Reflection
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5Luke-Acts-PracticingForgivenessandSolidaritywiththePoor.pptxLuke-acts: practicing Forgiveness and solidarity with the poor
Module 5 - MISS 500
Foundation for Biblical Mission
THE BACKGROUND OF LUKE
Gentile Christians were facing an identity crisis. They were asking:
Who are we really?
How do we relate to the Jewish past, particularly in view of the manifest animosity of contemporary Judaism?
Is Christianity a new religion or a continuation of the faith of the OT?
Above all, how do we relate to the earthly Jesus, who is gradually and irrevocably receding into the past?
The significance of luke
Lk. 24:46-49
The mission of the disciples is founded upon a word of the risen Christ and in a word of Scripture.
Luke focuses his formulation of the missionary commission on the content of the gospel, establishing the witness of the disciples to the nations of the Scripture of Israel.
The phrase “you are witnesses of these things” (Lk. 24:48) corresponds to the formulation in Acts 1:8 “you will be my witnesses.”
For Luke “witnesses” are the early Christian preachers who proclaim the message of Jesus Christ authentically and without distorting it.
The significance of luke
The content of the witness is:
The exalted Lord Jesus, his word and ministry
Jesus’s life and ministry (Acts 1:21-22)
His death and resurrection, his vindication and his exaltation (Acts 1:22)
The salvation “from this corrupt generation” (Acts 2:40)
The word of the Lord (Acts 8:25)
The necessity of faith and conversion in Lord Jesus Christ (Acts 20:21)
The gospel of the grace of God (Acts 20:24)
The kingdom of God (Acts 28:23)
The significance of luke
As Luke retells the story of Jesus and of the early church there are certain themes to which he returns again and again:
The ministry of the Holy Spirit
The centrality of repentance and forgiveness
Prayer
Love and acceptance of enemies
Justice and fairness in inter-human relationships
The significance of luke
There are also particular categories of people who are prominent in his writings:
The poor
Jesus’ association with women—a stunning crossing of a social and religious barrier in the (particular) society of his day
Tax-collectors
Samaritans
The entire ministry of Jesus and his relationships with all these and other marginalized people witness, in Luke’s writings, to Jesus’ practice of boundary-breaking compassion, which the church is called to emulate.
The significance of luke
Luke also had introduced salvation history:
The epoch of Israel, up to and including John the Baptist
The epoch of Jesus’ ministry, which Luke regarded as past and constituting the middle period of salvation
The epoch of the church, which was inaugurated on the day of Pentecost
Lk. 4:16-30
The centrality of the poor in Jesus’ ministry
The setting aside of vengeance
The Gentile mission
The verse stands as a preface to the entire ministry of Jesus’ public ministry
He is emphatically appropriating an OT prophecy to the life and ministry of Jesus
The Spirit of the Lord is upon him and has anointed him
The final messianic future is now operative
Isaiah’s prophecy is fulfilled
The gentile mission
God was not only the God of Israel but also, and equally the God of the Gentiles.
He reminded them of the fact the prophet Elijah had bestowed God’s favor upon the Gentile woman in Sidon and that Elisha had healed one leper, Naaman, a Syrian.
God was, therefore, not irrevocably bound to Israel.
The gentile mission
Encounter with Samaritans
Mark gives no reference to Samaritans or Samaria
Mathew records only Jesus’ prohibition to enter any Samaritan town (10:5)
Lk. 9:51-56
For nationalistic Jews, Samaritans were worse than Gentiles.
The Jewish reader can understand the reaction of James and John.
What they struggle with is Jesus’ denial of the law of retaliation.
The parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk. 10:25-37)
The fact that this parable follows right after the sending out and return of the seventy (or seventy-two) disciples further emphasizes a future mission to all nations.
Encounter with Samaritans
In terms of Jewish religion, the Samaritans were enemies not only of Jews, but also of God.
Jews were forbidden to receive works of love from non-Jews and were not allowed to purchase or use oil and wine obtained from Samaritans.
It is not the “human” in Jewish society who takes pity on the man who has fallen among robbers, but the “non-human.”
Encounter with Samaritans
The healing of ten lepers (17:11-19)
This happened in the borderland of Samaria and Galilee (17:1)
Here, the horror of leprosy has served to erase the differences between Jews and Samaritans.
Of the ten lepers nine are Jews one is Samaritan.
All are sent to show themselves to the priests, but only one returns to thank Jesus—the Samaritan.
The jewishness of luke
Jesus does criticize the Pharisees, but not as severely as in Matthew; they are not called “hypocrites” or “blind guides.”
Luke relates three instances of Jesus having being invited to meals in the house of Pharisees.
He omits controversial passages (Mk. 7:1-23, which might have been experienced as unpleasant by the Jews).
He does not apply the parable of the tenants to the chief priests and the Pharisees, as Matthew does.
In his passion narrative the crowd does not cry out, “His blood be upon us and upon our children” (Mt. 27:25).
Instead, Luke mentioned that “a great multitude of the people” mourned and lamented over Jesus (23:27).
The jewishness of luke
Only Luke has the crucified pray, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (23:34).
Luke frequently emphasizes that the Jewish authorities did what they did out of ignorance (Acts 3:17; 13:27).
His two books serve to reassure Gentile Christians about their origins.
Luke makes it abundantly clear that Gentile mission is in no way an illegitimate offshoot of renegade Christians but deeply rooted in God’s ancient covenant.
Gospel for the poor
In the Magnificat (Lk. 1:53) we read: “(God) has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.”
The beatitude of the poor and the parallel woe-saying on the rich (6:20,24)
The parable of the rich fool (12:16-21)
The story of the rich man and Lazarus (16:19-31)
The exemplary conduct of Zacchaeus, the chief tax-collector of Jericho (19:1-10)
All of these are unique to Luke
He is the only evangelist who has John the Baptist spell out in practical terms what it means to “bear fruits that befit repentance” (3:8), and he does this in terms of economic relations (3:10-14).
Gospel for the poor
Lk. 4:18
The words from the book of Isaiah become, in Luke’s gospel, a sort of manifesto of Jesus: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (4:21).
The prisoners, the blind, and the oppressed (or the bruised) are all subsumed under “the poor.” They are all manifestations of poverty, all in need of “good news.”
The phrase “to let the oppressed go free” has a distinctly social profile in Isaiah 58.
The lukan missionary paradigm
It was preeminently through the Spirit that the risen Christ was present in the community
In Mark and Matthew, the Spirit is not particularly prominent and is rarely linked with mission.
Among the evangelist he may be singled out as the “theologian of the Holy Spirit.”
The Spirit becomes the catalyst, the guiding and driving force of mission.
At every point, the mission of the disciples and the church were both inspired and confirmed by the manifestation of the Spirit .
The decisive event is Pentecost.
The Spirit has descended upon Jesus at his baptism (Lk. 3:21), now the Spirit descends for a second “baptism.”
The Spirit of mission is also the Spirit of power.
The lukan missionary paradigm
2. Correlation of the Jewish and Gentile missions
The Gentile church could neither deny nor denounce its Jewish origins.
It was Luke, the Gentile, who saw the need for rooting the Gentile church in Israel.
He did this in a bold way: Jesus was first and foremost the Messiah of Israel and precisely for this reason also the Savior of the Gentiles.
The Christian church may never forget that it developed organically and gradually from the womb of Israel and that it may therefore not, as an outsider, lay claim to Israel's historic prerogative.
The lukan missionary paradigm
3. “You are witnesses to these things” (Lk. 24:48)
The noun witness(es) appears thirteen times in Acts but only once in Luke’s gospel.
Perplexed observers became Easter believers.
The disciples became sharers of his messianic destiny and spokespersons of the word of forgiveness in his name to all the nations.
The task of witness is entrusted to very fallible human beings who can do nothing in their own power, but are continuously dependent upon the empowerment of the Spirit.
The lukan missionary paradigm
4. “Repentance, forgiveness of sins, and salvation”
Luke’s gospel and Acts are built on expectation of response.
The witness of the missionaries aims at repentance and forgiveness (Lk. 24:48; Acts 2:38) which leads to salvation (Acts 2:40).
5. Luke’s salvation has six dimensions: economic, social, political, physical, psychological, and spiritual.
6. “Preaching the good news of peace by Jesus Christ” (Acts 10:36)
For Luke, peace-making, a nonviolent resistance to evil, the futility of a self-destructive nature of hatred and vengeance, are all important issues that the mission of Church should not overlook.
The lukan missionary paradigm
7. Luke’s missionary paradigm has to do with his ecclesiology
Luke regards the life of Jesus and the story of the church as being united in one era of the Spirit.
The Lordship of Christ is not exercised in a vacuum but in the concrete historical circumstances of a community which lives under the direction of the Spirit.
8. Mission involves adversity and suffering.
What is true of the Master is also true of his disciples.
