of its exact importance. We’re not going to be able to deliver that to you. But but clearly, Clayton, if you look at the whole of Scripture and the whole of Luke’s account, taking swords is not the predominant themes.
00:04:57:43 – 00:05:04:40
Michael Gewecke
I mean, that we can be certain why it exists in this section of this text. You know, we’re going to be speculating.
00:05:04:45 – 00:05:30:34
Clint Loveall
Yeah. And it’s, you know, it is possible that what Luke is showing is is a misunderstanding on the part of the disciples as well. The idea that Jesus is saying we’re at a moment where the world is going to become offensive, as in trying to get to you. Offensive not in the I’m offended, but in the there coming after you.
00:05:30:39 – 00:06:00:43
Clint Loveall
And that that is going to be a change that it’s going to become dangerous for disciples and believers. And you could you could probably live there. I mean, you could probably be comfortable with that. But for this last line, they said, here are swords. And he said, it’s enough. And what does he mean? What do they mean? Why do they have two swords at the Passover supper?
00:06:00:48 – 00:06:30:06
Clint Loveall
What the whole thing is, is odd. And, you know, when we have these moments that we come to scripture for and it doesn’t speak clearly to us, I think rather than get troubled by that, we simply try to concede there must have been something there, but perhaps we missed it. Maybe we’ll continue to work on it. Maybe there will be a day that that it says something clear.
00:06:30:07 – 00:06:54:41
Clint Loveall
In the meantime, I think we try to not get I think it is dangerous to put most of our focus on passages that we least understand that there is enough challenge in trying to live up to what we do understand that I think these passages are risky for us because if we become obsessed with them, we likely miss the bigger points.
00:06:54:41 – 00:07:13:21
Clint Loveall
Trying to chase our tail on the smaller ones. And so I do think there’s room for caution. But we we tried to tell you at the beginning of this study and throughout, we will do our best to be honest with you, when we don’t have an answer. And I would say speaking, at least for myself, we don’t have one today.
00:07:13:26 – 00:07:36:52
Michael Gewecke
The only thing I might add, if you’re interested in this, this commentator who I previously pointed out said this is difficult to interpret. The upshot of what they had to offer at the end was that turning to this quote, which is actually a quote from the Old Testament, this idea had been counted among the lawless about what is written about me is being fulfilled.
00:07:36:55 – 00:08:05:11
Michael Gewecke
This is from Isaiah. The idea that the commentary lifts up is that that potentially we read these swords as being a recognition of the crisis that’s about to happen, that it’s in some ways symbolic of the way that this this worldly kingdom is now going to come in direct conflict, conflict with the heavenly kingdom clenched. That’s one commentator’s way of trying to gloss this in a way that makes sense to the modern reader.
00:08:05:11 – 00:08:24:18
Michael Gewecke
And I don’t offer it to you as a solution. I just simply offer it is that’s the kind of thing that we’re going to have to do with a difficult text like this. We’re going to have to say, okay, it’s a bump in the text. It lives outside of what we have seen in Luke, the predominant themes, the predominant message of the of the story of the gospel.
00:08:24:18 – 00:08:44:18
Michael Gewecke
So now that it comes. Yeah. I think you you rightly ask us, are we going to be troubled by it or are we going to recognize the the disruption, recognize the bump to the text and then will we we move on trusting that that the words that are clear are enough to guide our faith into the future?
00:08:44:25 – 00:09:04:46
Clint Loveall
Yeah. And along with that, I think to focus on the parts of the passage that maybe do make some sense to us. So when Jesus says, Did you lack anything? And they said No, but he said to them, but now, in other words, Jesus is warning them that things are on the cusp of changing. And I do think that’s instructive, that part of the text.
00:09:04:46 – 00:09:31:13
Clint Loveall
I think we can resonate with that. They they stand at a precarious place in which following Jesus is now going to be different than it was. It’s about to change. And Jesus is warning them. The warning he gives them is a difficult one for us to understand, but the reason he gives them those words seems clearer that now things are different.
00:09:31:13 – 00:09:42:16
Clint Loveall
And I think maybe at least that’s some helpful gen roll guidance or at least a signpost in a particular direction, even if we don’t understand all the particulars.
00:09:42:18 – 00:10:21:33
Michael Gewecke
I would add to that, looking at this text, the thing that is clear and it’s clear throughout all of the gospels, to be honest with you, comes in verse 37. This scripture must be fulfilled. The idea of fulfillment is written into every gospel that Jesus is not some kind of departure from God’s plan, but is actually embedded in God’s historical work amongst humanity, that Jesus fulfills all of that that came before all of the promises, all of the yearnings, all of the the God given desires that in Jesus that finds complete embodiment, literally.
00:10:21:34 – 00:11:03:46
Michael Gewecke
I mean, we talk about incarnation, but that fulfillment here does stand in that long line of saying that Jesus is making those things that were promises real and that everything that will follow Jesus will be in response to the fulfillment that’s happened in him. So, yes, while while some of the details of this account may strike us as being novel or new in the reading of Luke, I think that scenes like this are in every gospel, and I think that there are reflection of Jesus’s real teaching that he wasn’t coming to do this new thing that had no historical antecedent.
00:11:03:46 – 00:11:22:25
Michael Gewecke
No, he he was coming to be part of the thing that God had intended all along. That’s the fulfillment of God’s providential work. And so once again, we see that reflected in this text. And that’s a thing that we can both understand. We can find other reference to throughout the Gospels and we can hold on to.
00:11:22:30 – 00:11:50:49
Clint Loveall
Yeah, and, and we apologize. To give you a short study on a confusing passage for the end of the week, but I think it’s in our best interest if we stop there and if we look at the transition that’s happening next week so that we can keep some of those stories together because it does mark a change that not only a change of location, but a change of pace, a change of setting, a change of purpose.
00:11:50:49 – 00:12:08:51
Clint Loveall
I think in the next stories and I think I think we will be better served to leave them together or try and deal with them kind of back to back next week. And so we’ll move on from there, taking whatever we can from it. And we’re grateful that you join us as we discussed it.
00:12:08:56 – 00:12:18:15
Michael Gewecke
Yeah, if you haven’t yet I would subscribe because the As Holy Week continues. Luke’s text will only go deeper. So look forward to seeing you next week. And until then, be blessed.
00:12:18:16 – 00:12:18:57
Clint Loveall
Thanks everybody.