Tonight, we continue our journey through the Gospel of Luke with a discussion of Luke 4:14-6:11. (Most of these readings will track Mark 1:14-3:19.) Please join us on our voyage. The only provision you will need is a Bible. You are welcome to join us anytime. In the readings this week, Jesus begins his teaching and healing ministry and his authority grows.
The Healing of the Leper: (vv.5:12-16)
Jesus is not stationary but is traveling throughout Galilee. v.12. There he encounters a man “full of leprosy.” The Law renders this man ritually unclean. Lev. 14-15. Jesus reaches out to the man, touches him, heals him, and restores his ritual purity. Again, this story is a fulfillment of Isaiah 61:1 showing Jesus giving good news to the afflicted. This short vignette ends with Jesus withdrawing to the wilderness to pray. Throughout Luke’s gospel, we will see Jesus needing his time alone with God to recharge and refresh. This is another good lesson for all of us.
Healing the Paralytic: (vv.17-26)
In this story that we all know, Jesus takes his ministry a step further. In Jesus’s time there were healers and exorcists, but, as the Pharisees point out, no one other than God had the power to forgive sin. Within this story, Jesus will use the Jewish interpretive principle of qal v’homer which means from the “lighter to the weightier and is similar to an argument a fortiori.
In the story, a paralytic is brought to Jesus by his friends who must lower the man down from the roof into the house where Jesus is preaching and where certain Pharisees and Jewish leaders are present. Jesus says to the man “Your sins are forgiven.” There is no indication whatsoever that the man’s condition is caused by his sin. See, Lev. 19:14. The Pharisees object. Jesus responds qal v’homer, is it easier to pronounce forgiveness or cure paralysis? Therefore, by healing the paralytic, Jesus also establishes his power to forgive sins.
It is also here, that Jesus first refers to himself as the “Son of Man” who is the apocalyptic figure from Daniel 7:13. The story ends with those present saying “We have seen paradoxical things today.” v.26. Jesus is becoming more of an enigma to everyone.
Calling of Levi: (v.27-39)
This story opens with Jesus seeing the tax collector and issuing him an invitation to follow. Levi then “arises.” This is the same word anistemi used to describe Jesus’ resurrection and to describe Peter’s mother-in-law in 4:39, the paralytic in v.25, and Levi in v.28. Jesus brings about Resurrection. Levi does not just follow Jesus, but he throws him a great banquet. Banquets are a great theme throughout Luke’s gospel, as we will see.
The scandal is that Jesus eats with a tax collector and his friends. Tax collectors were marginalized in Jesus’s society because they put profits over morality, not unlike drug dealers and pornographers today. Jesus is very open with whom he associates, but, in doing so, he demonstrates the universality of his gospel message. He has come for everyone, and particularly those in most spiritual need. v.32.
The Pharisees not only object to the company Jesus keeps but that neither he nor his disciples have the same strict spiritual disciplines as themselves or John the Baptist, who abstains from all alcohol. Jesus responds in a two-fold way. First, Jesus says that when the bridegroom is present, the wedding party should celebrate – in other words, he is the Bridegroom (i.e. God) and now is not the time to abstain. v.34.
He also responds about old/new cloth and old/new wineskins. vv.36-38. There are two ways of interpreting Jesus’s saying. On the one hand, Jesus may be saying that in this new world where the Kingdom has come, what is appropriate and required has now changed. Or Jesus may simply be saying, as Paul writes in Romans 14, that different people have different practices for glorifying God, and that so long as those diverse practices are spiritually valuable, they should be respected. Therefore, if you fast, fast to the Lord, and if you give a great banquet, give a great banquet to the Lord.
Jesus and the Sabbath: (vv. 6:1-11)
Luke also shows us Jesus’ increasing authority by his declaring that he is “Lord of the Sabbath.” The fourth commandment says that no one can work on the Sabbath, not even a person’s slaves, guests, or animals. This is both a remembrance of the seventh day of creation and a weekly remembrance of God’s deliverance from Egypt. Ex. 20:8-11, Deut. 5:12-15. Only a few prohibitions are listed in Scripture, although working in the field is one of those. Ex. 34:21. Over time, the list of what constitutes “work” became more codified.
Luke gives us two Sabbath stories – one where he and his disciples are plucking and eating grain while walking and the other takes place with Jesus healing a man in the synagogue. In both cases, Jesus says that human need – hunger in the first instance and medical attention in the second – override the Law. Until this time, Jesus had always been punctilious in his legal observances.
What we see in Jesus’s violation of the letter of the law, sets up Jesus’s teaching in “Sermon on the Plain” (Luke’s version of Matthew’s “Sermon on the Mount”) whereby Jesus will move legal observances from the outward observance of the law to an internal observance. Jesus’s violations also move legal observance from a set of rules to the more fundamental underlying principles. As Paul writes in Romans 13, the second half of the Ten Commandments can simply be reduced to the principle of “love your neighbor as yourself.”
The Calling of the Twelve: (vv.12-16)
At the end of this initial phase of his ministry, Jesus calls the Twelve. See, Mark 3:13-19, Matt. 10:1-4. Prior to the calling, Jesus went up on a mountain and prayed all night. This is the only time, until the Passion, that Jesus prays for this extended period of time. Luke will continuously show Jesus in prayer.
Luke tells us that Jesus chose the twelve apostles from his larger group of disciples. In Luke 10, we will see Jesus appointing seventy more to go out. Luke is the only gospel that specifically speaks of additional disciples. Luke is also the only gospel (although some versions of Mark do) that calls the Twelve “apostles” not simply “disciples.” The difference is that a disciple is a “student” whereas an apostle is a “messenger.” These men are not simply to learn under Jesus, but to proclaim his message.
Dinner is at 6. The menu is ham and bean stew with popovers. Discussion about 6:45. Please join us!
I saw in the night visions,
and behold, with the clouds of heaven
there came one like a son of man,
and he came to the Ancient of Days
and was presented before him.
And to him was given dominion
and glory and kingdom,
that all peoples, nations, and languages
should serve him;
his dominion is an everlasting dominion,
which shall not pass away,
and his kingdom one
Daniel 7:13-14