The Gospel according to Luke according to Peter - 1 August 2011 |
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Some thoughts on chapter 6 of Peter Leithart, The Four.
- Luke is about what Jesus started to do and teach; Acts is about what he continued to do and teach.
- Remarkable table of parallels between Lk and Acts. Some examples:
- Luke begins with the Spirit filling John, Jesus and everyone else; Acts begins with the Spirit filling the church.
- Jesus heals a paralysed man (Lk 5); Peter and John heal a lame man (Acts 3).
- Long journey in both Luke (to Jerusalem) and Acts (to the ends of the earth).
- The parallels between these journeys, and between Luke and Acts generally, might suggest helpful lines of contemporary application for Luke.
- Chiastic outline of the Journey narrative from 9:51 onward
- Jesus’ temptation: like Adam’s, and yet different. Forbidden food, grasp authority, seek kingly wisdom prematurely or illegitimately. Yet in a wilderness, not a garden; hungry, not well-fed. And faithful, not fallen.
- Jesus as “Son of God” is connected with Israel, not just Adam. Temptation: scripture quotes related to wilderness wanderings; location in wilderness.
- Temptations: “Satan’s temptations are all about how the Son is going to gain and exercise His rule. Satan offers Jesus things that He is going to inherit anyway-bread, authority, power. But Satan tempts Him to pursue those things in a wrong way.”
- Jesus’ opening sermon (4:24ff) anticipates the shape of the whole of his ministry – proclamation to his own people, who seek to kill him.
- “In the days of Herod” (1:5) is not just a chronological marker. Cf. importance of “secular” history from 500 BC to Christ. Herod is an oppressor with salvation-historic significance.
- “The acceptable year of the Lord” (4:19) refers to the Jubilee, Lev 25. Cg. Isa 58; 61. The context is striking: he’s just defeated Satan in the wilderness, and now, therefore, comes the great moment we’ve all been waiting for, when he at last has the opportunity to tell us what he’s here to do. Answer: proclaim Jubilee to the poor.
- Lots of meals.
- Luke 7, a meal at the house of Simon the Pharisee. “They complain that He eats and drinks with sinners, but in the very next scene Jesus is eating and drinking with a Pharisee at the house of a Pharisee. Luke’s point is subtle. Does Jesus eat with sinners? You bet: He eats with Pharisees.”
- Simon the Pharisee’s well-calculated insults. So Jesus isn’t welcomed by the representative of “faithful lawkeeping Israel”; instead, in that very man’s house, the requisite rituals of welcome (kisses, footwashing) are performed by “a woman of the city, who was a sinner”.
- Foot-kissing: placing oneself in a position of servitude, the place of a conquered enemy committed to serve the new master.
Jesus often places his opponents and critics in his parables, forcing them to see themselves as God sees them. - Fair amount of agreement about the broad outline of Luke:
- 1 – 4:13 Introduction
- 4:14 – 9:50 Ministry in Galilee
- 9:51 – 19:38 Journey to Jerusalem
- 20 – 24 Ministry, death and resurrection in Jerusalem
- “Jesus’ instructions [to take no money, bag, sandals etc, 10:4] force the Twelve to rely on the generosity of the people they minister to.” They could have funded the mission from their own resources – they had jobs, and indeed some of them would have been reasonably well-off (Levi, for example!). But in this way the repentance which the message of the Twelve will require will necessarily entail generosity to the poor. “Jesus’ instructions force the people who receive the disciples to respond. They need to express their acceptance of the gospel by offering hospitality. No one in Galilee can say, “I like what those Twelve apostles say, I believe it, but I’m not going to help them at all.” If they don’t receive the message by receiving the messengers, then the messengers will move on to other towns. Jesus forces reception of the gospel to take the specific form of hospitality. “
- Disciples are learning to offer table fellowship. “A final bit of training comes in the story of the feasting of the five thousand (9:10-17). Preaching and healing are important parts of their ministry, but ultimately the Twelve are called, like Jesus, to serve at table. The capstone of their ministry will be to perpetuate and extend Jesus’ table fellowship.”
- In relation to the feeding of the 5000, the disciples “need to rely on God as much for their giving as for their receiving. This is a lesson for every Christian: Jesus provides for our needs, but He also provides us with the resources to meet other people’s needs. That is the whole point, since the mission of Jesus brings good news to the poor.”
- Luke 14, grabbing the seats of honour at the table, is a bit like Adam grabbing honour the wrong way. “Jesus challenges that competitive honor-grabbing head-on. He’s saying that there is a right way to be honored and to receive honor and a wrong way. The way he condemns is the way of Adam, who seizes an honor without permission and is exposed to shame. Jesus is saying, “Don’t be an Adam, who grasped at a high place.” Instead, Jesus says, the path to genuine and lasting honor is through humble service. Jesus uses this incident as an object lesson in humiliation and exaltation, and teaches the paradoxical truth that humiliation is the pathway to exaltation, service the way to authority.” Not just good social advice, but Jesus’ own path to glory.
- Luke 14. Next, Jesus has some criticism for the host, this time concerning the guest list, which is packed with his friends and rich neighbours, no doubt in the hope that they will repay the favour. Jesus, by contrast, says that we should invite the lowest of the low, and we’ll be “repaid at the resurrection of the righteous”.
- Disciples on the Emmaus Road: baaaad. “The two disciples who meet Jesus on the road have jumped the gun. They are already leaving Jerusalem, and it is clear that they are not leaving Jerusalem on mission. They are leaving Jerusalem dejected, disappointed, and perhaps even angry because all the hopes they put in Jesus have been dashed. They might be leaving Jerusalem in fear, fleeing because they worry that the Romans will begin the clean-up operation that often happened when a revolutionary leader was put to death. The two disciples of Jesus are fleeing from their mission. They leave not to be witnesses but to escape the danger of… ” All this, despite knowing the whole gospel story, including the resurrection-rumours. Jesus’ response is to teach them from the Scriptures.
- Luke 24: The disciples’ eyes are opened (1) by Jesus’ typological reading of Scripture; and (2) when Jesus eats with them at the table.
- Strikingly, Jesus’ presence and the teaching of the Word are not enough either. Jesus walks with the disciples, He teaches them everything concerning Himself from all the Scriptures, and still their eyes are closed. Still they are leaving Jerusalem. Still they are abandoning the mission that Jesus started, the mission to proclaim the gospel to the poor. Their eyes are opened only later, after Jesus sits to break bread with them (24:30-31)
- “The Word without the bread is not enough to open our eyes to the living, risen Jesus. The Word without bread is detached from real life; the bread without the Word turns into a magic act.”
- Luke 9:51; cf. 24:50-51 Jesus “ascends” to Jerusalem and then “ascends” to the Father.
- A circular journey from Temple to Temple: “Luke’s gospel is a large circle. It begins in the temple, with the angel’s announcement to Zecharias that he would be the father of John the Baptist, and it ends in the temple, with the disciples of Jesus continually praising God. The gospel begins with the songs of Mary and Zecharias, and ends with the great joy of the disciples. Near the beginning of the gospel, Jesus is lost for three days and is found by his parents; he explains by saying ‘Did you not know that I had to be in My Father’s house?’ (2:49). Here at the end Jesus is found on the third day, and has to explain again that He had to… “
- Luke 4. Astonishing change in reaction, from “all spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth” (v. 22), to “all in the synagogue were filled with wrath” (v. 28). Elijah and the widow at Zarephath made all the difference.
- Jesus’ rejection in Luke 4 (at the start of Luke-Acts) is repeated in Paul’s rejection at Rome (the end of Luke-Acts).
- “At the hinge of Acts is the character of Stephen.” Jesus-like character, speech, and death. Consequences: the decisive and increasing spread of the gospel. “in Luke, it’s not the death of Jesus that leads to the dispersal of the gospel, but the death of Stephen. The mission of the church begins when Christlike disciples of Jesus share in His cross. From Acts 7, there is a shift in the directional flow of the story. Up to the death of Stephen, there is a centripetal movement toward the center, but now there’s a centrifugal movement away from Jerusalem.”
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Posted by Steve Jeffery · Topics: Minister's Blog