Gospel of Luke—The Prophet and the People

Scope: The prophet visits God’s people in order to gather them into a restored People. The prophets call demands conversion, a real change of life. Those who respond to the prophet’s radical demands with faith find a place at his table. Those who reject his demands find themselves displaced from their place in the people. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus’s last journey to Jerusalem is an extended one, in which he forms a people around himself and instructs them. Luke’s passion account, in turn, is distinctive both for its portrayal of Jesus and for the way in which blame for Jesus’s death is shifted toward Jewish leaders and away from the ordinary Jewish people.

I. The suggestion that Luke-Acts is best understood as a Hellenistic biography has merit but omits the two most important characters A. Unquestionably, aspects of Luke-Acts resemble biographies of philosophers and their students. 1. The portrayal of Jesus as prophet overlaps the stereotype of the Cynic philosopher. 2. The apostles in Acts are shaded to resemble philosophers in their courage before tyrants.

B. But Luke-Acts is better understood as history because it opens up the story of Jesus and his followers to a much larger stage. 1. In Mark, there is an almost claustrophobic focus on Jesus and the disciples. 2. In Matthew, the story is opened up to conflict with formative Judaism. 3. Luke connects the story to larger world history and, above all, to the biblical story.

C. Luke’s main characters are the God of Israel (whose son Jesus is) and the people of Israel (whom the prophet Jesus calls to repentance), and the main crisis is whether God has been truly faithful to the people and whether the people will prove faithful to God. II. The prophet Jesus embodies God’s “visitation” of the people for their “salvation.” A. The canticles of the infancy narrative place John and Jesus in the frame of Gods intervention in history on the side of Israel (1:46- 55; 1:68-80).

B. Jesus not only announces “good news to the poor” and the outcast but he demands as did John, a repentance that shows itself in a change of life. 1. The positive response to the prophet is a “faith that means joining his radical social program. 2. Repentance means changing patterns of life in accordance with the prophet’s program, especially in the use of material possessions.

C. If the “poor” stand symbolically for those who respond in faith, the “rich” play the narrative role of the powerful and privileged who “have no need of comfort” and fail to repent (6:24-26; 16: 4; 18:18- 23). D. The response of Zacchaeus, the chief tax-gatherer, expresses the theme of salvation and repentance crisply (19:1-10).

III. Luke portrays Jesus’s long journey to Jerusalem as a prophetic progression that forms a people. A. Luke inserts the bulk of his Q and L material into this constructed journey: Jesus is constantly said to be on the way to the city “with his disciples.” 1. As he moves toward the city, he announces his death in a series of predictions. 2. He works few wonders but mostly teaches in several settings, especially on the road and while at table.

B. Luke carefully rotates Jesus speech among three groups: the crowd, the opponents, and the disciples. To each group Jesus speaks appropriately. 1. To the crowd, he issues warnings and calls to repent before it is too late. 2. To enemies (the Pharisees and lawyers) he tells parables of rejection(14:l5 24). 3. To the disciples called from the crowd, he provides instruction on prayer (II: I), the use of possessions, and perseverance (12:22- 34). C. Luke shows that the small group of the journey’s start (8:1-3) turns into a “great crowd of disciples” (19:37) that greets him as he enters the city as “the king who comes in the name of the Lord.”

IV. Luke’s passion account follows the same storyline as in Matthew and Mark but with a distinct emphasis. A. Jesus is presented in philosophical terms as a figure who is in control of his feelings, exercises authority to the end, and dies with a prayer of acceptance on his lips. In contrast to Mark and Matthew, where Jesus is recognized by his executioner as the son of God,” in Luke, Jesus is recognized by his executioner as “a righteous man.”( 23:47). B. The ordinary people of the city - who thronged to Jesus as a teacher (21 :38)—play little role in the plot against him. In contrast to Matthew, who puts the blame on the whole populace, in Luke’s Gospel, it is the leadership that works against Jesus. At his death, the populace repents (23:48—49).