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Today we begin a study of the gospel of Luke that will take
us through most of the next year. I love this day, poised
on the edge of what will be part of us for 12 months…I’ve
always loved new beginnings. I love this gospel of Luke,
as well.
Before we read, I want you to consider with me for a few
minutes just what it is that we will be looking at. I want
you to think first about this word “Gospel.” “Gospel,” of
course, means “good news.” Jesus used it to describe
the fact that the kingdom of God was breaking into the world.
The rest of the New Testament used it to describe that fact
that the kingdom had come in a person…Jesus Christ.
And so Matthew, Mark, Luke and John’s accounts of
the life of Jesus are called gospels. Gospel is good news.
They needed that a couple thousand years ago. We can certainly
use some of it today as well.
But “gospel” is also a distinctive form of literature,
the form represented by the first four books of the New Testament.
And that unique form can easily be seen in a style we might
call “narrative.” Or put more simply, “story.” Now,
let’s be clear. When you hear “story,” you
may immediately think “fairy tale,” or “fiction.” But
that’s not what I’m talking about.
I’m talking about truth presented in the way we hear
it best: a story. The story about God. The story about us.
A story not only seems to hold our attention, but it frees
our imagination to think about where we might appear in that
story…where our story intersects with other stories.
You might call the gospel… “the good news story.”
This is most clearly seen by contrasting how a gospel is
different than a letter, which is what most of the New Testament
is made up of. One author puts it this way:
When a problem appears in a New Testament letter…let’s
say the early church is struggling to learn how to accept
people of different ethnic groups. In Paul’s letters,
he might address such an issue using history, logic,
scripture and a reasoned personal appeal. But in the
gospel, the same issue (accepting people different than
we are) is dealt with in a very different way. Luke writes, “And
Jesus answered, ‘A man was going down from Jerusalem
to Jericho when he fell into the hands of robbers…,’” and
goes on to tell the story of the Good Samaritan. We,
too, are pulled into wondering “who exactly is
my neighbor, anyway?”
And so we begin the gospel. All four tell the story of Jesus.
But we begin one particular gospel, Luke’s gospel.
The oldest traditions of the church identify the author
as Luke, a doctor and a companion of the apostle Paul on
his missionary journeys. This would mean Luke was not an
eyewitness to Jesus’ life, but undoubtedly had access
to those who were. This gospel is Book I. The book of Acts
is Volume II, written by the same author and continuing the
story.
Luke is a fine writer, and like every writer has his own
patterns and themes. We will talk about some of those as
we go. But one of the most helpful things for me is remembering
the distinctives of the different gospels. Here are four
pictures that the scholar Dale Bruner listed out years ago.
- He says that Mark is the gospel
for evangelists…full
of action, power and the rapid spreading of the kingdom.
- Matthew is the gospel for teachers,
full of well-thought out doctrines and careful teaching.
- John is the gospel for spiritual
leaders, capturing some
of the mystery of Christ and the way that God Almighty
orchestrated the story.
- But Luke. Luke is the gospel for
deacons or social workers. Luke will always draw us back
to the stories of the poor, the sick, the oppressed,
the ones at the margins, the outcast…and
how their stories intersect with Jesus and His kingdom.
This
morning, we’ll read two short passages. The first
is the first four verses of chapter one, Luke’s introduction
and purpose. Then we’ll skip over all of the narrative
around the birth of Jesus (we’ll come back during Advent)
and pick up the story at chapter 2:41-52. And, in the tradition
of the church down through many ages, this morning let me
invite you to stand for the reading of the gospel:
Luke
1:1-4 & 2:41-52
Perhaps you noticed that just like the book of Acts, this
is addressed to “Theophilus,” a name which means “lover
or friend of God.” And it is written
“so that you may know the truth concerning the
things about which you have been instructed.”
That’s an interesting sentence, isn’t it? It
seems to bring out the huge difference between being instructed
in something…and knowing it. There is a vast gap between
learning the Ten Commandments, or the main theological concepts
of Christianity…and knowing God in Jesus Christ, personally
and intimately. Luke’s desire is that we might know.
But what I want us to look at a bit this morning is this
story of Jesus at age 12.
Now in Jesus’ day, a Jewish male had a coming of age
at 12-13, with his bar mitzvah (son of the law) and starting
to take on adult responsibilities. It is the only story in
all of the Bible that has anything to say about Jesus between
infancy and the beginning of his ministry at age 30. That
seems important to me.
[There are all sorts of stories about Jesus as a boy in
ancient documents that never made it into the Bible. Most
of them are pretty wild…showing Jesus as a sort of “SuperBoy,” flying
around or doing miracles or punishing his parents’ neighbors
when they were evil. But only this one made it into scripture.]
Anyone here who has parented or is parenting an adolescent
child, or even knows one…and who is not hooked a bit
by this story…must be a little sleepy this morning.
We have three adolescents in our household…and this
sounds pretty familiar.
Let me paraphrase in our language:
When Jesus hit the teenage years and headed off to middle
school, things became more challenging for his parents.
Once, in fact, they took a family trip along with many
others from their town to the big city, Jerusalem, for
the biggest holiday of the year, Passover.
Because so many of their neighbors and family went along,
Mary and Joseph had a small communication lapse as they
returned home. At the end of day #1, Mary thought Joseph
knew where Jesus was. Joseph thought Mary was in charge
of the kids. When they realized after an entire day that
neither they nor any of their siblings or nieces or nephews
or the large party had seen Jesus, they panicked. He was
lost. People get arrested for things like abandoning children
in big cities, and all sorts of terrible things can happen.
Cell phone service being poor in Israel at the time, Mary
and Joseph had to hightail it back to Jerusalem, arriving
at the end of day #2. This is beginning to sound like yet
another episode of “Home Alone!”
They spent all of day #3 combing the streets of Jerusalem,
filing a Missing Adolescent Report at the police station
and asking questions.
Finally, at wits end they go to the temple to pray for
their poor lost child…and there he is.
Now folks, there was an article in yesterday’s paper
about the perils of entering the teenage years…for
parents. How many years, how many gray hairs it can add to
parental heads. Maybe you have stayed up waiting for your
teen to come home by curfew…or an hour past, or two
hours past. Maybe you have experienced that wonder of not
going to sleep. Maybe you have sat and mentally written out
your speech to your child…which becomes less and less
reasoned and more and more emotional as time goes by.
But…Mary and Joseph find Jesus calmly talking in
the temple. They are flabbergasted. How can he possibly have
done this to them? And Mary blurts it out,
“Your father
and I…,”
I mean, have you been there!? What
Mary says probably happened at our house five times this
week, “Your father and I…your mother and I,” They
are incredulous! Now, Jesus…as far as we can tell,
was not being mean or disrespectful or anything…but
he was on an entirely different page.
“Didn’t you know…I would be in my Father’s
(heavenly) house?”
Well…NO!!! “Did you think about calling?! Am
I a mind reader?! And did you fill the car back up with gas?!”
“Didn’t you know…I would be in my Father’s
(heavenly) house?”
And what is their response when Jesus says this? This is
so precious:
“They did not understand what he was saying to
them.”
Now there’s a shocker! This could have been written
yesterday!
“Didn’t you know…I would be in my Father’s
house?”
There’s something a little quieting about that question.
You know I love to read well-written books. Always, they
have what English professors call “foreshadowing,” just
a few subtle hints of what is to come. Besides hooking you
into a story, what this does is help you realize that each
small part of the story fits into a larger whole.
I told you a couple of weeks ago I was re-reading Charles
Dickens’ Great Expectations. Dickens was the master
at weaving together a number of different substories, sometimes
leaving them for long periods of time but finally at the
end of the book they all collide together and you sort of
marvel and say, “Wow, Dickens was really in control
of this whole thing all along.” The author knew how
each piece fit into the whole, even though as a reader I
was clueless.
That’s how I started to view this short teenage story
about Jesus. Something bigger is at work here. Within this
short vignette are the first hints of a whole bunch of themes
that Luke will come back to again in weeks to come. It’s
a mini-gospel all by itself. I want to just pull on a few
of these threads that run through this gospel.
Geography. Geography is very important for Luke. He clearly
marks out where different parts of the story take place.
This scene takes place in Jerusalem. It is important not
only that this is the holy city, but that Jesus is here essentially
at the beginning of the story. Jesus will journey out away
from it, but then in chapter 9 we find Jesus “setting
his face for Jerusalem.” The whole rest of the story
will be his journey back here, until he arrives in chapter
19…knowing he will die.
Temple. Jesus is conversing here with the Jewish teachers
and scholars, questions and answers. When he returns again
to Jerusalem, he will again converse with the teachers of
the law. They will again be amazed, only this time moved
to anger.
Ties to Old Testament. Luke often uses images that at least
some readers might know from the Old Testament. As you listened
to this story, you may have even thought of the boy Samuel
in the Old Testament. In that story Samuel’s mother
Hannah presents him to the Lord after a miraculous birth,
and Samuel goes to the temple at a young age to serve God.
He will grow to become a great prophet, but in his boyhood
as he was apprenticed, we are told
“the boy Samuel continued to grow in stature and
in favor with the Lord and with men.”
The exact same words that described the boy Jesus here.
Uncanny Timing. This happens during
the Passover feast, one of the three pilgrimage festivals,
when people journeyed to Jerusalem. It celebrated the event
in Egypt when the Israelites were saved from the angel of
death. Just prior to the Exodus, they were told to sacrifice
lambs and put the blood on the doorposts of their houses
and they were saved. Here is Jesus again at Passover. And
in 20 more years he will give his life up in Jerusalem again
at the time of the Passover, sacrificing Himself so that
others (we) might live. And of course…it has to be
three days. Not two, not four, but three days that Mary and
Joseph are missing Jesus before he appears to them.
Befuddled People. Luke loves to show us befuddled people.
This might start with the parents, but really all along the
way, people do not understand Jesus. Don’t understand
his motives, identity or ultimately his purpose in coming
to earth. When Luke says in verse 50 that Mary and Joseph
“did not understand what he was saying to them,”
it may be the first time in the story, but certainly not
the last. Luke’s reader Theophilus was probably no
different, nor if we are honest, are we. We sometimes don’t
understand what Jesus is saying to us…sometimes we
won’t understand. It’s why Luke began the whole
story…with a desire for us to know the truth.
Tension over Jesus’ Identity. Like other parts of
New Testament, Luke will wrestle with exactly who Jesus is.
Here, Jesus’ folks look at him as son of Mary, but
perhaps for the first time…Jesus understands himself
more importantly as God’s Son. This tension of Jesus
as Divine Christ and as human being is apparent throughout
this gospel.
But here’s the best thread:
Lost and Found. Jesus is lost…but eventually is found.
Sit with this image for a second, lost
and found. Perhaps
you have had those horrible moments in a store or somewhere
else when your children are little, and they disappear faster
than you can blink. Your heart starts to beat harder, they
were just there a second ago, where could they have gone.
And about the time you start to panic, this cute little face
pops out from a clothes rack and your heart leaps up and
you grab them and they’ll never understand why you
pick them up in a longer-than-normal hug.
Perhaps you have been lost yourself in a sea of people on
a downtown street or in a train station or an airport . Someone
was supposed to meet you, but it’s getting really late, you
don’t know what you’ll do…and then there
they are. Such a joyous greeting.
For Luke, being lost is sort of like being dead…at
least spiritually. And being found is like becoming alive.
And the joyous thread that runs through this gospel is when
people are found by God. And so it is when the teachers of
the law were beginning to mutter against Jesus’ choice
of friends. And Jesus…guess what?...tells stories.
- a shepherd loses one of his sheep, but will not rest
until he finds it and joyously brings it home.
- a woman loses one silver coin, and
tears her house apart until she finds it and calls for
a party to celebrate. “There
is rejoicing in heaven,” Jesus says, “over
one sinner who repents.”
- and of course, the story of the prodigal
son, the
one who “was dead but is alive again…was lost
and is found.” Two times it is repeated by the father,
once to his servants and once to the resentful older brother.
Over and over again in the gospel of Luke is this phenomenon… lost
and found. It’s almost as if we hear the story enough
times, enough ways, we just might begin to imagine that we
can be lost people…
- too-busy lost,
- addicted lost,
- lonely lost,
- searching lost.
And we just might begin to see that our own story…might
connect with Jesus’ story. And then at the end of it
all when Jesus’ followers think that all is lost, when
Jesus is dead and lost, when they are purposeless and lost…Jesus
comes and finds them and changes everything.
It’s an amazing story. A gospel story. A good news
story.
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