Luke’s Gospel: All about Kingdoms

The other day we started asking what the gospel writers actually thought about the gospels they were writing. We saw that Mark was interested in how Jesus’ story brings Israel through its anticipated new exodus. We saw that Matthew, similarly, believed Jesus to be (1) the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham, (2) the successor to David with an everlasting kingdom, and (3) the one to bring Israel out of its long exile.

We move now to Luke. What did he suppose the gospel was all about?

Looking at Luke’s introduction, as we did with Matthew and Mark, we notice right away that Luke begins differently. His introduction doesn’t have Mark’s handy little epigraph. Nor does he begin with a lengthy genealogy that stands apart from the rest of the narrative. (Luke does have his own genealogy for Jesus—with its own purposes—but it doesn’t come until chapter 3.) Luke’s introduction is actually a greeting to his intended audience (Lk 1:1-4), and in that greeting he gives no indication concerning themes that will appear throughout the text.

In fact, to find the themes that concern Luke up front, we have to let his storytelling do its work on us. And it’s not even about reading between the lines, as it might have been with Mark and Matthew, because Luke’s emphasis comes to us about as plainly as could be as the opening chapters unfold.

The story opens not with Jesus himself, not even, really, with John the Baptist, as in Mark, but with John’s parents, Zechariah and Elizabeth. Elizabeth is barren and Zechariah works in the Temple. Big Z gets a visit from the angel Gabriel in the Holy of Holies and is told that they will indeed have a son, whose name will be John. Their son, further, will be the one of whom Malachi spoke, the one who precedes the dramatic Day of the Lord (cf. Lk 1:17; Mal 4:5-6).

“St Luke” by Lawrence OP used under license CC BY-NC 2.0

We saw this theme already in Mark and in Matthew both. They all see Jesus’ story as completing the long exile of God’s people. They’re coming home, we might say, and God is on his way, as well.

Then, of course, Jesus’ birth is foretold to Mary, and, just as with Zechariah, Gabriel is not shy about pronouncing her miracle boy’s purpose: “He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end” (Lk 1:32-33, TNIV).

Many have read the first portion of this prophecy and decided Gabriel meant to tell Mary that her son would be God. And then they have ready the second portion and decided that this was an additional kingly portion. But this is not Gabriel’s intention. Rather, Gabriel is saying the same thing several times over in these two verses. All of it, as we saw with Matthew’s citation of David, comes from 2 Samuel 7.

Notice the relevant passage, with emphases to show Luke’s parallels:

The Lord declares to you that the Lord himself will establish a house for you: When your days are over and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, who will come from your own body, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, and he will be my son. When he does wrong, I will punish him with a rod wielded by human beings, with floggings inflicted by human hands. But my love will never be taken away from him, as I took it away from Saul, whom I removed from before you. Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever (2 Sam 7:11b-16).

Gabriel has made the announcement that Jesus will be the son of David, for whom Israel has been waiting a thousand years.

Luke’s story goes on. Mary rushes off to visit her cousin Elizabeth and is so moved by the experience, she bursts into song. Whether Luke saw himself as the predecessor for Rogers and Hammerstein, with the incessant urge to insert musical numbers every so often in the narrative, I don’t know. What I do know, however, is that Luke is drawing heavily from Hannah’s prayer in 1 Samuel 2.

The sum total of Luke’s opening chapter paints a daring picture, one that no one familiar with the Hebrew Scriptures could miss. The Old Testament story in question begins with the barren Hannah crying out to the Lord for a child. Her child becomes a prophet whose career culminates with the anointing and ascension of David, the truest king from Israel’s history, a man after God’s own heart.

Luke condenses the tale: the childless Elizabeth gives birth to a prophet who will be the forerunner to a new and greater David, whose kingdom will never cease. The rise of a new kingdom—that’s the gospel Luke is telling.

Social Justice and the Gospel

via tamedcynic.org

I’ve never been a huge fan of the term “social justice.”

There, I said it.  And I will henceforth forever be disqualified from attaining my hipster credentials.

So much of what we today call “social justice” reminds me of Mark Twain’s insightful remark: “Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.”

I’m a bigger fan of simple justice, or, to coin a phrase that no one else will ever use, “Jesus justice.”

In Luke’s account of the start of Jesus’ ministry, Jesus famously announced his intentions.  He told the folks in his home town what he intended to do going forward.

[Jesus] went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom.  And he stood up to read.  The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him.  Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”  Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down.  The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” (Lk 4:16-21, NIV).

At last, his audience must have thought, we, the oppressed people of God, are going to get the kind of justice we deserve.  And at last, these pagan nations that have been crushing us will get the kind of justice they deserve!

It’s important to remember when reading the gospels that Jesus is living and working in the midst of a people that had effectively been under foreign domination for roughly 750 years.  Think about it: 750 years ago, the world was still 230 years from Columbus way underestimating the size of the globe.  So from the time the Assyrians conquered Israel (722 BCE) to the time of Jesus (~AD 30) the bulk of Palestine was ruled by people other than the Jews, a few very brief stints excepted.

All that is to say that Jesus’ fellow Nazarenes are ready for a change, and they surely thought Jesus was announcing it. More than that, they were certain it meant their elevation and the Romans’ demise.

But JR Daniel Kirk reminds us that Jesus justice (what a great phrase!) works a little differently than we expect, for Jesus goes on in Luke 4 to cite incidents in the Hebrew Bible in which God blesses foreigners through the prophets Elijah and Elisha (Lk 4:25-27).  Those who praised Jesus’ good news a few verses earlier are surprised and ready to lynch him.  Kirk:

The scandalous implication of Jesus’s good news is that God’s promises to Israel will come as a blessing through Israel for the sake of the nations’ glory rather than coming to bless the people of Israel at the cost of the nations’ humiliation (Jesus Have I Loved, but Paul?, 144).

Jesus justice (it just rolls off the tongue) doesn’t belittle one group in favor of another.  Jesus justice might bless one group, but that blessing is given to the one for the benefit of all.  Jesus justice is not a zero sum game.

Kirk again speaks of the culture of Jesus’ day:

In the first-century context, … the exaltation of Israel at the expense of Rome would be a perpetuation of the injustice already rampant on the earth–only now with a different perpetrator in charge (145).

To put this in contemporary terms, we might have imagined Jesus wandering into one of the Occupy Wall Street camps a couple years ago announcing the year of the Lord’s favor for the 99%.  The throngs would let out a cheer.  Those greedy bastards are finally getting theirs!

But then he might turn around, intersect a trader leaving the exchange and say, “Hey, what can I do for you?”  And the wealthy trader would say, “Well, my little girl is at Sloan-Kettering right now waiting for a blood transfusion.  I’m worried as hell.”  And Jesus would respond, “Don’t be afraid.  The cancer is already gone.”

The point is that in Jesus justice (aw, who am I kidding; it’s never catching on) there’s plenty to go around.  It’s meant for everyone, everywhere, at all times.

God Is Better than You Think

In Luke’s account of the crucifixion, Jesus hangs from the cross between two common criminals (Lk 23:32-33).  Jesus hangs there with them, as a convicted criminal just as they are.  Indeed Jesus hangs indicted as an enemy of the state.  An empire whose Caesar rules the known world cannot have a rival king within its territories.  The King of the Jews had to be dealt with severely.

As Jesus hung with his life slowly slipping from his tortured body, onlookers vied for his clothes and hurled insults at the dying man (vv.34b-37).

In the midst of this horrific scene, Jesus utters a most remarkable prayer.  All around him, the crowds are either verbally assaulting him, mocking him, dividing his belongings as if he were already dead, or completely ignoring the one many had thought would be their Messiah.  The people have rejected the Christ, and in response, Jesus prays, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (v. 34a).

I’ve been pondering this prayer for the last several days.  There’s a single question that continues to pester me in response to Jesus’ magnanimity: Did God answer Jesus’ prayer?

Did the Father heed the request of His Son, the exact representation of His being (Heb. 1:3), and forgive the throngs who had thoroughly rejected the one way to the Father?

Saturday morning I had breakfast with a good friend of mine and she shared an incredible story about her own father.  She had come to know Christ as an adult and freely shared her newly found joy with her family.  After some time, her dad, a straight shooter, told her with no equivocation, “I don’t want to hear about your Jesus any longer!”  Obediently, my friend stopped talking about Christ, even as she continued to live Christ.

Years later, her father lay on his death bed and my friend arrived to visit.  “I’m going to die today,” he told her to her disbelief.  “No,” he said to her.  “I had an interesting dream last night.  Your Jesus came to me.  I made peace with him.”  He breathed his last later that night.

My friend’s story is simply fascinating.  Perhaps you’ve heard similar stories.  They abound.

It has me wondering, though, for how many does the Lord so graciously reveal himself.  And how often does the Lord save one to the knowledge of no one else?  In short, how many of those who mock his appearance on the cross are yet forgiven?

I’m no universalist, but I am convinced of this: God is better than I think.