Luke 7:18-35.
In some respects this passage is confusing. It puts John the Baptist in a different light than earlier parts of the gospel. He has heard of Jesus but appears to doubt his identity. Jesus’ response to John’s messengers repeated the basic elements of his ministry so far: teaching, healing, exorcism and challenge to all who saw and heard to believe.
The phrase “the coming one” and the raising of the widow’s son also lend confusion to the passage. Did it refer to Elijah whose return was expected before the Messiah came to establish God’s reign? Or did it refer to John himself?
In her discussion of the passage Sharon Ringe suggests two possibilities, then resolves the problem.
Either this incident, shared from a common source in Matthew 11:2-6, is an actual event in Jesus’ ministry.
Or it is the product of the early church attempt to distinguish between John and Jesus.
It is known that there was some rivalry between the disciples of the two. The selected references to Isaiah’s prophecies clearly describe the essentials of Jesus’ ministry as Luke had previously defined it in 4:16-30 and 6:20-26. But this would imply that John was ignorant of Jesus’ ministry, which seems very doubtful and his own role in preparing for him.
Ringe’s solution is that there is no confusion or uncertainty if we regard the passage as a change in the theological understanding of the relationship between John and Jesus.
The subsequent rhetorical questions Jesus’ put to the multitude describes John and not himself as “the coming one.” In Jesus’ time the Jewish people awaited more than any prophet’s word but the word of one who would tell them that the events of the end-time had arrived. So the passage is essentially an eschatological statement. This is clarified by the quotation from Malachi 3:1 followed by Jesus’ assurance that John was more than just another prophet. He was the prophet who would prepare the way for God’s chosen Messiah bringing that final time of salvation to Israel.
In other words, John was the last of the old order, but he was still not the one who came to establish God’s reign on earth. He was not the Messiah. That is how vss. 28-30 describe John. Many people who came to be baptized by John believing that he represented the welcome justice and righteousness of God. Those who refused to be baptized by him, were actually rejecting God purpose for their lives.
It was as if Jesus and John stood on different sides of the dividing line marking the beginning of God’s final reign. They had a common agenda from God, but they would both be rejected by their own generation. The parable about the children’s games makes this point. Neither John’s message of repentance nor the good news Jesus proclaimed would be heard except by a relatively few.
The proverb about Wisdom’s children reiterates the point of the whole passage. Those who do believe welcome both the appeal for repentance and the joy of God’s purpose and reign being fulfilled at last.
Showing posts with label Messiah. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Messiah. Show all posts
Monday, January 25, 2010
Friday, January 15, 2010
4 - A Time of Testing
What we used to call Jesus’ temptation is now described as testing. That is certainly the more accurate translation of the Greek word. It also more accurately defines his experience immediately after his baptism. This is further confirmed by the repeated use of the conditional form Luke gave to Satan's challenges to Jesus: “If you are the Son of God .... If you will worship me ....” Luke thus created the impression that we are hearing the inner spiritual struggles of Jesus as he meditated
on how to proceed with the mission for which his birth and baptism had prepared him.
Another significant aspect of this experience was the role of the Holy Spirit. Throughout the forty days in the wilderness, Jesus was surrounded and supported by God’s active power. Matthew and Mark represented this power by the presence of angels, generally regarded in biblical language as spiritual agents.
The time spent in the wilderness was not as important as we might think. It was a symbolic number merely recalling OT references to similar experiences of Moses (Exod. 34:28; Deut. 9:9) and Elijah (1 Kings 19:4-8).
Nor can the scripture quotations Luke put into the mouth of Jesus be ignored. The three tests were all symbolic and had biblical precedents. Moses had provided food for the Israelites in the wilderness. Where famine was frequent, turning stones into bread would have been extremely popular. It would not be wrong, but neither would it be adequate as Moses had said to the Israelites (Deut. 8:3).
The second test was equally seductive at that time when Roman power brutally subjugated the Jewish people. But to accept the promise of absolute power would have been a denial of God’s sovereignty and an obstacle for the reign of God’s justice and love promised throughout Isaiah 40-66. By deciding to worship and serve God alone, Jesus accepted that goal as primary and vastly better than any other possible means. The implication is that those who seek security by violent means will ultimately fail. Divine mercy, justice and love are the only means God uses to bring about God’s reign on earth.
The biblical precedent for the third test lay in Psalm 91:8-9 where the righteous are promised God’s special protection. To jump from the pinnacle of the temple would have won Jesus instant fame and credibility, but would also contradict his real message. Like the other tests, this one would not have been inherently evil, and in each case some good would have come from what was proposed. More important than what any religious leader might do was whether or not it would enhance the relationship of all the people with God.
Surprisingly, each of the tests also involved activities that were expected of Israel’s promised Messiah. They all had social and political as well as religious manifestations that lay within the Jewish belief system. Luke presented them as being very much like the Israelites’ misunderstanding of God’s purposes for them and their failure to trust God during their time in the wilderness.
Note especially that Luke did not provide an alternative means for Jesus to proceed. All we have is the ominous note that Satan left Jesus “until an opportune time.” As we shall see the testing of Jesus was to go on throughout his ministry.
The testing of Jesus’ mission in and to the world is still going on.
on how to proceed with the mission for which his birth and baptism had prepared him.
Another significant aspect of this experience was the role of the Holy Spirit. Throughout the forty days in the wilderness, Jesus was surrounded and supported by God’s active power. Matthew and Mark represented this power by the presence of angels, generally regarded in biblical language as spiritual agents.
The time spent in the wilderness was not as important as we might think. It was a symbolic number merely recalling OT references to similar experiences of Moses (Exod. 34:28; Deut. 9:9) and Elijah (1 Kings 19:4-8).
Nor can the scripture quotations Luke put into the mouth of Jesus be ignored. The three tests were all symbolic and had biblical precedents. Moses had provided food for the Israelites in the wilderness. Where famine was frequent, turning stones into bread would have been extremely popular. It would not be wrong, but neither would it be adequate as Moses had said to the Israelites (Deut. 8:3).
The second test was equally seductive at that time when Roman power brutally subjugated the Jewish people. But to accept the promise of absolute power would have been a denial of God’s sovereignty and an obstacle for the reign of God’s justice and love promised throughout Isaiah 40-66. By deciding to worship and serve God alone, Jesus accepted that goal as primary and vastly better than any other possible means. The implication is that those who seek security by violent means will ultimately fail. Divine mercy, justice and love are the only means God uses to bring about God’s reign on earth.
The biblical precedent for the third test lay in Psalm 91:8-9 where the righteous are promised God’s special protection. To jump from the pinnacle of the temple would have won Jesus instant fame and credibility, but would also contradict his real message. Like the other tests, this one would not have been inherently evil, and in each case some good would have come from what was proposed. More important than what any religious leader might do was whether or not it would enhance the relationship of all the people with God.
Surprisingly, each of the tests also involved activities that were expected of Israel’s promised Messiah. They all had social and political as well as religious manifestations that lay within the Jewish belief system. Luke presented them as being very much like the Israelites’ misunderstanding of God’s purposes for them and their failure to trust God during their time in the wilderness.
Note especially that Luke did not provide an alternative means for Jesus to proceed. All we have is the ominous note that Satan left Jesus “until an opportune time.” As we shall see the testing of Jesus was to go on throughout his ministry.
The testing of Jesus’ mission in and to the world is still going on.
3 - The Genealogy of the Son of God.
Instantly we notice that Luke’s genealogy is different from Matthew’s in several ways while also being somewhat similar. First, Luke introduced a valuable historical detail for the beginning of Jesus public ministry - he was 30 years old. Like Matthew, he recorded Jesus’ heritage to David and Abraham, but in reverse order beginning with Joseph and making no mention of Mary at all.
Luke also added a parenthetical note about Joseph’s presumed relationship to Jesus. Could this possibly have been to counter rumours about his illegitimate birth that had begun to circulate in the 80s? In his Rabbi Jesus: An Intimate Biography (Doubleday, 2000) Bruce Chilton declares that Jesus would have been regarded as a mamzer in his home town of Nazareth. The word is bluntly translated "bastard."
Unlike Matthew, Luke imposed no significant pattern or order to the genealogy. The linkage with David and Abraham established Jesus as the saviour of Israel. Then by tracing Jesus’ ancestry all the way back to Enos, Seth and Adam he stated for all to know that Jesus was the Son of God and Saviour of the whole of humanity. That would have been of great significance for the Gentiles in Luke’s audience.
The term “Son of God, ” however, did not imply some sort of divine nature. In Jewish thought, it meant that,like the earlier monarchs of Israel, Jesus had been chosen for a unique role in history. It also conveyed the same sense of inclusiveness found also in Gabriel’s message to Mary in 1:35, in Simeon’s song in 2:30-32, and it confirmed what the voice from heaven had said in 3:22.
The genealogy brought to an end the introduction to the gospel. Luke’s audience would know beyond doubt exactly who this Jesus of Nazareth is and why he had been born. Sharon Hinge noted that this had been done by all that preceded it, i.e. “the angelic announcement of the birth, the prophetic precedent, human sensitivity, a heavenly voice and a catalogue of ancestors.”
Thus far in Luke’s narrative Jesus himself had played no more than a totally passive role. Yet several important themes to be developed during his ministry had already been introduced. Hinge went onto say that Luke had yet to tell what Jesus would do
with these beginnings and the working out of these claims in very specific historical contexts. She notes further that there was a mysterious "lack of hospitality toward such a project had already been reflected in the circumstances of Jesus’ birth.”
Another way these introductory passages could be interpreted is to see Jesus as a person whose life, words and work contradicted what might have been expected of Israel’s Messiah as perceived by Jews of that time. This same theme had echoes in the introduction to John’s Gospel: “He was in the world, ... yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, but his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.” (John 1:10-12)
Is it too much to say that in the latter decades of the 1st century CE the traditions about Jesus in diverse Christian communities had begun to coalesce into a definitive theology about the person and work of Jesus, the Christ? This may not have been a mature Christology, but it certainly was the beginning of such theological reflection as to the person and work of Christ. If true, Luke contributed greatly to the espousing of this theology by the Gentiles of his time.
Luke also added a parenthetical note about Joseph’s presumed relationship to Jesus. Could this possibly have been to counter rumours about his illegitimate birth that had begun to circulate in the 80s? In his Rabbi Jesus: An Intimate Biography (Doubleday, 2000) Bruce Chilton declares that Jesus would have been regarded as a mamzer in his home town of Nazareth. The word is bluntly translated "bastard."
Unlike Matthew, Luke imposed no significant pattern or order to the genealogy. The linkage with David and Abraham established Jesus as the saviour of Israel. Then by tracing Jesus’ ancestry all the way back to Enos, Seth and Adam he stated for all to know that Jesus was the Son of God and Saviour of the whole of humanity. That would have been of great significance for the Gentiles in Luke’s audience.
The term “Son of God, ” however, did not imply some sort of divine nature. In Jewish thought, it meant that,like the earlier monarchs of Israel, Jesus had been chosen for a unique role in history. It also conveyed the same sense of inclusiveness found also in Gabriel’s message to Mary in 1:35, in Simeon’s song in 2:30-32, and it confirmed what the voice from heaven had said in 3:22.
The genealogy brought to an end the introduction to the gospel. Luke’s audience would know beyond doubt exactly who this Jesus of Nazareth is and why he had been born. Sharon Hinge noted that this had been done by all that preceded it, i.e. “the angelic announcement of the birth, the prophetic precedent, human sensitivity, a heavenly voice and a catalogue of ancestors.”
Thus far in Luke’s narrative Jesus himself had played no more than a totally passive role. Yet several important themes to be developed during his ministry had already been introduced. Hinge went onto say that Luke had yet to tell what Jesus would do
with these beginnings and the working out of these claims in very specific historical contexts. She notes further that there was a mysterious "lack of hospitality toward such a project had already been reflected in the circumstances of Jesus’ birth.”
Another way these introductory passages could be interpreted is to see Jesus as a person whose life, words and work contradicted what might have been expected of Israel’s Messiah as perceived by Jews of that time. This same theme had echoes in the introduction to John’s Gospel: “He was in the world, ... yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, but his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.” (John 1:10-12)
Is it too much to say that in the latter decades of the 1st century CE the traditions about Jesus in diverse Christian communities had begun to coalesce into a definitive theology about the person and work of Jesus, the Christ? This may not have been a mature Christology, but it certainly was the beginning of such theological reflection as to the person and work of Christ. If true, Luke contributed greatly to the espousing of this theology by the Gentiles of his time.
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