Luke 5:12-26

Transcript

00:00:01:04 – 00:00:29:54
Clint Loveall
Welcome back, everyone. Thanks for joining us. If you are with us and tried to be with us yesterday, grateful to be back. Sorry about a little hiccup with the computers system yesterday, but good to be with you today as we continue through the fifth chapter of the Gospel of Luke. We’re in the 12th verse. Just a reminder, the last time we were together, there was a Jesus calling disciples.

00:00:30:18 – 00:00:50:29
Clint Loveall
We had that fishermen. Now, today we see a couple of stories. Luke Kind of front loads a lot of the healing type stories and shows that Jesus continues that work. And so we get two of those today, go through the first one quickly, then we’ll get into the second one. Once when he was in one of the cities, there was a man covered with leprosy.

00:00:50:52 – 00:01:13:57
Clint Loveall
When he saw Jesus, he bowed with his face to the ground and he begged him, Lord. If you choose, you can make me clean. Then Jesus stretched out his hand, touched him, and said, I do choose. Be made clean. Immediately the leprosy left him and he ordered him to tell no one Go, he said, and show yourself to the priest.

00:01:13:57 – 00:01:39:19
Clint Loveall
And as Moses commanded, make an offering for your cleansing. For a testimony to them. But now, more than ever, the word about Jesus spread abroad, and many crowds would gather to hear him and to be cured of their diseases. But he would withdraw to deserted places and pray. There’s a range of things in the New Testament that are likely referred to as leprosy.

00:01:39:34 – 00:02:04:12
Clint Loveall
Leprosy in our day and age, at least in the part of the world we live, is not a serious concern, though it is in other places. This may be isn’t the leprosy we know, but the danger of those diseases in Jesus day was that they separated people from their communities. So there they are, isolated, they’re often ostracized. They’re kind of kept out on their own in most cases.

00:02:04:13 – 00:02:33:19
Clint Loveall
The other thing theologically true about leprosy is leprosy was considered to be one of the things that really only God could heal in the in the Jewish world, at least to be healed of leprosy was considered nothing short of divine miracle at the very hand of God and so when we have this story, Jesus heals a leper. There’s this very interesting language, Lord, if you choose and Jesus responds, I do choose to be made clean.

00:02:34:37 – 00:03:18:07
Clint Loveall
And then we get this this idea immediately. The leprosy left him. So with a word here with a with a sentence, Jesus claims that shows the extent of his authority. And then in keeping with know Jewish tradition, go show yourself to the priest. Make an offering. Michael, I don’t know that there’s anything shocking here shattering. This is a kind of story that in all of the gospels, the one part that may be of interest is that he tells Jesus or I’m sorry that Jesus tells him, you know, don’t say anything, but that is that’s not uncommon.

00:03:18:07 – 00:03:26:47
Clint Loveall
We can unpack that a little bit more. But I think in regard to the miracle here, pretty clear cut, pretty standard. We see something like this in all the gospels.

00:03:27:00 – 00:03:50:58
Michael Gewecke
Yeah, I think that there’s just a couple interesting details that are worth really pointing out here. One of the things we want to make mention of is when we look here at this idea of the men covered with leprosy, not just some leprosy, but covered in it, we might think of that as being a reflection of a medical condition, and we might even relate that to the thing that today we call leprosy.

00:03:51:16 – 00:04:13:26
Michael Gewecke
And I think it’s worth noting that Luke, though a doctor, is not working with our current generation medical terminology. And I think what we need to see in leprosy that we might miss if we don’t slow down and intentionally look into it, is it’s not just describing a disease which needs to be treated. It’s not just a health condition.

00:04:13:44 – 00:04:40:48
Michael Gewecke
It’s also and maybe in some ways more prominently a social condition, because what this means for a person is a complete removal from society. And in fact, other scholars point out you’re one of the odd details of this text is that Jesus encounters this leper in verse 12 here. One of the cities. That’s actually a strange thing. Social code would not have allowed lepers into one of the cities.

00:04:40:48 – 00:05:04:21
Michael Gewecke
And so, you know, commentators point out that may be a reflection of this being a smaller place further away from Jerusalem, the big city, the idea that the rules might be a little bit more lax here, but largely when we look at this idea of leprosy, it is is speaking to this social sin, this social sickness that separates one from the community that’s really important.

00:05:04:42 – 00:05:35:22
Michael Gewecke
There’s also historical and biblical precedent for stories like this where, you know, in the Old Testament you have the prophet Elisha healing people with leprosy. Jesus is very much living into that prophetic role in releasing people from that kind of separation from others and by healing their bodies. And of course, you know, Clint, to your point, you’re going to miss if you go through attacks like this and this is going to be true throughout all of Luke.

00:05:35:22 – 00:05:58:37
Michael Gewecke
And it’s honestly the theme shared throughout all the gospels. It’s it’s tempting to get fixated here on the miracle, how it happened is, you know, who the characters are, what difference that makes, or in some cases, who the opponents of Jesus are reflected in that story. All of that is interesting, but we would be remiss here to miss that this is a point about Jesus in his authority.

00:05:58:37 – 00:06:29:49
Michael Gewecke
Jesus has the power to do this work and Jesus has the will to do this work. In this case, it’s literally in the voice of this sick man, Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean. Jesus’s response I do choose, be made clean. That that is the kind of power that Luke is showing us here. And Jesus is very much living into that messianic, prophetic sign of God role that Luke has already inaugurated the text.

00:06:30:19 – 00:07:06:00
Clint Loveall
And and we want to you know, I think to some extent, these texts are not generally concerned with the psychology, but I do think when there are significant moments, we want to point them out not advocating that that’s exactly what the text means, but there’s something in the text to learn. And so one of the striking things here is that Luke tells us Jesus stretched out his hand and touched the leper and that that’s just unthinkable in the context that that is shocking.

00:07:06:23 – 00:07:37:21
Clint Loveall
It’s forbidden that Jesus touches this man. And yes, the physical healing is the point of the story. But but imagine if you are a person considered unclean and if if people are afraid of you, then imagine what it means that Jesus would lay his hand on you, that there is something beautiful, there’s something profound in that, something shocking in that, I think.

00:07:37:21 – 00:07:55:04
Clint Loveall
And we shouldn’t we want to be careful not to just simply read past details of the story like that, because that may seem like nothing to us, but I assure you that is not nothing to this man and to the people who saw this happen.

00:07:55:28 – 00:08:20:11
Michael Gewecke
Another thing I would add very briefly here, Clint, is we’re about to move on to this next healing story. And it might seem to us like a pretty significant jump in tone, but I think we already see some connections between the story that’s about to come, because here know this. What happens after the healing in verse 14, Jesus then tells this man, Show yourself to the priest, as Moses commanded, Make an offering for your cleansing for our testimony to them.

00:08:20:11 – 00:08:45:43
Michael Gewecke
Jesus is calling this man to live out what is expected and required. Jesus, in fact, is sending him to the priest. So let’s make it very clear at this juncture here, Jesus is not anti organized religion. Jesus is not anti the teachings of Moses. Jesus is both the one who is able to heal this man and does he so chooses to do so.

00:08:46:02 – 00:09:15:45
Michael Gewecke
But also Jesus is calling this man to go through the proper steps so that he can come back into society. So on one hand, this is Jesus inviting this man to the next part of his healing, the restoration to his community. But also it’s setting us up with what’s about to be another healing story that is going you’re going to see as we read it together, that it’s got conflict built into it with the religious community.

00:09:15:45 – 00:09:26:22
Michael Gewecke
And so Luke is already beginning to weave this thread. The first story doesn’t involve conflict, but it already prepares us as the reader for the conflict that’s about to come.

00:09:26:25 – 00:09:49:12
Clint Loveall
Yeah, and to your point earlier, Michael, just to point out the practice of the day, because leprosy is not only a physical disease but a danger to the community, It has a kind of two step healing process. There’s the physical healing of the disease, but then the priest must certify someone as ready to reenter society. In other words, no longer a danger.

00:09:49:12 – 00:10:13:24
Clint Loveall
That had to be confirmed in the Jewish context by a priest that, yes, this healing is real. And yes, you can return to your life. So the medical healing is only part of a two step process when it comes to leprosy. Verse 16 He would draw withdraw to deserted places. We were going to see that in Luke, see that to some extent in all the gospels.

00:10:13:55 – 00:10:39:28
Clint Loveall
In Luke, there’s a real ebb and flow between Jesus being with people and then being by himself. That’s just part of the way the story is told. Then we get into a story that you probably know, though I think for most people this isn’t the gospel out of which they generally know it. I think other versions of the story may be more popular, but you’ll see it here and you will recognize it.

00:10:39:28 – 00:10:59:07
Clint Loveall
So I try to read it quickly so we can then spend some time with it one day while teaching Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting nearby. They’d come from every village of Galilee and Judea, from Jerusalem, and the power of the Lord was with Jesus to heal. Just then, some men came, carrying a paralyzed man on the bed.

00:10:59:07 – 00:11:17:06
Clint Loveall
They were trying to bring him in and lay him before Jesus, but finding no way to bring him in because of the crown. They went up to the roof and they let him down with his bed through the tiles in the middle of the crowd in front of Jesus. When he saw their faith, he said, Friend, your sins are forgiven.

00:11:17:06 – 00:11:48:05
Clint Loveall
Then the scribes and the Pharisees began to question, Who is this speaking? Blasphemies? Who could forgive sin, but God? Then Jesus perceived their questioning and he answered them, Why do you raise such questions in your hearts? Which is easier to say your sins are forgiven, or to say, Stand up and walk. But so you may know that the son of man has authority on Earth to forgive, since he said to the one who was paralyzed, I say to you, stand up, take your bed and go home immediately.

00:11:48:05 – 00:12:09:05
Clint Loveall
He stood up before them, took what he had been lying on and went to his home, glorifying God, amazement, seized all of them and they glorified God and were filled with all saying, We have seen strange things today. This is one of those stories I think you learn young and it just kind of sticks with you. It’s visual.

00:12:09:23 – 00:12:35:34
Clint Loveall
There’s wonderful lessons here about the power of friendship in these men who carry the paralyzed man, their faith in Jesus, I suppose to some extent the Paralympics, faith in them as he’s lowered through the roof. But all of those things are wonderful. All of those things are interesting and they’re great for devotional reading. But the core the crux of this story is that Jesus is encounter.

00:12:35:34 – 00:12:59:38
Clint Loveall
He encounters this man. He’s confronted with this man who was paralyzed, and he says a strange things thing to him, Friend, you’re sins are forgiven. And in it, very occasionally in the church history, that has led people to think that this man’s connects condition excuse me is connected to some sin. That’s not at all apparent in the story.

00:13:00:23 – 00:13:27:43
Clint Loveall
It looks as though perhaps Jesus is setting up maybe setting up a conflict here. Your sins are forgiven. And then, of course, the religious leaders find this to be blasphemous. No one can forgive sin. But God. How could you say this? And then Jesus puts them on the spot saying, Well, do you think it’d be easier to tell him to get up and walk?

00:13:28:48 – 00:13:59:42
Clint Loveall
Then he does. And again, there’s that word. Immediately he stood up and he went home, glorifying God. Amazement seized all of them, and they glorify God. And we’re filled with all saying we have strange things. What’s interesting in Luke is amazement seized all of them. And Luke doesn’t really draw a distinction here between the Pharisees, the religious leaders and the crowd in other places.

00:13:59:42 – 00:14:24:01
Clint Loveall
We we see a kind of Jesus has gotten one up on them and they’re angered by that. Here you can read Luke to almost say that they, too, were among those who were amazed at this point in the story. We’ve not really seen a lot of conflict yet, though. They did just accuse Jesus of blasphemy. At least they were saying that to themselves and Jesus perceived it.

00:14:24:19 – 00:14:52:04
Clint Loveall
So this version of the story, Michael, is is a little less it’s harder to kind of divide up teams in Luke’s version of this story. And it would be very a may even be very interesting to be able to determine when Luke says amazement sees them all, who exactly does he have in mind? I think that’s an interesting wrinkle in this version of the story.

00:14:52:48 – 00:15:16:51
Michael Gewecke
We should not miss that. This in Luke’s telling of it, is a kind of collection of religious leaders. There’s a kind of upping the ante happening in this story because we see that they’ve come from every village of Galilee, Judea, Jerusalem is included in that list. So that’s a little bit like the big city bigwigs being present at the this story.

00:15:16:51 – 00:15:47:33
Michael Gewecke
So Luke bookends this story by telling us how many religious leaders are present. And then to Clint’s point, and I think it’s a very helpful point, the kind of openness to the all at the end of this story does leave us, the reader, wondering if even the religious leaders themselves are astonished and moved by this this story. But clearly, if you look at the text, Jesus is perceiving their questionings.

00:15:47:51 – 00:16:11:38
Michael Gewecke
It’s not even that they are coming to Jesus and making argument. Jesus knows the thoughts and intense of that, the question, the heart, the the doubt that is happening and, you know, I think that this text is well-remembered because especially in the book, like Mark, this story is told in a really beautiful way. But here this story is visual.

00:16:11:38 – 00:16:33:21
Michael Gewecke
The idea of the friend being let down that that help from the friends. I mean, there’s so many rich images we would all want to apply to our own life of faith. We would hope that we would have those friends in our life who would do the same for us. We would hope that we would trust Jesus to forgive our sins and then to find ourselves healed in every aspect of our life, including our our physical brokenness.

00:16:33:32 – 00:17:02:00
Michael Gewecke
I mean, all of this is good, but you say that and then realize I think our temptation here is to miss that this is a story about Jesus. Not astonishing. The crowd, because of the healing or because of the faith of the friends or because of these different elements is because Jesus has claimed to be God and then proven his ability to heal as a way of proving his contention that He is God.

00:17:02:09 – 00:17:28:08
Michael Gewecke
That this is a story about Jesus being accused of blasphemy, which if you grow up Christian and you go to Sunday school and you learn this story, the thing that might strike us is the miraculous nature of the healing. What struck the Pharisees that day is that this man is claiming divine Sonship, which is blasphemous. It is an honor, acceptable theological statement.

00:17:28:08 – 00:17:54:32
Michael Gewecke
Jesus is making a universal claim here, and Luke is introducing us as the reader to that claim simultaneously. Well, I mean, we’ve seen that in Jesus’s sermon to his home congregation already, but. But your Jesus repeats that in a substantial way. And then we see that joined with power. And this is a Luke in theme that just continues to advance down the road.

00:17:54:32 – 00:18:14:36
Michael Gewecke
And it’s going to continue to drive more and more opposition and conflict because of how unacceptable of a blasphemous theological statement it is. And I’m just trying to make the case we shouldn’t let that pass by us. We may be familiar with this, but this is Jesus is making a very strong claim in a story like this.

00:18:14:56 – 00:18:36:55
Clint Loveall
Yeah. And he does so in an interesting way. This is, I think, the first time we’ve seen Jesus refer to him himself as son of man. It won’t be the last son of man is for Bible scholars. It’s a fascinating title because it’s it’s unique. It’s attributed to the Old Testament. Though the Old Testament doesn’t do a great deal with it.

00:18:37:22 – 00:19:01:30
Clint Loveall
And so it is kind of open ended. And for Jesus to use it of himself, which he does in the Gospel of Luke, pretty consist entirely, is is an interesting trait, an interesting theme in the text. It it has an Old Testament reference. It’s not a term that was necessarily reserved for the Messiah. It’s not an offensive term.

00:19:01:30 – 00:19:28:49
Clint Loveall
It’s not claiming, In fact, many believe that perhaps one of the reasons Jesus used it is because it didn’t have a strong connotation with anything else, and it allowed him to kind of define the term for himself or allowed us to define the term based on his usage of it. But it is interesting. We’ll see it more. I think the other thing, you know, Luke has such a neat way with words, Michael.

00:19:28:49 – 00:19:55:15
Clint Loveall
We get to the end and he in the words of the crowd we hear, we have seen strange things today. And again, I think sometimes those of us who had the opportunity or maybe the good fortune to be in church and to hear the stories, we we sometimes be as they become familiar to us, we sometimes lose the strangeness of them.

00:19:55:15 – 00:20:16:03
Clint Loveall
But think about, had you been at that house that day, First of all, there’s people digging through the roof. Second of all, there’s Pharisees arguing about who can forgive sins. Third of all, there’s a paralyzed man who gets up and walk and carries is I mean, there is strange at every layer of this story. And that’s more than just a passing detail.

00:20:16:03 – 00:20:40:49
Clint Loveall
That’s an opportunity, an invitation for us to remember what it must have been like to encounter the otherness of Jesus, the strangeness, the the kind of thing that one didn’t interact with, didn’t encounter very often. And so I just, you know, Luke could have just as well drawn a smiley face. So, you know, we have seen strange things that day.

00:20:40:49 – 00:21:00:54
Clint Loveall
Yeah. Yeah. No kidding. It it is as strange as it gets. And we we can take that for granted because we know the stories. We’ve heard them a hundred times. We forget how stunning this is and how at various levels this text is very intriguing, very engaging, and to use Luke’s word, strange.

00:21:01:24 – 00:21:31:24
Michael Gewecke
Yeah, not just strange even to intensify. I that amazement seized them. I mean, that is beautiful language. And I think Luke is conveying really effectively that the people encountering Jesus this day are put off center, that the assumptions that they make or the beliefs that they put upon him are being disjointed by the reality of what he can say and what he does simultaneously.

00:21:31:24 – 00:21:58:12
Michael Gewecke
And that reminds me of that text where the the crowd mentioned in the synagogue that this man teaches with authority, that this is the kind of thing that’s joined together intimately in Jesus’s life in ministry. Amazement sees them. We have seen strange things. If our lives are going to be marked by an encounter of Jesus, there will be some amazement at some step of that journey, and we too will see strange things.

00:21:58:22 – 00:22:05:47
Michael Gewecke
But some of that is if we’re willing to open our eyes to see those strange things and that is a regular part of the practice of faith.

00:22:05:58 – 00:22:29:54
Clint Loveall
One of the things Luke does really well, just quickly to end here is groups things together. And so in these two stories we’ve seen, we really the theme is sort of restoration. We have a man with leprosy whose body is restored and then his social connections are restored. Here we have a man whose physical state, his movement, his peril paralyzed Asian.

00:22:30:03 – 00:22:59:07
Clint Loveall
He is physically restored. But don’t forget that Jesus also proclaimed him to be forgiven of his sins. Now, whether that’s because this man had some hidden sin, we don’t know. But the end is the same. Regardless, this man is restored physically and spiritually. So we have two healing stories restoration of body in two instances in social community and in a return to life in both instances.

00:22:59:20 – 00:23:26:16
Clint Loveall
And this idea that wholeness has not only to do with our body, but also the forgiveness of our sins. His soul is restored as well, which is a little nod, a little precursor in Luke to some of the things that are coming up. And so Luke does a really nice job of lumping some of those things together. And in a subtle way, in this case, really unpacking the same theme in a variety of ways.

00:23:26:16 – 00:23:28:49
Clint Loveall
And I think you see done really well here.

00:23:29:15 – 00:23:45:43
Michael Gewecke
And that’s a really great summary and a great place to end of the only note that we have to offer here the day, if you made it this far into the video is we are on break for a week here. We will return next Tuesday with the next part of this study. So just be aware will be out for a few days.

00:23:46:03 – 00:24:06:32
Michael Gewecke
If you have not yet subscribed, we would love to have you do that. It’s a great way to keep up with these studies as they go. We’re just three away from hitting 500, so we’d love for you to do that. And of course give this video like it helps people in the future when they’re trying to study, find this passage and certainly give us a comment with questions or thoughts.

00:24:06:50 – 00:24:10:04
Michael Gewecke
We look forward to seeing you as we continue the study next Tuesday.

00:24:10:04 – 00:24:18:45
Clint Loveall
Thanks, everybody.