Gospel of Luke

Overview

Luke is the longest of the four Gospels and the only one that comes with a job description. It opens with four verses of formal Greek, addressed to someone called Theophilus, explaining that many have undertaken to set down an account, that the author has investigated everything carefully from the beginning, and that he is writing an orderly account so that Theophilus may know the certainty of what he has been taught. No other Gospel says anything like this. It is the language of Hellenistic historiography, and it tells you what the book thinks it is.

It is also half a work. Acts begins by addressing Theophilus again and referring back to the first volume, and the two books share a vocabulary, a style and a structure. Read alone, Luke ends with the Ascension; read as designed, it is the first half of a single narrative running from a childless priest in the temple to Paul preaching in Rome without hindrance.

Roughly a third of the material is in no other Gospel. Most of the famous parables are Luke’s alone, and so is almost everything anyone pictures at Christmas: the annunciation, Mary’s song, the census, the manger, the shepherds, the angels. Matthew has the magi and the star and the massacre; the shepherds are here.

Written around 80 to 90 CE, it uses Mark, shares a body of sayings with Matthew, and adds a large fund of its own.

What happens

Beginnings (1 to 4). The book opens in the temple with an elderly priest, Zechariah, struck mute for doubting an angel, and his wife Elizabeth pregnant with John the Baptist. Six months later the same angel comes to Mary in Nazareth. She visits Elizabeth, and sings the Magnificat, a song about God pulling rulers off their thrones and filling the hungry while the rich go away empty. A census sends the family to Bethlehem, and the child is laid in a feeding trough because there is no space; the announcement goes to shepherds working a night shift. In the temple, Simeon takes the baby and says he can now be dismissed in peace, and warns Mary that a sword will pass through her own soul. At twelve, Jesus stays behind in the temple and is found three days later asking questions. Then John’s preaching, the baptism, and a genealogy that runs backwards past Abraham to Adam, which is Luke’s way of saying who this is for.

The public work begins in the synagogue at Nazareth. He reads from Isaiah, good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind, liberty to the oppressed, sits down and says the scripture is fulfilled today in their hearing. They are impressed until he points out that Elijah was sent to a foreign widow and Elisha healed a Syrian, at which point they try to throw him off a cliff.

Galilee (5 to 9). Healings, calling of disciples, conflicts over sabbath and over eating with tax collectors. The Sermon on the Plain, shorter than Matthew’s version and blunter: blessings on the poor, the hungry, the weeping and the hated, and four woes to their opposites. A centurion’s servant healed, a widow’s dead son given back at the gate of Nain, a woman with a bad reputation washing his feet in a Pharisee’s house. Luke notes in passing that a group of women, including Mary Magdalene and Joanna the wife of Herod’s steward, were travelling with the mission and financing it.

The journey (9:51 to 19:27). At chapter 9 Luke sets his face toward Jerusalem, and what follows is a ten-chapter section with almost no geography in it, functioning as a container for teaching. Nearly everything Luke alone preserves is here. A lawyer asks who counts as a neighbour and gets the Good Samaritan. Martha complains about Mary. The disciples ask how to pray. A rich farmer builds bigger barns and dies that night. Chapter 15 answers the complaint that he eats with sinners with three parables of losing and finding, ending with the father who runs down the road, the ring and the robe, and the elder son outside refusing to come in. A rich man ignores Lazarus at his gate and finds the positions reversed. A widow wears down an unjust judge. A Pharisee and a tax collector pray, and the wrong one goes home justified. Then Jericho, blind Bartimaeus, and Zacchaeus up a tree, who gives away half of everything.

Jerusalem (19:28 to 24). The entry, the temple, the questions about taxes and resurrection, the prediction of the city’s destruction. The last supper, with the dispute among the disciples about which of them is the greatest placed at the table. Gethsemane, the arrest, Peter’s denial, and a detail only Luke has: Jesus turns and looks at him. Herod as well as Pilate. On the way to the execution he tells the women of Jerusalem to weep for themselves. On the cross, a prayer of forgiveness for the executioners that some early manuscripts omit, and the promise to the criminal beside him.

The last chapter is the best-told resurrection scene in the New Testament. Two people walking to Emmaus are joined by a stranger who asks why they are downcast, explains the scriptures to them for seven miles, and is recognised only in the breaking of bread, at which point he vanishes.

How to read it

Read Luke and Acts together and in order if you can. They were written as one thing, and Acts answers questions Luke deliberately leaves open.

Read the Nazareth sermon in chapter 4 as the programme. Everything Luke chooses to include afterwards can be checked against it, and it is the fastest way to see what distinguishes this Gospel from the others.

Read the travel narrative slowly and in chunks. It is the heart of the book and it has almost no plot, so it rewards reading a few parables at a time rather than sprinting.

Compare the Beatitudes with Matthew’s. Matthew has nine, spiritualised, on a mountain; Luke has four, plus four woes, on a plain, about actual poverty and actual hunger. The difference is the clearest single illustration of what each writer is doing.

Notice the women. Luke names them, gives them speeches, records that they paid for the mission, and puts them first at the tomb. He also, as some readers point out, tends to show them listening rather than preaching, and the question of whether Luke is the most or least sympathetic of the Gospels on this is a live argument.

Questions it raises

• Luke blesses the poor and pronounces woe on the rich, without qualification. Is that a statement about economics, about the coming kingdom, or about both?
• The prodigal’s father runs to meet him before any apology is delivered. What is the parable saying about repentance, and is the elder brother treated fairly?
• The Good Samaritan answers a question about the limits of obligation by refusing the question. Does that work as an argument?
• Luke claims to have investigated everything carefully. How much does that claim tell you about the kind of accuracy he is offering?
• The disciples on the Emmaus road do not recognise him for seven miles. Why does Luke end his Gospel with a story about failing to see what is in front of you?
• If Luke and Acts are one work, what does the second half do to how you read the first?