Opening the Gift of Luke’s Gospel this Christmas
The Christian year begins with Advent, the season of preparation for the coming of the Lord, and our preaching at SRC this season will focus on Luke’s account of Jesus’ birth. In the Gospel, the cradle, cross, and crown are united in Christ as the story of God’s redeeming work unfolds. Perhaps that will lead some to read “the rest of the story” of Jesus that Luke wrote for us.
Luke’s Gift
Luke authored a two-volume story of the life of Jesus. The Gospel is volume one - and it covers Jesus’ life ministry up to his death and resurrection; volume two is The Acts of the Apostles, covering Jesus’ ministry in and through the Church, beginning with his ascension and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Both volumes are addressed to "Theophilus," evidently an early Christian disciple in Luke's circle, or possibly, as his name means "Friend of God," a symbolic designation for all who will seek to follow Jesus and long to be deeply rooted in his life and truth.
Luke’s work was not written to introduce something entirely new about Jesus but to clarify and magnify the teaching of the Apostles that was already proclaimed and taught in the churches. That would be especially so among the Gentile churches served by Paul, whom Luke accompanied as a member of Paul's apostolic band (see Colossians 4:14). In short, Luke is seeking to "catechize" Theophilus (see Luke 1:3-4), and, through him, us as well.
Luke's purpose in his writing is to give Theophilus a great gift, one that is something increasingly unpopular in many circles today: certainty. Luke has "investigated everything carefully" and written the Jesus story as an "orderly account" (and not simply a theological reflection). None of the Gospels are, strictly speaking, "biography" in the sense that we use that term today. But they are "historical," and Luke's, in particular, makes that claim. The result is a catechesis in the life and teaching of Jesus that is reliable, and because the Holy Spirit inspires it, it is God's word as well.
Luke notes that from the beginning, the eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have "delivered" the life and teachings of Jesus to the Christian community. "Delivered" is a very significant word, also used by Paul to describe his own faithful re-telling and passing along of the body of teaching concerning Jesus he had himself received. “I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you..." (1 Corinthians 11:23); and, "For I delivered to you of first importance that which I also received..." (1 Corinthians 15:3). This represents the right and apostolic sense of "tradition" - the received and handed-down teaching about Jesus that then becomes written instruction for the permanent edification and protection of the Church. Thus, the "tradition" precedes the written Gospel. But far from supplementing or contradicting it in some way, tradition is one with it. Jesus lived and taught and died and rose again; the Twelve were his witnesses and faithfully re-told his teaching, proclaiming the story of his life, death, and resurrection. Afterward, the story emerged in the written form of the Gospels. Luke writes an "orderly account" of what the apostles had "delivered" to the Christian Community, a "narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us.”
Journey and Table: the Structure of Luke
In his Gospel, Luke employs two primary literary devices to tell the Jesus story and call all to become his disciples. The first is the image of a "journey". Luke's Gospel opens with the journey of the angel of the Lord to Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, and then of the angel Gabriel to Mary, the Blessed Virgin and Mother of Jesus. The angels come to announce the miraculous birth of both sons, Messiah's forerunner and the Messiah who will come as the fulfillment of the promises of God made to his people from of old. The result is Mary's journey to meet with John's mother, Elizabeth, and then Joseph and Mary's journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, where Christ is born. Jesus journeys with his parents to Jerusalem as a twelve-year-old child and, in young adulthood, to the Jordan River, where John baptizes him. Subsequent journeys unfold, climaxing in the monumental journey from the Mount of Transfiguration to Jerusalem and crucifixion. The Gospel follows this with the story of the resurrected Savior traveling down the Emmaus Road with two disciples and then stopping to break bread with them, opening their eyes in that meal to the reality of his glory. The final ascending journey to the Father closes the Gospel as the disciples begin their journey to make disciples of all nations. Jesus said, “While the foxes have holes and the birds have nests, the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head,” and Luke’s Gospel especially shows Jesus' life as an extended journey - from glory to humiliation and return to glory.
Along the way, Jesus will teach and preach the Gospel of the Kingdom and call the repentant to follow him. He will rebuke the rich and welcome the outcast, all while forming a community of disciples who will learn that to follow Jesus means dying, too, taking up their cross as they take his message to the world. They will witness Jesus' power in remarkable signs and be overwhelmed by his transfiguration. They will discover the meaning of the Kingdom of God among men - of the banquet to which the poor, the blind, the crippled, and the lame are invited. This brings us to the second way Luke helps us hear Jesus' story.
Since one must eat to make a journey (see 1 Kings 19), the second motif Luke highlights is the matter of eating and drinking, the way of hospitality, culminating in the Last Supper with the disciples and the formation of the Eucharistic Tradition to form the heart of the new Christian community. There were no roadside restaurants for the weary traveler of Jesus' day, so basic hospitality in the form of bread was at the heart of Jesus' world. This idea of breaking and sharing bread - and in particular with whom one is willing to break bread - is at the heart of the Jesus story that Luke tells. At his birth, having been refused hospitality, Jesus is placed in a food trough -- the manger - by his mother, Mary. From his first moments, Christ is placed here as food for the world. The prominence of the theme of food along the way can be seen throughout the Gospel of Luke.
After introducing us to the Lord Jesus and his forerunner John, Luke arranges his Gospel around a progression of ten meals, as follows –
Banquet at the home of Levi - Luke 5
Dinner at the home of a Pharisee - Luke 7
Breaking Bread in Bethsaida - Luke 9
Hospitality in the home of Martha - Luke 10
Second Dinner at the home of a Pharisee - Luke 11
Third Dinner at the home of a Pharisee - Luke 14
Hospitality at the home of Zacchaeus - Luke 19
The Last Supper - Luke 22
Meal at Emmaus - Luke 24
Meal with the Disciples - Luke 24
Luke places Jesus teaching concerning the Kingdom, the necessity of faith and repentance, and the call to become a disciple around these meals. In his excellent little book "Eating Your Way Though Luke's Gospel," Robert Karris lists over 75 passages that deal with the subject of food in Luke, noting especially the historical setting of the events. Eugene LaVerdiere's "Dining in the Kingdom of God" is most helpful in exploring how these ten meals find their definition and climax in the Last Supper, the Kiddush, and the Eucharistic Supper, forming the foundation of the new Christian community. It is at meals that Jesus identifies with sinners; it is to an eschatological feast that he invites us all; it is because of his actions at "symposiums" that Christ is then accused of being a drunkard and a glutton. It is in the feast of his table that he gives himself to us and opens our eyes to the reality of his resurrection and rule. How thankful we must be that Jesus does indeed ‘eat with sinners and welcome them."
The early Christians were aware of the theme of eating with sinners and breaking bread as they moved into the ancient pagan world. They take their meals together with gladness (Acts 2); Peter struggles to cross the threshold of a Gentile and discovers through a vision of unclean food made clear that the Gentile man has been made clean by God (Acts 10-11); it is in Antioch that Paul will rebuke Peter over his bad table manners that put the Gospel at risk (Acts 11-15; Galatians 2). How important is the table and eating? From the fall in the Garden to the feast of Heaven, the Bible unfolds the story of redemption and new creation through acts and images of eating and drinking. Life and death - ultimate destinies - are all tied to the matter of a table, a feast, or a fast; the new covenant itself is inaugurated at a sacred meal as the Last Supper becomes the Lord’s Supper. And at the Lord's Table each Lord's Day, Christ continues to open our eyes as we pause to rest along the way in our pilgrimage of faith.
God’s Love for Us
Jesus made his journey because of God’s love for sinners, to seek and save the lost, a redemptive journey from the Father above through the humiliation of the manger and the cross, and then back to the Father. Luke wrote of Jesus’ story concerning a prodigal son who, in rebellion, left his father for a distant country and squandered his inheritance, and in doing so, points us to Christ who in obedience left his Father for a distant country to make us his inheritance and bring us home to God to feast in the Kingdom.
The journey and feast motifs meet in Bethlehem at the birth of Jesus. The Son of Man, who left the light of heaven and journeyed to the squalor of our fallen world, was placed in a food trough by his mother, Mary. From his first cries and sighs, he is identified with food for the world, the only one who can truly satisfy all who hunger and thirst. Mary “wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger,” a rough stone box holding hay for the family’s livestock to eat. Some thirty years later, Mary watched as others took Jesus’ body down from the cross, “wrapped it in linen and laid it in a tomb cut out of stone” (Luke 2:7; 24:53). A stone trough and a stone tomb are the bookends of Luke’s Gospel, written that we might know the redeeming love of God given to us in Jesus and learn to follow him as faithful disciples.
Luke emphasizes the blessing God brings to the poor and outcast, the radical inclusion of women in the circle of disciples, and the mission of Jesus to save sinners as God’s humble servant. In many ways, Jesus is seen in this Gospel as the one whose followers would unexpectedly become those who eventually “turn the world upside down”, as Luke observes in Acts.
Let me encourage you to read Luke's moveable feast carefully and prayerfully, asking Jesus to open your eyes to his grace and glory as you do so.