Luke 1: 5-23 New International version
5 In the time of Herod king of Judea there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly division of Abijah; his wife Elizabeth was also a descendant of Aaron. 6 Both of them were righteous in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commands and decrees blamelessly. 7 But they were childless because Elizabeth was not able to conceive, and they were both very old.
8 Once when Zechariah’s division was on duty and he was serving as priest before God, 9 he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to go into the temple of the Lord and burn incense. 10 And when the time for the burning of incense came, all the assembled worshipers were praying outside.
11 Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. 12 When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear. 13 But the angel said to him: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John. 14 He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, 15 for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born. 16 He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. 17 And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
18 Zechariah asked the angel, “How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.”
19 The angel said to him, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news. 20 And now you will be silent and not able to speak until the day this happens, because you did not believe my words, which will come true at their appointed time.”
21 Meanwhile, the people were waiting for Zechariah and wondering why he stayed so long in the temple. 22 When he came out, he could not speak to them. They realized he had seen a vision in the temple, for he kept making signs to them but remained unable to speak.
23 When his time of service was completed, he returned home.
Luke 2:41-52 The Message
41-45 Every year Jesus’ parents traveled to Jerusalem for the Feast of Passover. When he was twelve years old, they went up as they always did for the Feast. When it was over and they left for home, the child Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents didn’t know it. Thinking he was somewhere in the group, they journeyed for a whole day and then began looking for him among relatives and neighbours. When they didn’t find him, they went back to Jerusalem looking for him.
46-48 After three days they found him in the Temple seated among the teachers, listening to them and asking questions. The teachers were all quite taken with him, impressed with the sharpness of his answers. But his parents were not impressed; they were upset and hurt.
His mother said, “son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been worried and trying to find you.”
49-50 He answered, “Why were you looking for me? Didn’t you know that I had to be here, dealing with the things of my Father?” But they had no idea what he was talking about.
51-52 So he went back to Nazareth with them, and lived obediently with them. His mother held these things dearly, deep within herself. And Jesus matured, growing up in both body and spirit, blessed by both God and people.
Reflection
So I have been like you living through this Christmas season, trying to understand what Christmas, what the birth of a baby born over two thousand years can possibly mean to my life, our lives, today.
Besides the commercial benefits, and the increased family contact does Christmas really make a difference to us? And do these Christmas stories make sense to us today?
Last week we looked at Matthew’s nativity story and we can see how Matthew posits Jesus as the New Moses bringing a new law that is to be inscribed on people’s hearts. When you know the story of Exodus and Moses, we can see how this might give a resigned and defeated Jewish people, new hope that the promises of the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob have not been abandoned, that their God, Yahweh has not abandoned them.
Today, we are going to jump to around 100-120 CE, and the Gospel of Luke- Acts. Luke –Acts is like a two volume story that begins with Jesus and ends on an optimistic note with Paul in Rome.
So with Luke the nativity is like a story in parallels in which Jesus always wins. We have all these similarities between Jesus and John.
So the story introduces the parents, the angel Gabriel visits
both Mary and Zechariah who are troubled, Gabriel tells them to “Fear not”, and the name and the destiny of the child to be is given.
Both Zechariah and Mary are a little incredulous, with Zechariah citing the advanced age of himself and his wife and Mary protesting she is a virgin.
They are both given a sign: Zechariah because of his response to Gabriel – is basically told by Gabriel to shut up.
Gabriel leaves and Elizabeth conceives.
Elizabeth is already six months pregnant when the angel visits Mary and so the confirmation sign for Mary occurs
later after Mary has conceived and Gabriel has left when she visits her cousin, Elizabeth and Luke 1:41- 45 reads:
When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb,
and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. In a loud voice she exclaimed:
“Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear!
But why am I so favoured, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb
leaped for joy. Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill
his promises to her!”
Then we have Mary’s response in the Magnificat (Luke 1:47-55) After John is born and he is named and circumcised Zechariah’s voice returns and he sings what we call the “Benedictus”.
John’s birth is a simple affair: “When it was time for Elizabeth to have her baby, she gave birth to a son. 58 Her neighbours and relatives heard that the Lord had shown her great mercy, and they shared her joy.” (Luke 1:57-58)
And now we start seeing differences because when Jesus is born the parents have the travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem, we have the line of David, we have these wonderful images of angels and shepherds, (Luke 2:1- 20). Then Jesus is circumcised and named on the eighth day just like John, according to the instructions of Gabriel.
But, then, Jesus is presented in the temple and we have consecrations, and sacrifices offered and prophecies by Simeon and Anna about this Messiah child. Simeon praises God and says:
“Sovereign Lord, as you have promised,
you may now dismiss your servant in peace.
For my eyes have seen your salvation,
which you have prepared in the sight of all nations:
a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
and the glory of your people Israel.”
Luke 2:29-32
Only then does the family go home to Nazareth, returning to Jerusalem for Passover every year. And then we have our scripture reading this morning telling us of a 12 year old Jesus in what we would call a coming of age story.
For all the similarities between John the Baptist and Jesus, John only prepares the way for Jesus. It’s important because by the time Luke is writing Luke –Acts, Jesus hasn’t returned, the Kingdom of God has not arrived, and Jesus, Messiah to the Jews is being rejected by the Jews - and how can we make sense of that?
And how are we going to tell the world or at least, Theopolis and his community, to whom the volumes are written, that we (Christians) are a real religion, are a legitimate part of Judaism and so continue to enjoy the exemptions that Jews had long been granted, and not some flakey, new upstart superstition upsetting the Roman and city gods thus causing problems for the Roman government.
Luke’s task is not a simple recounting of a different story; it’s a different story because he is speaking out of a whole different historical context. Luke is a gentile, writing not only about Jesus (Gospel of Luke) but about the growth of Christianity around the Empire. (Acts)
Jesus and his contemporaries may have suffered under the oppressive weight of Roman Empire but, at least, they had Jerusalem and the Temple. The gospels are all written after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem around 70 CE.
Mark and Matthew, written around 70 CE and 90 CE respectively, and their congregations may not have had the Temple, but, at least, they had the Jewish synagogues and communities in diaspora.
Luke had seen the tensions between the Jewish and Christian communities rise, and the relationship between the two groups becomes more and more hostile as time goes on. Christians become increasingly not Jewish and more Gentile and thereby increasingly visible in their absence from the local rituals and ceremonies Jews were traditionally exempt from.
Luke is writing hoping to provide justification for the argument that Christians can be good Roman citizens, that Christians are in fact, true Jews, following the Messiah who has already come. Especially since Jews had continued to cause trouble, rabble rousing down in Judea, ever since the 1st Jewish Revolt and the destruction of the Temple.
In 132 CE Zealots under the proclaimed Messiah and descendent of King David: Simeon Bar Kokhba (Son of the Star) and his thousands of followers held Jerusalem for a while, but by 135 at Bethar, near Masada, the revolt was finally quashed, by the Emperor Hadrian, and the Jews exiled from Jerusalem forever. – or at least until 1948 and the reestablishment of the state of Israel with Jerusalem under international rule until 1967 when it came under Israeli rule.
A lot of history, I know, but the history shows the contentious nature of land and power and that is why when we get to the genealogy of Jesus in Luke it looks different from that in Matthew. Remember Matthew, making such a big deal of going al the way back to King David and a United Israel, then all the way back to Abraham – and the promises made to Abraham by Yahweh – promises of descendants and land. (Genesis 12).
Well, Matthew goes all the way back to Adam- Yes - Adam because we are no longer just dealing with Yahweh’s promises to Abraham but an extension of promise to the whole world – ok, Gentiles in the Roman Empire mainly; but especially Christians, they are the true inheritors of the promises made to Israel.
Promises mediated through Jesus, the true Messiah who has been accepted by Christians and not by Jews. Specifically, Luke means Christians are not like those other Jews who cause trouble and didn’t accept Jesus, and you can tell because they aren’t Christians, or put another way Christians are the true inheritors of Judaism, the true sons and daughters of the Kingdom.
So, now, we can see why John the Baptist is so important, John is the one who announces the coming of the Kingdom, John is the one telling everyone to get ready.
I really don’t know if knowing the sitz en Leben, the historical setting and context of scripture help us enjoy our Christmas more or better but knowing that these gospels came out of real situations, that the authors were:
trying to figure out what does it mean to follow Jesus
in their time:
OK there’s lots of questions – you get the idea! But they (Luke) start with the basics: Who is Jesus? where did he come from? where was he born?, why is he important?, how do we really know he is the Messiah? When some of the answers look like the birth stories in Luke we see that God is working in the world, God is working in these lives, then God is still working in the world and God in working in our lives – visions and promises, angels and ancient text –old lives and new lives – old women get pregnant- virgins get pregnant – babies are born – songs are sung – angels and shepherds rejoice and we get to rejoice with them.
It’s freeing, to see where things come from, there’s reasons why the gospels are different, there’s reasons why they are written in the way they are written, there are reasons why they are included in the New Testament – our scripture.
And I believe there are reasons why there is truth and light and hope that has shone through these words for thousands of years in hundreds of translations and languages.
The Good News of Jesus the Christ has a message that transcends any book that contains it, because ultimately the Good News of Jesus the Christ, is about a God of love, Abba, who wants to enter into relationship with each one of us, about a Kingdom of God in the here and now and always coming, and about a community of Jesus followers who care for and about each other.
May it be so Amen
So I have been like you living through this Christmas season, trying to understand what Christmas, what the birth of a baby born over two thousand years can possibly mean to my life, our lives, today.
Besides the commercial benefits, and the increased family contact does Christmas really make a difference to us? And do these Christmas stories make sense to us today?
Last week we looked at Matthew’s nativity story and we can see how Matthew posits Jesus as the New Moses bringing a new law that is to be inscribed on people’s hearts. When you know the story of Exodus and Moses, we can see how this might give a resigned and defeated Jewish people, new hope that the promises of the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob have not been abandoned, that their God, Yahweh has not abandoned them.
Today, we are going to jump to around 100-120 CE, and the Gospel of Luke- Acts. Luke –Acts is like a two volume story that begins with Jesus and ends on an optimistic note with Paul in Rome.
So with Luke the nativity is like a story in parallels in which Jesus always wins. We have all these similarities between Jesus and John.
So the story introduces the parents, the angel Gabriel visits
both Mary and Zechariah who are troubled, Gabriel tells them to “Fear not”, and the name and the destiny of the child to be is given.
Both Zechariah and Mary are a little incredulous, with Zechariah citing the advanced age of himself and his wife and Mary protesting she is a virgin.
They are both given a sign: Zechariah because of his response to Gabriel – is basically told by Gabriel to shut up.
Gabriel leaves and Elizabeth conceives.
Elizabeth is already six months pregnant when the angel visits Mary and so the confirmation sign for Mary occurs
later after Mary has conceived and Gabriel has left when she visits her cousin, Elizabeth and Luke 1:41- 45 reads:
When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb,
and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. In a loud voice she exclaimed:
“Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear!
But why am I so favoured, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb
leaped for joy. Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill
his promises to her!”
Then we have Mary’s response in the Magnificat (Luke 1:47-55) After John is born and he is named and circumcised Zechariah’s voice returns and he sings what we call the “Benedictus”.
John’s birth is a simple affair: “When it was time for Elizabeth to have her baby, she gave birth to a son. 58 Her neighbours and relatives heard that the Lord had shown her great mercy, and they shared her joy.” (Luke 1:57-58)
And now we start seeing differences because when Jesus is born the parents have the travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem, we have the line of David, we have these wonderful images of angels and shepherds, (Luke 2:1- 20). Then Jesus is circumcised and named on the eighth day just like John, according to the instructions of Gabriel.
But, then, Jesus is presented in the temple and we have consecrations, and sacrifices offered and prophecies by Simeon and Anna about this Messiah child. Simeon praises God and says:
“Sovereign Lord, as you have promised,
you may now dismiss your servant in peace.
For my eyes have seen your salvation,
which you have prepared in the sight of all nations:
a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
and the glory of your people Israel.”
Luke 2:29-32
Only then does the family go home to Nazareth, returning to Jerusalem for Passover every year. And then we have our scripture reading this morning telling us of a 12 year old Jesus in what we would call a coming of age story.
For all the similarities between John the Baptist and Jesus, John only prepares the way for Jesus. It’s important because by the time Luke is writing Luke –Acts, Jesus hasn’t returned, the Kingdom of God has not arrived, and Jesus, Messiah to the Jews is being rejected by the Jews - and how can we make sense of that?
And how are we going to tell the world or at least, Theopolis and his community, to whom the volumes are written, that we (Christians) are a real religion, are a legitimate part of Judaism and so continue to enjoy the exemptions that Jews had long been granted, and not some flakey, new upstart superstition upsetting the Roman and city gods thus causing problems for the Roman government.
Luke’s task is not a simple recounting of a different story; it’s a different story because he is speaking out of a whole different historical context. Luke is a gentile, writing not only about Jesus (Gospel of Luke) but about the growth of Christianity around the Empire. (Acts)
Jesus and his contemporaries may have suffered under the oppressive weight of Roman Empire but, at least, they had Jerusalem and the Temple. The gospels are all written after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem around 70 CE.
Mark and Matthew, written around 70 CE and 90 CE respectively, and their congregations may not have had the Temple, but, at least, they had the Jewish synagogues and communities in diaspora.
Luke had seen the tensions between the Jewish and Christian communities rise, and the relationship between the two groups becomes more and more hostile as time goes on. Christians become increasingly not Jewish and more Gentile and thereby increasingly visible in their absence from the local rituals and ceremonies Jews were traditionally exempt from.
Luke is writing hoping to provide justification for the argument that Christians can be good Roman citizens, that Christians are in fact, true Jews, following the Messiah who has already come. Especially since Jews had continued to cause trouble, rabble rousing down in Judea, ever since the 1st Jewish Revolt and the destruction of the Temple.
In 132 CE Zealots under the proclaimed Messiah and descendent of King David: Simeon Bar Kokhba (Son of the Star) and his thousands of followers held Jerusalem for a while, but by 135 at Bethar, near Masada, the revolt was finally quashed, by the Emperor Hadrian, and the Jews exiled from Jerusalem forever. – or at least until 1948 and the reestablishment of the state of Israel with Jerusalem under international rule until 1967 when it came under Israeli rule.
A lot of history, I know, but the history shows the contentious nature of land and power and that is why when we get to the genealogy of Jesus in Luke it looks different from that in Matthew. Remember Matthew, making such a big deal of going al the way back to King David and a United Israel, then all the way back to Abraham – and the promises made to Abraham by Yahweh – promises of descendants and land. (Genesis 12).
Well, Matthew goes all the way back to Adam- Yes - Adam because we are no longer just dealing with Yahweh’s promises to Abraham but an extension of promise to the whole world – ok, Gentiles in the Roman Empire mainly; but especially Christians, they are the true inheritors of the promises made to Israel.
Promises mediated through Jesus, the true Messiah who has been accepted by Christians and not by Jews. Specifically, Luke means Christians are not like those other Jews who cause trouble and didn’t accept Jesus, and you can tell because they aren’t Christians, or put another way Christians are the true inheritors of Judaism, the true sons and daughters of the Kingdom.
So, now, we can see why John the Baptist is so important, John is the one who announces the coming of the Kingdom, John is the one telling everyone to get ready.
I really don’t know if knowing the sitz en Leben, the historical setting and context of scripture help us enjoy our Christmas more or better but knowing that these gospels came out of real situations, that the authors were:
trying to figure out what does it mean to follow Jesus
in their time:
- how can we be Jesus followers if we are not Jewish?
- who gets to be in on God’s promises?
- How do we remain good Christians and good Roman citizens at the same time?
- How do we not get killed when we don’t show up at Apollo’s birthday feast and eat the sacrificial meat?
OK there’s lots of questions – you get the idea! But they (Luke) start with the basics: Who is Jesus? where did he come from? where was he born?, why is he important?, how do we really know he is the Messiah? When some of the answers look like the birth stories in Luke we see that God is working in the world, God is working in these lives, then God is still working in the world and God in working in our lives – visions and promises, angels and ancient text –old lives and new lives – old women get pregnant- virgins get pregnant – babies are born – songs are sung – angels and shepherds rejoice and we get to rejoice with them.
It’s freeing, to see where things come from, there’s reasons why the gospels are different, there’s reasons why they are written in the way they are written, there are reasons why they are included in the New Testament – our scripture.
And I believe there are reasons why there is truth and light and hope that has shone through these words for thousands of years in hundreds of translations and languages.
The Good News of Jesus the Christ has a message that transcends any book that contains it, because ultimately the Good News of Jesus the Christ, is about a God of love, Abba, who wants to enter into relationship with each one of us, about a Kingdom of God in the here and now and always coming, and about a community of Jesus followers who care for and about each other.
May it be so Amen
