LUKE - Week 1

Another week, another book of the bible to get out heads around and teeth sunk into!

Having brought our adventure in Isaiah to a close last week, I used the final reflection to bridge the gap between the message of Isaiah and the treatment of that message in the New Testament, especially in the Gospel accounts.

As if by design, we are now embedding ourselves in a new story, the Gospel of Luke.

We’ve covered Matthew and John within the last year of our reading plan, so perhaps by now you’ll be thinking about how to approach a Gospel story in a new or different way to previously.

For me, as we begin studying Luke, there are four main questions to be ask of this as a text.

1) Who were the intended recipients and how did that shape the text?

2) What were the key messages it is trying to convey?

3) What elements of Luke are shared with the other gospels and why might that be?

4) What elements of Luke are unique and why might that be?

I think that starting with that set of questions when approaching the Gospels allows us to get the most out of the story as we read through. These encourage us to think about the biblical big picture, the historical context and the theological themes.

So, for this post, I’m not going to reflect on the text so closely – there’ll be plenty of time for that (listen to my talk from Sunday if you really can’t wait! It’s here) – but we’re going to being Luke by thinking about these questions which should better equip us to study the text ourselves and get more out of it.

1)

Most scholars of the bible make the case that the Gospel of Luke was intended for a gentile, or non-Jewish, audience. This has been true as far back as Irenaeus of Lyons, a second century ‘early church father’, whose influence was incredible.

This is largely because of the prominence of certain themes, such as the universal reach of salvation and Jesus’ concern for all humanity. Further to this, Luke’s Gospel includes lots of stories about marginalised people, particularly non-Jews. This is typified by the parable of the Good Samaritan, found only in Luke, which uses the example of a Samaritan, who were enemies of the Jewish people, to demonstrate a God-like heart. Some also make the point that the genealogy of Jesus used in Luke goes back to Adam, who symbolises all humanity, so as to draw attention to the universal nature  of Jesus’ mission.

What we can expect from a Gospel written with this intent is a lack of some of the more traditionally Jewish imagery and references. Whilst Matthew makes repeated reference to prophetic statements in the Hebrew Bible, Luke can be found to use more stories, especially the Parables, which are more accessible and have more universal understanding.

Slightly less noticeable to us, but still noteworthy, is that Luke appears to use a more Greek literary style and the structure of the narrative would have appeal to a more broad gentile, Greek speaking audience.

2)

A couple of key points stand out in Luke’s Gospel. At this point in our journey, these are more things to look out for, but you might also notice other prominent messages or themes.

Given the idea that this could be for people who weren’t Jewish, some of this writing is bound to be introducing the big ideas of God, Jesus and what would go on to be the foundations of Christianity.

These include, but are not limited to, the Kingdom of God, Salvation, Social Justice and the work of the Holy Spirit. (Side note- interesting that having just undertaken our ‘Thinking About God’ questionnaire, many of these were areas about which we lacked clarity and confidence! Maybe reading through Luke now will speak into these areas for us)

Before the time of Jesus, the Ancient Jewish idea of the Kingdom of God would have been both present and future. There was an understanding of God as king and the reality of that was seen in God’s power and authority over both creation and all the nations. Our Old Testament/ Hebrew Bible stories are full of examples of the idea that God is ruler over all and is active in the ‘global’ (not that they had a full sense of what global means today) political landscape. There was also an eschatological hope (eschatology being the study of the ‘last things’, or what happens at the end of it all!) that Israel would be restored.

This is what we’ve just seen in Isaiah, the expectation of a Messiah, who would come and restore Israel and get rid of all those pesky empires that kept attacking and oppressing Israel (I’m looking at you Assyrians and Babylonians…).

Whilst they might have understood this in a narrower sense as relating to Israel, one of the key components of Luke’s gospel is that this hope is for all people, and all can be restored, redeemed and saved.

We also see an extension of Isaiah in the centrality of social justice. Isaiah 1 seems to indicate that all the punishment that follows is largely a result of Israel’s lack of care for those in need. They failed to enact social justice, and suffered as a result.

In Luke, we see the expansion of this idea, again moving beyond the realms of just the Jewish people. Whilst Isaiah promoted caring for the poor and vulnerable among Israel, in Luke we see a push for justice for all, and a duty to care for all.

3)

A lot of Luke is also found in the Gospel accounts of both Matthew and Mark. I won’t pull out examples now, as already I fear this post is too long, but if you look up a synopsis of these three gospels, you’ll find a number of examples, including some almost word for word copies between the texts. This picture will give you an idea:

Perhaps the main reason for this then is source sharing. Luke’s author, to their credit, says from the outset that they intended to look into the events of Jesus’ story and provide an ordered account. In this framework, using other key sources (which were limited at this point) was either beneficial, unavoidable or both!

4)

The question of what is unique to Luke, I think, is more interesting than what it shares with the other Gospels. The unique elements of each of the Gospel accounts highlights what that particular author wanted to communicate and from what perspective they were writing. Luke has a surprising amount of unique material. When we looked at Isaiah, I mentioned Luke 4 and the story of Jesus reading from Isaiah in the synagogue, which is unique to Luke.

I also mentioned the Good Samaritan earlier in this post. There are several of the more well known parables which only exist in Luke, such as the parable of the Prodigal Son. Luke appears to have most fully embraced the parable format, again, likely in order to reach a wider audience with Jesus’ values and teachings.

Much of the first two chapters of Luke, with the infancy narratives and nativity stories, are unique. We’ll come to those closer to Christmas. But, on the other end of the narrative, there are key differences in the crucifixion and resurrection accounts.

I spoke on Sunday about the story of the ‘Road to Emmaus’, which is unique to Luke. You might have read just this week about the two others who were crucified along with Jesus and the interaction they shared. This is, once more, unique to Luke. The story powerfully conveys the simplicity of the salvation process – one of the criminals mocks Jesus, whilst the other acknowledges him as innocent, but also seemingly as God! Jesus tells him that he’ll be in Paradise, apparently just on the basis of that interaction. The message appears to be anyone can be saved, at any time, with a heart that believes in Jesus.

There is so much more to get into, and in more depth, but you can look forward to that in the weeks ahead.

The countdown to Christmas is on!!