Chapter 4: The Gospel of Luke
The Liberation of Israel
§11 CONTINUING THE SCRIPTURAL STORY
Luke as interpreter of Scripture
“Of all the Evangelists, Luke is the most intentional, and the most skillful, in narrating the story of Jesus in a way that joins it seamlessly to Israel’s story. As Nils Dahl aptly observed, Luke is seeking to write “the continuation of biblical history.”1 The overall design of Luke’s two-volume work, accordingly, highlights God’s purpose in fulfilling the promise of redemption for his people Israel.”
§12 THE PROMISE OF ISRAEL’S LIBERATION
Israel’s story in Luke’s Narrative
- The story of Israel’s liberation: Recollections of divine promise and signs of hope. “By the end of the first chapter of the Gospel, then, Luke has given the reader abundant clues that his story of Jesus is to be read as the narrative continuation of Israel’s story and as the liberating climax toward which that story had moved.”
- Obedience to Torah exemplified. Luke urges Torah-obedience by examples, not by statements.
- God’s kindness and mercy to Israel. Several allusions to God’s mercy. "“For the most part, however, Luke’s allusions to the scriptural narratives of God’s kindness do not serve this sort of hortatory purpose in which God’s character is proposed as a paradigm for human conduct; instead, they are meant to frame the story of Jesus as the climax of the continuing story of Israel and thereby to evoke faith, praise, and (as we shall see) repentance.”
- Isaiah’s vision of new exodus. Luke uses several OT texts to show that Jesus is the fulfillment of the long story of Israel. And, God’s salvation will now be for all people.
- Judgment, repentance, and forgiveness. Jesus will judge. There is a paradox between judgment and grace in Luke’s gospel.
§13 JESUS AS THE REDEEMER OF ISRAEL
The road to Emmaus story shows us that Jesus Christ is the redeemer of Israel, just as the two dejected followers thought he was.
- Jesus as the agent of liberation. When Jesus reads Isaiah 61 and says that is fulfilled in him, he makes a claim to Israel’s redeemer.
- The Davidic royal Messiah. “… the crucified and risen Jesus as the hermeneutical key to Israel’s Scripture, while finding the key to understanding Jesus’ messianic vocation in the Davidic psalms. On this reading, the release and redemption of Israel depends not on triumphant conquest through violence but rather on the martyrdom and exaltation of a paradoxical Davidic messiah whose identity is narrated through these scriptural intertexts that sing of lament, suffering, and final vindication by God.”
- The prophet like (our unlike) Elijah and Elisha. Jesus raising the widow’s son is a close parallel to a similar story about Elijah. Luke quotes the final sentence nearly verbatim. There are other allusions to Elijah/Elisha stories. But in each, Jesus’s response and message is different from the old prophets.
- Jesus as Lord and God of Israel. “… we come to know Jesus in Luke only as his narrative identity is enacted in and through the story.”
- Jesus as the Son of God. Mark clearly identifies Jesus as the Son of God in the birth narrative. And repeats references to it throughout the gospel.
- Jesus as the Lord of the new exodus.
- Jesus as the Coming One.
- Jesus as Kyrios. “In short, Luke in his own narration quite remarkably applies the title κύριος both to the God of Israel and to Jesus of Nazareth—occasionally in a way that suggests a mysterious fusion of divine and human identity in the figure of Jesus.”
- Luke’s retention of Mark’s divine identity motif.
- How the divine identity hypothesis illumines other Lukan texts. “The “low” Christology that much twentieth-century criticism perceived in Luke’s Gospel was an artificial construction achieved by excluding the hermeneutical relevance of the wider canonical witness, particularly the Old Testament allusions in Luke’s story. It is therefore precisely by attending more fully to the Old Testament allusions in Luke’s Gospel that we gain a deeper and firmer grasp of the theological coherence between Luke’s testimony and what the church’s dogmatic tradition has classically affirmed about the identity of Jesus”
- The Redeemer of Israel.
§14 THE LIGHT TO THE NATIONS
The Church’s Witness in Luke’s Narrative
- Confronting the power of empire.
- A light for revelation to the Gentiles. While there are allusions to Jesus and the Gentiles in Luke, it is not until Acts that Luke makes clear that Jesus was the light to the whole world, Jews and Gentiles.
§15 LUKE’S SCRIPTURAL HERMENUEUTICS
The Church’s Witness in Luke’s Narrative
- Luke’s manner of engaging scripture.
- The themes of Luke’s intertextual narration.
—Theme 1. Narrative continuity. The story of Jesus is is the culmination of the longer story of Go’s promises.
—Theme 2. Plot.
—Theme 3. Suffering.
—Theme 4. Concern for the poor and helpless.
—Theme 5. Good news to all nations.
—Theme 6. Jesus is anti-empire in a subtle way.
—Theme 7. Jesus is the redeemer of Israel.
“In Luke’s Gospel, the identity of God is given specification precisely in and through a narrative account of the human figure Jesus, born in Bethlehem and laid in a manger, sent to proclaim good news to the poor, crucified under Pontius Pilate, risen indeed—and precisely in and through these events revealed as κύριος πάντων: Lord of all.”
Quotes From: Richard B. Hays. “Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels.” Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/echoes-of-scripture-in-the-gospels/id1136901922