Category: Living in The Story blogs

Luke wrote his gospel at least twenty years after Mark, probably with a copy of Mark’s well known narrative in front of him as he composed. Much of Mark is quoted verbatim and Mark’s basic chronology is recreated in Luke.

But Luke had his own sources as well. And he had his own purposes.

How does one tell a story so remarkable? How does one find words and images that give credence to something so unbelievable—and yet believed and trusted by more and more people throughout the Roman Empire as Luke wrote his account of the Christ event?

Luke admits he was not an eyewitness rather he interviewed those who were and he sought to honor their faithful memories; sought to honor their faith.

But Luke had his own perspective as well.

Distance can offer the gift of the big picture; it can provide a sense of how the various chapters of The Story build upon one another. Luke definitely understood Jesus to be crux and climax of The Story of God’s ongoing, grace-full, redeeming work in Israel.

For Luke and the other gospel writers, it is Jesus who weaves together all other stories; Jesus who reveals something brand new in the universe.

Like Matthew, Luke presents Jesus as one who fulfills the Scripture.

The larger-than-life characters at the beginning set the stage:

• Zechariah and Elizabeth’s son, John, was “filled with the spirit and power of Elijah” from conception;
• Mary was told her son, Jesus, would receive the throne of his ancestor King David;
• Mary’s Magnificat celebrates the God who continues to be faithful to the promise made to Abraham;
• the devout man Simeon recognized in the infant Jesus “the consolation of Israel” and
• the prophet Anna named him as the one Israel had been looking for—the redeemer of Jerusalem.

Like both Mark and Matthew, Luke’s Jesus affirms that the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus was “necessary.”

Then the Risen Jesus said to the astonished disciples: “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.”

Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.

Luke 24:44-48

And like Mark, the Lucan disciples were unable to comprehend the meaning of Jesus before the cross. The Christ event could only be understood through the lens of the resurrection. The disciples could only comprehend meaning when their eyes and minds had been “opened” by the Crucified and Resurrected Christ.

But different from Matthew, Luke’s revelation of who this Jesus is comes quietly, artfully; as in any good story, clues are laid like breadcrumbs.

Richard Hays calls this Luke’s “intertextuality.” (I draw heavily for this reflection from Hays’ excellent book: Reading Backwards.) Although Luke the narrator does not often announce that such and such happened “in order to fulfill what was spoken in the Scriptures,” Luke’s characters clearly are acting in the same grand drama that Israel has been enacting from the time of Abraham.

Many of the Old Testament echoes in Luke do not function as direct typological pre-figurations of events in the life of Jesus. Still less do they function as proof texts. Rather, they create a broader and subtler effect: they create a narrative world thick with scriptural memory.

Richard B. Hays

“A narrative world thick with scriptural memory.”

Luke weaves delicate threads of the ancient story into the fabric of his own story of Jesus so that any perceptive reader can see the same God, the same Spirit, the same work of redemption revealed now in the life of Jesus of Nazareth.

Luke skillfully tells the Jesus story with gentle intersections of the Hebrew story and intriguing intimations that the God of Israel is embodied in this one: Son of God and Lord.

Of course the other gospel writers see Jesus as “Son of God” as well.

• It was heard as an allusion to royalty: “son” like the king was God’s son.
• It was heard as an allusion to humanity: “son” like Israel was God’s chosen.
• It was heard intimating Isaac, the beloved only son of Abraham, offered and received back as if in resurrection.

But there is more …

[In Luke,] Jesus’ origins are mysteriously divine, and his personal identity is closely bound with God’s own being in a way that transcends the God-relation of any of Israel’s past kings or prophets.

Hays

Thus Luke’s (and Matthew’s) description of a virgin birth:

The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you [the angel announced to Mary]; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God.

Luke 1:35

Gospel Christology says there is something unique about Jesus as “son” and so both Luke and Matthew seek to express that mystery in their stories of a virginal conception. These stories need not be interpreted as anatomical or physiological; these stories are meant to be theological.

The virgin birth is a metaphorical way to talk about that which is beyond our understanding. This is a method of communicating the Church’s confession that this Jesus is “mysteriously divine.”

“What does this mean?” the New Testament theologians persistently asked.

And we continue to ask: “What does this mean?

All of the gospel writers referred to Jesus as “son of God,” but Luke is the only one who regularly uses “Lord” as a title for Jesus.

In the Hebrew Scriptures, the Tetragrammaton is the four-letter “name” for God; it was not often written for it was too holy. So ancient writers in the Hebrew Scriptures substituted the title Adoniah -“Lord”- for the one God, Creator and Redeemer of Israel.

(Whenever you see the word “LORD” printed in your Old Testaments with small caps you can recognize that as an indication of the original word derived from the ancient Tetragrammaton. My font in this blog won’t allow the small caps so I can’t show you here.)

When Luke boldly proclaims Jesus of Nazareth as “Lord,” he continues this tradition.

• “Why has the mother of my Lord come to me? Elizabeth asks the newly pregnant Mary.
• “Unto you is born this day in the city of David, a savior who is Christ the Lord,” the angels proclaim to the shepherds.
• “The Lord turned and looked at Peter,” after the cock crowed signaling Peter’s denial.
• “The Lord has risen indeed…” the disciples testified to one another with a burning in their hearts.

Throughout, Luke demonstrates an exceptionally “high” Christology—that is, he “suggests a mysterious fusion of divine and human identity in the figure of Jesus” (Hays).

Unlike the other three gospels, Luke is the only one who wrote a second volume to the story: the Acts of the Apostles.

Throughout this sequel, the preachers proclaim unabashedly, explicitly, as Peter did in his Pentecost sermon: “Let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.”

Then, in Acts 10, Peter boldly declares to Cornelius the centurion: “[God] sent the word to the sons of Israel by proclaiming the gospel of peace through Jesus Christ; this one is Lord of all.”

The statement is bold on two levels: the confession insists that Jesus IS Lord and Caesar is NOT.

But the proclamation also ascribes to Jesus a place in the fundamental confession of Israel:

Hear O Israel, the LORD our God: the LORD alone.

Gone the delicate threads woven quietly, subtly. Now the confession is bright and bold: God-in-Christ has redeemed—and is redeeming—all people, all things, all creation.

Jesus the Christ is Lord of all.

Richard B. Hays, Reading Backwards: Figural Christology and the Fourfold Gospel Witness (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2014).

Years ago, we took our children to Washington D.C. for a Spring Break trip and while we were there we visited the National Cathedral. It’s beautiful. High vaulted ceilings. Intricate stained glass in large lovely windows. Even the smallest detail seemed carefully planned and wrought for grandeur.

Now you have to understand – the church buildings of our experience up to then did not have towering arches and stained glass artwork. The church we were familiar with built simple buildings; functional and utilitarian. When I was growing up, we didn’t even call the sanctuary a sanctuary; for us it was an “auditorium.”

As we walked through the National Cathedral, our fourth grader stared with wide-eyed wonder. “Why did they make it so big and fancy?” she wondered.  Her question took me aback for a moment; I wasn’t sure how to answer since the extravagance of the architecture was new and different for me as well. But then I had an insight: an important insight for my journey into a bigger world of faith.

I answered: “Because they believe God is worth it. They want to build something very beautiful and majestic and large because God is beautiful and majestic and huge.

And because God deserves the very best we can give.”

“Hmmmm….” she pondered. “I think I agree.”

Psalm Surely something similar was going on when Israel built the Tabernacle. This story in the final chapters of Exodus describes the people paying attention to every detail; crafting beauty with every turn of their lathe and twist of their spindle. This traveling sanctuary was completely utilitarian, but everything was built with such care and passion and attention to beauty that it must have been breath taking.

The Tabernacle sounds extravagant to me.

The word “extravagant” has taken a bad rap, I think. But the way I use it here describes an understandable outpouring of passionate generosity.

I’ve been wondering about passion this week. Where does it come from? How does that happen? Like the mystery of springtime, what is it that stirs a soul and quickens life?

And what happens to cause a lack of passion?

A wise mentor once taught me that the opposite of love is not hate; the opposite of love is apathy. When we don’t care, when our hearts cannot be moved, when we are content to sit in our small complacency – this is dangerous; this is insidious.

Apathy is sin.

“The self curved in on itself” so that the heart begins to lose its ability to expand and be moved with compassion for the other. The Self begins to lose its ability to open itself up to God.

But this Tabernacle story is a good example of hearts wide open with extravagant generosity. For all the stories we hear about Israel whining and complaining and resisting, here is one lovely story about when they got something really, really right.

I’ve been thinking about passion this week and I’ve pondered what God’s people of old might teach us modern folks about the extravagance of generosity.

The story tells us that God raised up leaders and gifted them with creativity and competence. “They had been given skill by the Lord,” the text says. They were called by God and by Moses to motivate and demonstrate excellence.

These inspired, visionary leaders led with passion. 

Another thing this story tells us is that the entire community created a culture of generosity.

There are plenty of stories that describe the complaining of the Israelites as if it were some sort of epidemic. Someone starts criticizing and then before you know it, everyone around her is infected. Pretty soon the whole community is grumbling about one thing and then another. It’s as if the ethos of an entire community becomes a culture of complaint.

But in this story, the culture the Israelites created was for gratitude and goodness and generosity. The hearts of some were stirred, then pretty soon, there was an epidemic that infected the entire community with joy and generosity; they were fevered with enthusiasm.

I like the way Exodus describes all the different skills and offerings and gifts.

Planning and organizing, carving and weaving, working with metal, wood, fabric and precious gems: everyone had something to do; everyone had something to give.

The people understood that each one of them had something significant to offer and they believed that what they were doing together was important.

It was important; this work they did together as a people really mattered. Working together on this hugely important Tabernacle project helped form them as a people and defined who they were and whose they were. In the building of the Tabernacle, they came to understand themselves as a people who worshiped this God who had called them into being and called them into relationship.

The naming of relationship is the cornerstone for the entire Law. Remember the very first words of the Ten Commandments remind: “I AM the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of slavery….” (Exodus 20:2).

And so here, in this story, the people’s hearts were stirred because of this key relationship. They were moved and motivated by their gratitude to the living Lord. Their actions were a response to the self-giving God who had rescued them from Egypt.

Do you remember when you were madly in love? Can you recall when you wanted to give, give, give to your beloved and how that giving gave you such joy? Remember how your extravagance simply reminded you how precious this relationship is; how giving only made you wish you could give more?

When we are truly in love, our hearts are stirred.

I’ve been thinking about passion this week and I wonder: how do we lose it?

How is it that our love can become so conservative, so careful, so cool? How does that insidious apathy creep in so that the culture of an entire relationship becomes small minded and hardhearted?

If you’ve been reading through Matthew this week, you’ve recognized the abundant extravagance of Jesus.

When Jesus reinterpreted the Law, he called for an extravagant generosity, grace and welcome among brothers and sisters, for the stranger among us, and even for our enemy. When Jesus described the kingdom of heaven, he used extravagant images of God’s grace breaking into the world and permeating everything like yeast in dough. When Jesus went about healing, he created an extravagant outpouring of God’s wholeness and shalom within lives that were broken and fragmented.

There is no hint of apathy in Matthew’s Jesus. His heart was stirred to extravagant generosity.

Even in the wonderful little story of the Transfiguration in chapter 17,  there is a vision of extravagant glory that tore open the mundane settledness of the disciples’ world and poured into their lives as they stared with wide eyed wonder. And did you hear Peter’s response? Surely this was an extravagant response: building three tabernacles – not just one!

But the voice is clear: THIS is the Son, the Beloved. Listen to him! This is the One who has been sent to show us how beautiful and majestic and large and extravagant is God’s love for us.

And this is the One who continues to show us God’s glory.

And so now the Transfigured Christ is ever seeking to transfigure us; the Spirit of the Risen Christ is still working to transform us “from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18).

When hearts are stirred and transformed into the image of this Christ, then extravagant self-giving becomes the mark and the sign; the culture and the calling of the people of Christ.

Living in The Story readings for Week 11

Exodus 35-40

Psalm 27

Psalm 84

Matthew 14-20

2 Corinthians 1-5

The Ten Commandments that are part of the story of The Exodus are the cornerstone of the ancient Law. The first four commandments spell out the human responsibility in our relationship with the God who has created and called us. The last six commandments spell out our human responsibility to one another.

It’s sometimes helpful for me to think of the ancient Law of Israel as training wheels that – over the centuries – helped mature the people of God and bring them into a larger, deeper relationship with the Creator of love who yearns for the love of all creation. The rules and regulations, the do’s and don’ts of the Law were set in place to help form Israel into the people God had created and called them to be.

The goal of law is not to hold us back or to keep us as small-minded rule followers. Rather the purpose of law is to lead us forward into maturity and freedom.

But the Law is not the Covenant. There is an important difference in the way the Bible talks about the Law and how it describes the Covenant. There is a crucial difference in meaning and function.

Continue reading “Covenant”