I am probably
very weird in this, but I find the first verses of Luke’s gospel to be very
engaging. This is one of the very few
times in our scriptures that the authors tip their hands as to what they’re up
to. The author, who has been given the
name, “Luke,” although he never identifies himself so we don’t have any real
idea who he is, tells us that he is not an eyewitness to Jesus. He never met Jesus. He never saw Jesus. He’s writing probably 50 years after Jesus’
death and resurrection. He tells us that
he’s being an historian. He has
critically examined many of the writings about Jesus that are out there and he
has selected some of them to create an orderly account of the life of Jesus.
We have to remember
that there are far more writings about Jesus than made it into the Bible. This book, called The Other Bible contains some of them. Many of them are outright bizarre. A couple weeks ago I read one account to the
confirmation class. There Jesus was a
boy and he wanted to play with some of the children in the neighborhood. Apparently they didn’t want to play and they
hid. So, Jesus turned all the children
into goats. That’s not your usual story
about Jesus! Anyway, in the end Jesus
turns them back into children.
You can see from
that that there were many strange and bizarre stories floating around about
Jesus. Luke gathers them, weeds out the
nonsense, and puts together the gospel we have today. He also wrote a second volume that is in the
Bible, The Acts of the Apostles.
One source that
did make it into Luke was almost certainly Mark’s gospel. They rest side by side in our Bibles and it
is easy to see how Luke picks up things from Mark and uses them in his own
account.
All of this gives
us insight into the formation of scripture.
When I was little I had this image of how Bible texts were written. I imagined a man hunched over an old wooden
writing desk with a feather quill in one hand, a piece of yellowed parchment on
the desk, and a sputtering candle too. I
then imagined the Holy Spirit hovering over the writer inspiring the writing
with God’s own words.
While the Holy
Spirit definitely had a hand in the writing and compiling of the Bible as we
know it, it was actually a much more complex process. And that is a good thing.
I get frustrated
when people pull out their Bibles and point to a chapter and verse and say,
“That’s what the Bible says, it must be true.”
Not so. If we’ve learned anything
from our reading of Bible passages over the last couple years it’s that they
are complex; even often deliberately written so as to be
self-contradictory. We are left to
conclude that either the authors were complete dimwits who didn’t know how to
keep their facts straight, or that something far more complex was going
on.
A study of
ancient Hebrew writings and teaching techniques shows that they often created
contrasts and contradictions to make a deeper point. It often led to debates as to exactly what
scriptures meant, and we see that Jesus engaged in those debates as well.
The Bible is not
a simple instruction book where if you simply do what it said God would be
happy with you and bless you with a good life.
I fear that all too many Christians these days see the Bible and their
relationship with God in that way: do
good and God will like you and give you a good life. If you actually know the scriptures you know
that the most faith-filled people often had very difficult lives full of
struggles and troubles.
It would make my
job, and the work of evangelism, so easy if faith were simply a matter of
applying word for word what a piece of scripture meant. It would be so simple, and it would be
obvious that those people who lived that way were blessed by God with a
statistically measurable better life.
Everyone would want to have a part just to have an easier life. Not so!
God made you a
creative, intelligent, and complex being.
Do you really think God will then give you an overly simplistic set of
instructions, call it The Bible, and then say follow it? Nope.
If God made you creative, intelligent, and complex then God will also
come to you in creative, intelligent, and complex ways. The scriptures will reflect that. We need to work with them, struggle with
them, and explore them.
It’s interesting
that Luke sort of dedicates his work to someone. He says, “I too decided, after carefully
investigating everything from the very first, to write an orderly account for
you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the truth…”
Theophilus can be
a name, but it is a name with a meaning.
It means lover of God. Some
people think Luke actually wrote his gospel, and the book of Acts, for a real
person named Theophilus. Most doubt it,
and count me among them. “Most excellent
theophilus” is you. It’s anyone who
loves God and seeks to have a deeper loving relationship with God through what
Luke has written.
And as an aside,
isn’t it nice to have the Bible speak out to you and call you, “Most excellent
lover of God”? How often does someone call
you “excellent”? God does through the
Bible.
There are parts
of the Bible that read like personal letters and stories, but Luke’s gospel
isn’t one of them. He writes like a
grand storyteller making a great public statement. Theophilus is surely everyone who reads this text!
So, what does
Luke have to tell us –lovers of God- after all his research and finding things
like Mark’s gospel to be reliable… and stories like Jesus turning children into
goats not so much?
Well, we meet two
people and an angel in the verses today.
Poor Zechariah. He’s a godly man,
working in the temple; a high and holy task.
He’s getting old but he is faithfully serving his shift in the temple
when suddenly and angel greets him. Now
this is the temple, so he shouldn’t be surprised to encounter something godly,
but the angel’s promise is miraculous: He, Zechariah, and his wife Elizabeth
will have a child! They’re both old and
this is highly unlikely. Can you imagine
going to the park with your child when everyone else there is either a young
parent or a grandparent with their grandchildren?
Zechariah does a
very reasonable, but it turns out very stupid thing. He asks the angel for proof. Here’s a hint. If you’re ever met by and angel, and the
angel promises something beyond belief, just accept it. Don’t ask for proof!
Careful what you
ask for, because you might just get it!
Zechariah’s proof is that he can’t speak until the child is born. Who knows, those quiet days may have been the
best days of his wife’s life!
Anyway, contrast
Zechariah with the next person we meet – Mary.
Now, if Zechariah was promised something miraculous by the angel, Mary
was promised something impossible. A
child! No way! Not happening! She knows enough about the ‘birds and the
bees’ to know how things work! But look
at her response to the angel. Does she
say, “Prove it,” or, “Give me a sign,” the way Zechariah did? No.
Despite the impossibility of the promise she simply says, “Here I am,
the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”
I think that is
Luke’s model of discipleship he wants lovers of God to have. He also wants his readers to know that when
God acts, all normalcy is off. Luke is
not going to ask us to start believing in magical fairies or unicorns, or that
Jesus is turning little kids into goats.
He is also not telling his readers that they should expect miraculous
and impossible things to happen in their lives because they love God.
No, Luke is
inviting us to see beyond the limits of what we think is possible and open our
hearts and minds to what God is capable of doing. Over and over again in Luke’s gospel we’ll
meet people who say something is impossible.
But God acts in ways that are beyond the limits of possible. Luke doesn’t want his readers to be stuck in
the mundane limitations of life and miss that God is at work in many and
various, and often VERY unpredictable ways.
The cross is the most unpredictable of them all.
And so, don’t
expect the Bible to give simple answers to complex problems. No, it is up to the task of being the voice
of God journeying with you into the most difficult and complex things that may
come up in your life. And then, in a
relationship with God that is not crippled by our sense of limits, we, like
Zechariah and Mary and many others we have yet to meet, embark on the adventure
of being a lover of God.
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