Luke

Hello and welcome to what is, I believe,
the fourth episode of the Pastor Talk podcast.
If you’re counting, we are glad that you are joining us today.
We are going to be turning
our full attention this week to the book of Luke.
Having finished the first two Gospels,
we get to turn our attention to the third synoptic Gospel,
as it’s called by biblical scholars,
and we’ll get to see in it a different vantage of who Jesus was and what He did and said.
And so, we’re excited to jump into the conversation with you again today.
Yeah, welcome.
A couple of things to look for as we go through the Gospel of Luke.
Luke is probably the most careful of the biblical authors.
Luke is written in the best Greek,
the best grammar, whoever Luke was, and we suspect he might have been the physician described in the comfortable with language.
This whole Gospel is crafted like a history, like a story.
He even says in the beginning here,
“I wanted to carefully investigate everything and then write an orderly
account.” And it feels that way.
It feels orderly.
It goes somewhere.
It builds toward a conclusion,
very different than the Gospel of Mark,
which is a little frantic,
a little haphazard.
Luke is a much more careful storyteller in that regard, I think.
Absolutely.
And we’ll probably talk a little bit more about the Mark-Luke thing.
But would you
agree with this, Clint, that if we didn’t have Luke—I’m going to make this statement—if we didn’t have Luke,
there would be no Christmas program as we know it.
Is that a fair statement?
There’d be no shepherds.
There’d be no choir of angels.
Yeah, we’d be missing a lot.
I mean,
really,
Luke provides for us a great deal of our Jesus’ birth and early life,
kind of, stories.
In fact, it’s only in Luke where we have the story of Jesus going to the temple,
in fact, twice as a baby,
as an infant, and then as a young man.
And that’s really the only biblical
glimpse into the childhood life of Jesus,
say, for him going to Egypt in the other Gospels.
Yeah, we’d have no innkeeper.
We’d have no inn.
We would not have the sheep.
We wouldn’t have the manger.
All of that is in Luke.
And we should say on the front end,
I think, Michael, that one of Luke’s driving concerns is the poor and the downcast and the left out.
And if you look,
you don’t have to get very far into the birth narratives before you encounter that.
Mary and Joseph appear not to have a great deal of resources.
They’re put out of the inn.
The birth is not announced as it is in Matthew by a star to wise astronomers from the far country
who bring extravagant gifts.
It’s shepherds who are working in the fields at night.
There’s just right away in the very front page of the Gospel,
we get this idea that Luke loves down on their luck,
hard case people and cares about them deeply.
And the Jesus described in all the Gospels does too,
but I think we see that nowhere more clearly than Luke.
Without a question,
you’re going to find throughout the entire book of Luke,
the lost,
the least,
the downcast being lifted up by Jesus.
And Luke is clearly presenting for us this side of
Jesus, which is important.
And we’re going to run across it in lots and lots of different ways.
But if it wasn’t for Luke,
we really wouldn’t have this story of Mary and Elizabeth.
We would not have this story of Zechariah and the whole going mute and John the Baptist.
And Luke really,
it’s not just that Luke flushes out Jesus’ story.
He flushes out so much more of the context leading
up to Jesus that the Gospel writers really don’t provide.
I mean, Mark, Jesus shows up and stuff
has happened in day one.
Matthew gives you a little bit of that,
but it’s all with the orientation of prophecy and fulfillment.
Luke is really almost giving what feels like a historical account.
Yeah.
And it gets overshadowed because of Jesus’ birth as it should.
But we get the John the Baptist birth story in Luke as well.
And the whole front end of that feels
kind of Old Testament-ish.
We have a priest who doubts an angelic vision and is mute.
His wife is unable to bear a child,
but they’re promised.
We see that over and over again in the Old Testament.
And in this case,
as many cases in the Old Testament,
that child is for knowledge or
predicted to be a prophet,
a great prophet.
That all comes to pass as is spoken by the angel,
which is, of course,
what we expect as the reader.
The other thing that the early chapters of Luke shows,
almost poetic,
Zechariah’s prophecy,
Mary’s song called the Magnificat that has been set to
music and is probably known by many people,
the song of the angels,
the rejoicing of the shepherds.
There’s almost a musical quality to some of these words that are written.
Again, Luke is not just
writing down details.
Luke is crafting closer to art here,
I think, than the other gospels.
Absolutely.
And I think that’s a statement that applies across this entire book.
This isn’t just the beginning, though.
I think you’re pointing out some particular examples of it.
Luke is clearly an expert writer.
Luke is writing what is not only an account of Jesus’s life,
but Luke’s writing a
kind of literature here because you’re going to see similar stories.
You’re going to see,
in some cases, the exact same story of things that Jesus said and did in the previous gospels.
But whereas when you finish Matthew and you read Mark,
I felt like,
oh, okay,
here’s the little section that
could have been copy pasted.
When you get to Luke,
there’s often setting up transitions.
Jesus is changing locations,
and there’s setting and location and character changes.
It’s not better or worse.
It’s not a better gospel than any of the others.
But I do think in some ways,
in the way it’s been composed and crafted,
it is more nuanced.
You know more about photography than I do,
but there are those pictures that you see where the focus is very clear in the foreground,
but the background is somewhat fuzzy and slightly out of focus.
That’s not Luke.
In Luke, the foreground of Jesus is crystal clear,
but in addition, you get to see behind that.
And as you look at the
background, I think Luke has painstakingly made it possible for us to see clarity in the
behind-the-scenes stuff as well.
I mean, nobody else tells us about Jesus going to the temple to
be circumcised and named and Simeon and Anna.
Nobody else dedicates a gospel.
By the way, the word theophilus, if you run into that in the first couple of verses,
that means lover of God,
the one who loves God.
Nobody else tells us about Jesus being 12 and amazing the priests and the
scholars with what he knows already of the Torah and of preaching and teaching.
We don’t see anything like that in any of the other gospels.
And without Luke,
I think we would have a less
complete picture, a fuzzy background.
You know, this is a book that I would personally hand to a
person who really didn’t know the Jesus story because I think it’s accessible.
I think it
presents Jesus’s story with all of its integrity.
It’s not like John.
When you get to John,
you’re going to be struck by something that might seem completely different.
Luke just tells Jesus’s story in a way that not only knits it all together,
but it slowly builds.
Well, you said it before we started recording here.
It’s sort of like a long crescendo up to
the end of Jesus’s purpose.
And it’s really put together well.
And by the way,
it’s not by accident that our confirmation students read the book of Luke.
They read through one book every confirmation season.
And Luke is the book that we chose for that very reason.
Yeah, I think there is a good case to be made that Luke is the best gospel to start with in some sense.
It’s also probably unfortunate that because of the way the gospels are arranged,
we’ve separated Luke and Acts,
which we know to be the first and second chapter.
The same author wrote both of them.
And Acts really continues.
You’ll notice how abruptly the book of Luke ends.
There’s no great commission.
There’s no ascension.
There’s just,
well, there’s an ascension, but it just happens and leaves you sort of with the what next question,
which then the book of Acts
takes up and answers.
But because of the way the gospels are arranged,
Luke stands on its own.
But yeah, to your point, Michael,
it’s a good first gospel to read for sure.
Yeah, and I wouldn’t put it.
It’s not a better gospel.
It’s not qualitatively.
It is just doing
its own thing.
But I think it’s really, it’s really accessible.
And I think it may be in its accessibility.
And maybe after finishing the first two gospels,
you might be tempted to go on autopilot on Luke,
possibly,
that may not be true.
But if you find yourself sort of just reading on
without catching, you know, try to slow yourself down.
There’s, there’s a lot of good stuff here.
One of the things scholars argue about is where Luke got some of his stuff because there are some
beloved parts of Luke that aren’t present in Matthew, Mark, or John.
And we’ll point those
out as we go.
But Luke has access to some other Jesus material that for whatever reason the other gospels don’t include.
And we’re glad that he did because it’s wonderful stuff.
It’s the good
Absolutely.
And some of the stories are told in a way that gives us a totally different
vantage.
Let’s just point out,
Jesus begins his earthly ministry in chapter four.
He reads the prophet from Isaiah,
and he sits down after saying, you know,
the Spirit of the Lord is on me and
because he’s anointed me.
And by the way,
it’s not on accident to proclaim good news to the poor.
And the crowd is angry and takes him out of the city to throw him off a cliff.
And that is,
in many ways,
Luke in a nutshell,
Jesus stands up says, I’m here.
I’m good news for the poor and the outcast.
And that makes people mad.
Yeah. And again, as you mentioned, no coincidence that Luke starts by telling us that Jesus first message is good news to the poor released to the captives
recovery of sight to the blind.
These are Luke’s passions.
These are the themes that he loves.
And let’s pause here and talk about healing for a second,
maybe because I think we read the
scriptures at a completely different time and place.
We may miss the fact that healing,
which is something we can certainly all understand the value of.
We’ve all been sick.
We all know family members or loved ones who’ve been very sick.
We can all sort of experience that desire
for our bodies to be healed.
I think when Jesus is healing in Luke,
Luke not only recognizes the
importance of the physical body being restored,
but for Luke, it’s also a pointer,
a sign to the
fact that the kingdom of God is writing the world,
that the things in the world are broken and sick,
that the deepest part of our bodies is also a reflection of God choosing to take the thing
that is wrong and make it right.
And that is not only spiritual,
that’s not only justice for the
oppressed, it’s also bodies being re-knit together because that’s the creative action of God in the world.
Yeah.
And I think there’s even a sense in Luke where Jesus is kind of the one who balances
the scales.
If you’ve had hard things in life,
the promise of the kingdom is good things.
If you’ve had good things in life and have taken them for granted or abused them,
then the promise is
you lose them.
They will be removed from you,
taken from you.
And there is that sense I think
in Luke that if you’ve experienced hardship, physical,
if your health has been poor,
if you’ve been beaten down,
Jesus is the one that sets things right in your favor.
Absolutely.
You know,
some have argued that Luke’s healings are so well described and have
additional information and then this confirms the idea that he was a physician,
the doctor.
And there’s not consensus on that,
but it is interesting at times the care that Luke gives
to describing a person’s condition.
I would say that’s especially jumped out to me in this reading, Clint,
with demon possessed individuals.
Some just very simple things like the boy who would
be thrown to the ground or the descriptions of people drooling.
And it’s just a few things that
almost kind of make you think, huh,
someone knew the right question to ask or I guess it’s a little
bit like Michael Guecky asking.
So, is that an Android phone or is that,
you know, it’s like
there may be an interest reflected there.
Yeah. Well, for instance, since we’re in chapter four here,
when they go to Simon’s house
and it says Simon’s mother-in-law was suffering,
it doesn’t just say she was ill,
she was suffering from a high fever.
That’s the kind of detail description that doesn’t seem to
be as present in the other tellings.
Maybe it’s more obvious in Luke because it’s repeated more often.
Would you agree with the idea?
At least I think I encountered this as we read through Luke.
It felt to me like Jesus’s teachings,
the things shared across the synoptic gospels,
it seemed that they were compiled in groups,
in sections together that were maybe a little
tighter than the other gospels.
The other gospels sometimes let different stories kind
of live next to each other a little bit,
where Luke really kind of packaged them seamlessly.
I think that’s fair.
There are those who have made the case that Luke is the most carefully edited
and that Luke tries to group things together probably with an eye toward making them memorable
in a time when many people couldn’t read.
The idea is that by grouping things of similar themes,
it makes memory work easier for early Christians.
Well certainly also makes reading it easier.
If you have a communal Bible,
you could read one
section of Luke and you could get that core idea of the teaching and you could take that home with you.
The Centurion is an interesting character in the book of Luke who says that he’s unworthy
to have Jesus come under his roof but I’m a person with authority so all you need to do Jesus is say
that it be healed.
That story is not unique to Luke.
But the way he tells it is in that it’s
Jews who come to Jesus and say there’s this Centurion but he’s been good to us,
he helped us rebuild the temple,
he’s done good in our community,
could you help him?
Those details are fascinating and they’re not present in the other gospels.
Yeah and Luke does have this.
This is not clearly just Luke but that idea of faith is pervasive
throughout the entire book.
Obviously the writer wants us to be engaging for ourselves in seeking
to have greater faith.
You know an interesting detail in Luke which we’re going to encounter
in a very different context in John is Jesus’ anointing by the woman.
Luke puts that relatively
early in the gospel and generally that’s cast as sort of an end of story kind of anointing which is interesting.
If I remember correctly,
Luke is divided into three primary sections.
Jesus’ ministry in Galilee,
his journey toward Jerusalem and then the last third essentially
what happens in Jerusalem once he arrives and Luke does foreshadow that with some of those
stories that he seems to have moved earlier.
Yep and I think that’s a great point to mention
Clint that with those let’s call them three movements there’s very differing relationships
with the Pharisees and Sadducees than what you see in the other gospels.
Jesus as he’s farther
away from Jerusalem tends to have maybe this is oversimplifying but he tends to have a little bit
more collegial conversations with the Pharisees and the Sadducees and as Jesus gets progressively
closer to Jerusalem those conversations become more confrontational like what you would see in
Matthew than being most of the time.
Yeah, for me it felt like Luke sort of slow boils the story.
He simmers and as we get closer and closer to the cross the language gets stronger.
You know, Luke saves all his scary end of the world stuff for right before Jesus goes to the cross.
The stories get a little edgier,
the language gets a little harsher,
the conflicts get a little more
prevalent.
That’s a mark of Luke’s storytelling style that he guides us there not just with the
story itself but with the way that he tells the stories that lead to the cross and by the time
we get there we’re on level 10 but we don’t start at level 10.
No and let’s be very clear here
Luke makes it very very obvious throughout the entire gospel that Jesus is still intending
on going to the same place.
I mean Jesus mentions that all the time so specifically says it may be
the most explicit predictions of what are going to happen to him.
Absolutely. It’s just the structure
of how Luke leads us through that story I think is a little bit more seamless.
It’s certainly very well constructed.
As we kind of move toward the middle of the book Michael let’s spend a little
time with some of the material that we know only from Luke.
So the Parable of the Good Samaritan,
a lot of people are going to love that story.
It’s a very interesting story in that Jesus cast
to Samaritan as the hero which would have been pretty problematic for Jewish listeners.
They would have liked probably many of them might have liked the part about the priest and the Levite
not doing well but they would expect a regular Jew to come along and be the hero and by casting
that in the light of Samaritan Jesus turns that story on his head.
I think that’s one of probably
the most politically charged stories in the gospel that I can think of.
I think that one is
hard for us to resonate with in terms of how shocking it must have been for his hearers to
hear that it was a Samaritan.
It’s fascinating to me that Luke in Luke’s construction of the gospel
intentionally and from the very beginning has Acts 2 in mind.
I mean that’s not lost in this and
Acts 2 is the the coming of the spirit,
the speaking in tongues.
The Samaritans are not an enemy
in Luke.
In fact, Luke goes tells us this story that Jesus gives where the where the Samaritan is a hero.
Yes,
in Mark we have the centurion and we have that kind of faith.
We have other examples
of Gentile believers in the other gospels but Luke has a kind of global telling here that I think
is really notable and laudable.
Absolutely and not just in regard to parables there’s the story in Luke 17.
Jesus cleanses 10 lepers and nine of them go on their way probably anxious to get back
to their life and one of them comes back and the one that comes back is a Samaritan and Jesus says
was the only one who returned to give thanks this foreigner,
this outsider.
Again, Luke loves the outsider but so not only does the parable of the good Samaritan highlight the Samaritan as a hero
later on Luke includes a story in which a real Samaritan was a healed by Jesus and then b
unlike nine Jewish people came back to praise Jesus and thank him for what he had done.
Well and let’s not forget the stories in Luke of the bridegroom and the party and you know all of
the well-to-do people can’t make it because their schedules are busy and they’ve got important
things to do and so the master goes and says well go and get the sick and the lame and the
people on the street and bring them in so they can be part of the party.
That stuff’s not on accident
Luke is just repeatedly and really poetically reminding us that Jesus is for the people
who other people don’t send invitations to parties.
Right and again things that we would have missed
as children without the gospel of Luke,
the song about Zacchaeus,
Zacchaeus the wee little man,
that’s Luke,
he’s short, he’s a tax collector,
he’s an outsider, he’s despised and Jesus goes
to him and says I’m coming to your house and then Zacchaeus encountering Jesus says I’m going to
pay back anything I’ve done wrong,
I want to make it right but Jesus is criticized again for being
in the home of a sinner but that that story is also seems to me vintage Luke.
Would it be fair to
say that Luke spends more time describing the outsider,
the Samaritan,
the sick,
the demon possessed and Luke spends more time describing these people almost for their own sake than making
them flashpan arguments for the Pharisees and Sadducees.
I’m just thinking in the other gospels
whenever Jesus is healing an outsider or a sick person that turns to arguments about the Sabbath
pretty quick, that turns into does Jesus have the authority to forgive sins,
is he blaspheming.
In Luke it’s not that those issues aren’t present they certainly are throughout the book you’ll see
them but it’s almost as if Luke also has compassion for these people that these very
people get a short moment in the spotlight for their own sakes.
I think that’s fair Michael,
you know again Luke tends to literalize some of what Matthew spiritualizes for instance
the beatitudes in Matthew we have blessed are those who are poor in spirit,
Luke says blessed are the poor,
period. Matthew, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.
Luke says
blessed are the hungry and the thirsty.
In Matthew there’s this sort of parable about going out and
inviting the lame and the blind.
In Luke this is chapter 14,
it’s instruction.
He says when you
give a banquet invite the poor,
the crippled, the lame and the blind and you will be blessed
because they cannot repay you.
So what Matthew gives us kind of spiritual lesson,
Luke literalizes,
he makes it physical,
go take care of the poor,
they are the blessed ones,
they are the the needy
ones and how you treat them is a litmus test in Luke for what you believe,
true in all the Gospels
but nowhere more true than Luke.
And you have in Luke the absolute joy of God presented in beautiful
ways the stories of the lost coin,
the stories of the prodigal son,
the stories of how when the
lost are found, when the broken are healed,
when good is restored in broken places that God rejoices
in that, that God’s patience and love shines through in that.
The God displayed in Luke
is this beautiful picture of the prodigal son’s father.
Not only is he willing to accept that son back,
he’s waiting, he’s actively waiting for the son to return and then when the son shows up the
father runs to him which is a culturally shameful thing to do.
So I wonder if even within some of
beloved stories that we know and have and cherish in Luke,
if there aren’t some of those distinctives
very clearly shown that the father in Luke is looking out for the lost son and that’s good news in Luke.
Yeah,
that Luke 15 is called the lost chapter sometimes,
it’s three parables, the lost sheep, the lost coin and then the lost son,
we call it the prodigal son.
Just a quick count,
I think the word celebrate or rejoice is used six or seven times in 30 verses.
So God is the one who
rejoices when the lost are found.
God is the one who finds joy in the restoration of people,
the reconciliation of relationships.
It wouldn’t be surprising if the 15th chapter is most people’s
favorite chapter of Luke.
I mean, it’s beautiful,
it’s well done and really compelling idea that God
is the one who goes looking for the lost and when finding them rather than scolding them and saying
I told you so, says welcome home,
let’s celebrate.
I mean, that’s a beautiful image,
it’s beautifully written, it’s compelling.
Exactly,
absolutely.
But here’s the problem,
is you get done with 15
and now you have to read 16 and that I think Clint is one of the beautiful things about reading the
whole gospel through like this.
It’s because I would much rather preach 15 than 16 and the person
listening here is like,
what happens in 16?
But let’s talk a little bit about the shrewd manager here.
I have a question mark next to chapter 16 in my Bible.
The parable of the dishonest manager,
he steals from his boss,
his boss is going to fire him and in response he goes and cuts some deals
that he no longer has the authority to make with other clients so that he can get favor from them
and you expect this guy is going to get blasted.
Jesus is going to say that that guy had terrible
things happen to him and Jesus says make friends of dishonest wealth,
which is maybe a harsh translation,
make friends by means of wealth so that when it’s gone they may welcome you into eternal homes.
Lots of ink spilled through the years on what to make of a parable like that.
Best guess is this is Luke’s way of saying nothing is more important than the good news,
than the gospel and use your resources accordingly,
maybe?
That’s a guess at the parable.
Let’s go a few paragraphs before,
right?
Because we sometimes forget that the parable of the lost son
is simultaneously the parable of the lost brother,
older brother.
The older brother just cannot accept
the younger brother like the father can and in fact the older brother who’s wrapped up in jealousy
says, “Hey dad, I’ve been here the whole time.
You didn’t give me half of my inheritance that I
squandered and I’m sitting here living like a servant and your son comes home and he lives
like royalty.” Then Jesus gives this parable immediately following so there’s no break here.
It’s just Jesus told his disciples the next parable comes,
this really challenging parable
of the shrewd manager and then you get to the end of this where Jesus just piles it up.
Let’s see, you can’t serve both God and money,
which that’s a challenging statement unto itself.
And then the Pharisees,
it says in verse 14,
who loved money heard this and sneer that Jesus
and now the conflict starts heating up even more.
So that’s what’s beautiful about doing this is
the Good Samaritan is immediately followed by this challenging text.
You have this comforting, grace-filled,
love-exuding reminder of God’s fatherly affection for the lost and
this challenging reminder that Jesus is giving to the powerful that you can’t serve privilege and
power and God, you have to choose and that’s exactly the Jesus of Luke because Jesus is doing
both of those simultaneously all the time.
Yeah and if you’re not reeling enough by then,
you finish that chapter with the rich man and Lazarus.
It just gets better.
Lazarus is the only name ever given in a parable who is poor and is outside of a rich man’s
gate and the man doesn’t care for him and then when they both die,
the rich man goes to Hades and
Lazarus is over with the angels and there’s this conversation about let me go tell my brothers,
no, they have the prophets,
they have Moses,
if they don’t listen to them,
they won’t listen to you.
He had good, you had good things in life,
he had bad things in life, now you’re reversed,
now you should have known better.
Yeah, that’s a tough chapter.
It’s also particularly difficult chapter probably for Protestants,
especially with Luther’s reading
of grace and law.
Sorry, this turned theological pretty quickly but the way that Luther read the
book of Romans very much gave the Protestant legacy where when we think of the law,
we think of the law as bondage and that doesn’t square incredibly well with Jesus’s point at the end
of this parable because Jesus makes the point,
hey, if you’ve got Moses in the prophets,
that should be all you need.
That in itself is enough for you to find your way
but that stands intention with the fact that so many characters in all of the gospels
do have the law in the prophets and they don’t get it,
including by the way, the disciples.
Yeah, and I do think Luke,
does Luke do this more than the other gospels?
I don’t know if Luke says
more troubling things than the other gospels but Luke gives us these head-scratching stories.
A couple chapters from there are just really the next chapter over.
You have this unjust judge who
the lady hounds until he does something and then Jesus says, you know,
God will grant justice to
the chosen ones to cry to him day and night,
sort of presenting the idea that if you just bother God enough,
he’ll do what you want,
which clearly isn’t the meaning of the parable
but it leaves you a little confused.
Then he follows that up with a beautiful parable that
Pharisee prays, I thank you, I’m not like other people and he is not justified and the tax
collector prays, God be merciful to me,
I’m a sinner and he is justified.
Yeah, on the whole, I think Luke is easier to read than some of the other gospels but he does have some material that
just hard to know what to do with.
Right, and let’s not try to smooth out all of the wrinkles here,
let’s not try to make it all fit into neat boxes.
Let’s just consider for a moment,
maybe that’s part of the point because Jesus is not boxable.
We shouldn’t try to stick labels to Jesus,
especially when those labels are our labels but we shouldn’t try to fit Jesus into the specific
place that we think he should be because Jesus is a healer,
Jesus is a proclaimer of forgiveness,
he’s a proclaimer of the restoration of the downtrodden and the broken and Jesus is also
a prophet, he also speaks truth to power,
Jesus also makes the religious leaders angry,
all of these things which may appear to us to be opposing or to be things held in tension
are who Jesus is and in many ways that introduces us to a Savior who is beyond our expectation or
beyond our ability to control and that’s a beautiful thing.
Yeah, I think those moments in
in the Gospels in general,
Luke in this case where Jesus is cryptic,
keep us from assuming
that we know everything about Jesus we need to.
Keep us from thinking that we understand Jesus
in a way that we have him figured out.
The Gospels aren’t going to let you do that.
If you read them carefully, there’s going to be enough question marks for you that you can’t be thinking,
“Oh, I get Jesus.” Right,
and I think that’s true in every Gospel and I think the way that it fits
though here specifically in Luke is,
I think as you read Luke,
don’t let Luke become a caricature.
In other words,
Luke is not just a social Gospel.
It’s not just about God loving the lost and the
least and the downtrodden and the broken and the oppressed.
That is true.
Jesus is for them in Luke
but Luke is not a soft telling of Jesus by any matter.
Jesus is critical,
Jesus is sharp,
Jesus is prophetic and so this isn’t like a one,
this isn’t a nicer, softer Jesus.
It’s a full account
of who Jesus was which should include all of those different aspects.
Yeah, and again as Jesus moves
closer to the cross in Luke, the conflict,
the language,
the drama, it seems to me it all ramps
up.
We get less of the emotionally compelling,
we get less of the healings, we get
less of the teaching and we get more of the discord and the disconnection and
the anger and the plotting and scheming.
And again, I think Luke, he just sets that up really
well.
We’ve been moving toward it slowly and then when you get to the end,
the pace quickens,
the story moves fast,
you get the behind the scenes stuff,
you get the intrigue, the politics,
you get the arguments and I think Luke does a really nice job of taking us there.
Towards your point about the politics,
I felt as I did the reading this time that it almost
felt like the way that Luke pieced together some of these Pharisee and Sadducee stories.
In Matthew and Mark, they felt almost kind of shotgun sporadic,
just included in different places,
sort of topical.
But in Luke,
it almost felt to me like Jesus was sort of going up to the big leagues,
like the Pharisees and Sadducees.
You started with the interns and then you got to the
small priests out in the countryside,
the rabbis.
And then as he gets close to the Jerusalem,
they start sending teachers of the law,
the questions become more complicated,
the debates seem to be more nuanced.
It seems like Jesus is going up the chain of religious privilege as
he gets close to the Jerusalem.
I think that’s reflective of the fact that Luke kind of saves
that material at the end.
In Matthew and Mark, it’s scattered throughout.
Luke saves it for us
to give us that impression,
I think.
I would agree with that 100%.
Also in Luke, we kind of move toward the crucifixion and the passion narrative.
We have these familiar but different stories.
We now have Pilate and Herod going back and forth who don’t really see why Jesus would
need crucified, but aren’t able to stand up to the Jews.
We don’t get told about the custom of
releasing a prisoner, but Barabbas goes free anyway.
We have Jesus telling the women who
are weeping, daughters of Jerusalem,
“Don’t weep for me.
Weep for yourselves and your children
because of the days that are coming.” And we have these stories that we’ve heard with details that we haven’t heard.
And that makes Luke’s version,
I think, very interesting.
In Luke, we have those words, “Father, forgive them.
They don’t know what they’re doing.” In Luke,
we have the story of the criminals.
And I would argue this is vintage Luke.
Jesus’ last act on earth before he gives up his
spirit is to proclaim pardon and promise for one of the criminals near him who has professed faith.
So,
even in Jesus’ last act in the Gospel of Luke in his earthly ministry,
his pre-resurrection ministry, it’s to someone who is an outsider.
It’s to someone who is low on the chain, an outcast,
a villain.
Yeah, it’s really well told, I think.
And let’s just point out,
because you’ve already made it through the book of Mark,
the centurion in seeing that Jesus dies in Luke says,
“Surely this was a righteous man,” which
that should be contrasted with Mark,
what we mentioned last time.
Mark,
that centurion says,
“Surely this man is the Son of God.” And the difference between Mark and Luke here,
I think, does betray something of their purposes in writing.
Agreed.
Yeah, agreed.
I think then we – to the burial, the resurrection story,
you know, again, we get Joseph.
Luke’s telling of the resurrection is interesting.
You know, you have two men dazzling clothes.
The women are terrified.
They have this wonderful phrase,
“Why do you look for the living among the dead?
He’s risen.” And they come back from the tomb,
and they tell the men in this case.
And then verse 11,
“The word seemed to them an idle tale,
and they didn’t believe them.” And again,
that tension of, “Can you receive this incredible news?
Can you trust this report that’s unimaginable?” And they can’t in the first instance.
It’s funny you point that out,
Reverend Lovell, with your love of the ending of Mark,
because you just there essentially ended right where Mark ended.
And I would say, personally,
I think that the story that follows this,
the Road to Emmaus,
is – it’s one of my favorite
gospel stories, to be perfectly honest with you.
And it’s the ending that Mark should have had
when they added the other ending.
But if you aren’t familiar with this story,
you’ll get to it.
But here, there’s some people walking to another village.
And as they walk,
Jesus, who’s resurrected, walks with them.
They don’t recognize him.
They have a conversation with Jesus,
who’s resurrected, and they don’t even know it.
And then they get to the village.
And it says that they don’t understand
who he is until he takes bread,
gives thanks, breaks it, and gives it to them.
And suddenly, their eyes are open and they recognize him.
And it’s a beautiful,
powerful story.
I’m not going to spoil it for you more if you haven’t seen it before.
But it, for me,
just demonstrates
how the early church from its earliest days understood that communion and living in the
practice that Jesus gave us together in fellowship and hospitality,
that these practices that we
literally do today at First Presbyterian Church in the Spirit Lake,
these practices open our eyes to Jesus Christ.
And we see that in our scriptures,
which I think is just amazing.
It’s really amazing.
Yeah. And that’s a good story.
It’s a great story.
I’ll grant you that.
And again, not to spoil it,
but just to point out that for the characters
involved, it starts with this line.
We had hope that he was the one to redeem Israel and the
combination of the words had hoped are always sad in our life when we’ve had to give up a hope.
We had hope, but then not too many verses later,
those same men proclaim,
“The Lord has risen
indeed.” And that journey from no hope to the Lord has risen is a beautiful,
that’s beautiful ground to travel for, Luke.
Yeah, this is a good story.
I’m not saying it should be in Mark,
but it’s a good story.
The only thing I feel compelled to kind of point out in Luke is
verse 41 of the last chapter here.
Luke tells us of the disciples,
“While in their joy,
they were disbelieving and still wondering.” And Matthew said something similar.
We tend to think
that faith and doubt are a light switch and you have either one or the other.
But I’m always struck
when I read these part of the gospels by the reality that faith and doubt are like oil and
water mixing together.
They’re always both present.
And the question is,
which one do we listen to?
Which one leads us?
Which one drives us?
Which one do we embrace?
These are men who have just
seen the risen Christ and they’re rejoicing and they’re disbelieving.
Faith and not faith aren’t linear.
They’re always in tension.
They’re always at play and at work in us.
And I like that language
I think it’s profound.
If I was going to lift out a thing in Luke,
maybe a takeaway,
I think I would lift out the fact that we may be tempted,
especially in Matthew and Mark,
maybe not so much
in John, but I think we might be tempted to segment Jesus’ story.
He’s born, he lived, he does stuff, he says stuff, he dies,
he resurrects, and then he says go.
Luke, because of its connection to Acts, is so seamless.
The story of Jesus does not end even in resurrection for Luke.
The story of Jesus
has got a long tail ahead and that’s a very significant invitation to every one of us to
recognize the fact that Jesus’ story is not over.
It’s not over at all.
And the gospel of Luke
is like a prelude to a much larger story and while that’s,
I don’t want to quibble because
the other gospels, they’re not intended to be done either,
but I think Luke is a beautiful picture of
how that story does not end at the end of Luke.
It keeps going and we’re supposed to read it that way
and simultaneously we’re supposed to put ourselves in the extended chapters of that story.
We’re in the story of Luke,
it’s just we’re not in these black and white words.
Right, I mean very near the
end of the book.
Stay here in the city.
Well first he says I’m sending you and then he says so stay
here in the city.
I’m sending you so stay here until you have been clothed with power from on high
and it makes us anticipate what happens next and it’s incredible how easily Luke transitions from
the Jesus story to the discipleship story.
You didn’t notice it,
you didn’t see it,
but all the sudden Luke makes it clear that the Jesus story is now inseparably linked to what followers do with it.
The story continues through the people who understand the truth and what they do with
that truth and that now becomes the continuation and it’s an incredibly powerful way that Luke presents that.
Christ’s story cannot now be separated from the church’s story.
Absolutely. Yeah, that’s a total preach.
One last Luke thing,
it is I think significant that we began this story
in the temple with Zechariah.
We end it in the temple continually with the disciples.
It says they worshipped him and they returned to Jerusalem and with great joy they were continually in the
blessing God and the significance of that is that we start and end the Christ story in the temple
but we move into the book of Acts in which we see that sent into all the world.
Really, really good writing.
Believe we’re listening to this podcast.
Go live in the story of Jesus Christ.
Take these words of the Jesus that we encounter and let’s show others the grace that we’ve received,
the lost and the least might they know something of the grace and love of Jesus Christ because
of what we do and let’s keep on going as we encounter Jesus because we’ll only be transformed
in new and maybe even more enlightening ways when we get to the Gospel of John next week.
Thanks for joining us friends.
We look forward to speaking with you again next podcast.
See you next Saturday.