In presenting the genealogy of Jesus (3:23-3:38), Luke doesn't stop where Matthew did: relating him to David and Abraham, with all that was good and hoped for by Ancient Israel, casting Jesus as the very Jewish Messiah. For Luke, that is not enough of a statement because what God's Spirit is up to it bigger than that. Instead, the lineage of Jesus, born of Mary, is traced all the way back to Adam-emphasizing Jesus' link with all humanity. He is not the fulfillment of only one religious group's expectations. Rather, as the New Adam who gets it right for us, Jesus is for everyone; he is the Universal Christ. And it is not for his followers to go about enshrining him in the garb of religious traditions. Luke's Christ wears God's Spirit, preaching repentance and forgiveness as the good news. That was not heard as 'good news' by the keepers of the faith. The religious leaders of the day had a place for everything and wanted to keep anyone who didn't fit in their assigned places. So what the power brokers heard and saw was, to them, bad news: Everybody has a second chance. What power and authority is all about is not 'us' and 'them', the 'righteous' and the 'wrong', the true followers who stay the sacred course and those who jump off surfing a wave of secular culture. Power and authority are not divisive energies which separate people into 'winners' and 'losers'. God's power and authority is what would bring all the people back together: repentance and forgiveness, a second chance (or, as Luke's friend Paul put it: a new creation), a new creation in which God's Spirit is completely in charge.
Luke wastes no time proclaiming what can happen when the Spirit is allowed to flow for the good of people. The very old and the shockingly young bear children, suggesting the overwhelming power of a God who will be active even in a world we despair of as barren, even through those we dismiss as untested, virginal.
Not only women, but blessed too are the poor, the hungry, the sick and outcaste-all favored by God, Luke taught his people and reminds us today. God will often act, the truth will be told, through the lives of people who have been left out of the process, pushed to the outskirts, labeled by the system or 'tradition' as living on the wrong side of the border, born the wrong color, the inferior gender, or oriented to expressing their deepest, loving selves in unacceptable ways…
…Yes, what do you suppose started the finger-pointing and tongue-wagging about the supposed inappropriate touch by Mary Magdalen? Was there proof-positive of a dissolute lifestyle or merely raised ire over her honestly admitting her need of Jesus? Barging upon the 'in' crowd, weeping her tears and drying his feet! Can't you hear them? "If this kind of person is accorded a seat here with us, how will it look? We appeal to our rules and traditions!"
But in Luke's Gospel (3:3), even the one who prepared the way for Jesus offered a Christic critique of such institutionalism: "You brood of vipers…" do not attach yourselves to rules and traditions, but to God and the people… "Do not begin to say to yourselves we have Abraham as our father…" Jockeying and lobbying for position is impotent. If there is an 'in' crowd and outcastes, then all there is is self abuse of power, with you in trouble and everyone out of sorts-social dis-ease.
"What then shall we do?" ask the scribes, Pharisees, and any religious groupings in many places and times, pondering crisis. The Baptist's cry: "Bear fruits that befit repentance…" Be fair, promote justice. I am preparing the way, trying to open you up with a baptism in honesty and truth.But the one is coming who will baptize you with the Spirit that will fill you to be and do these things.
What things? (4:14-21) preaching good news to the poor, proclaiming release to the captives, sight to the blind, freedom for the oppressed, the acceptable year of the Lord.
And more. Not only does Jesus teach and speak with authority, but he even commands the 'unclean spirits' (4:31-37): the hostilities to human well-being and the rebellions against God, wherever they are found. But it is as if Luke the Physician is writing a journal piece researching who actually is infected by unclean spirits: not the persons labeled as sick but the culture that avoids and blames the person 'possessed'. The cure for a culture of avoidance and blame? Jesus who is present and all-compassion.
Luke, showing himself to be more a social scientist than medical doctor marvels not so much at Jesus' miraculous healings but rather observes and comments on the reactions of the crowd. For example, the swineherds have a lot to say (8:26-38) upon seeing the demons cast out of a man and enter into the herd which then runs off the cliff. What do they talk about? Their gladness over the restored man? Their awe at the healing power of Christ? No! Their fear over how Jesus upsets the way things are; their anger over watching their livelihood/livestock fall off a cliff.
Not the well-being of others but the security of the self is the virus that Luke sees running rampant. And Luke knows that is precisely what Jesus in the Spirit comes to heal.
A leper is healed (5:12-16). Jesus gets close enough to make a difference. What's the difference? Jesus is bringing people back into community, modeling the Church's Mission to outcastes, setting a place for everyone at the table.
The paralytic's sins are forgiven; not because of his faith but the faith of those who carried him to Jesus. The community must bear people in need, believing (as would Martin Luther King, Jr.) that "I cannot be everything I was meant to be unless you become everything you are meant to be." With everyone Jesus, in word and deed, expressed you can only become who God intends you to be by being related, reconciled in community, growing to wholeness within yourself and with others.
How far would Jesus go? We know; all the way. But along the way, you could see what was coming because Jesus would work even on his Father's day off; that's right, healing on the Sabbath (6:1-11). Doing good work on the traditional day of rest would get him into trouble. That's when the religious conservatives, filled with fury, started having their closed meetings about what they were going to do.
Obsessed and possessed by their own version of purity rather than being filled with Christ's Spirit of compassion, such supposed church bodies post sentries at the door. But the Body of Christ is available to all. The Christ we meet in Luke's Gospel touches-heals-sends us to be the Church open to all, for all. To be the Church is not to be special and set apart, but like Jesus son of Adam to have a common bond with all humanity-to be the Church in the middle of everything that is going on, with everybody. After all, that is the Pentecost picture of Christ's Spirit-filled church, as depicted by Luke in his second volume of good news called The Acts of the Apostles.
© Thomas F. Reese
October 19, 2003