[Dialogue] 5/09/13, Spong: The Birth of Jesus, Part XIII. Introducing the Lucan Story

Thu May 9 16:49:07 PDT 2013

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	The Birth of Jesus, Part XIII
	Introducing the Lucan Story
	Somewhere six to ten years after the Gospel of Matthew was written, another gospel, the one we call Luke, makes its appearance. Both Matthew and Luke had Mark as a common source although Matthew used it more extensively than Luke. Some scholars also believe that Matthew and Luke had a second common source, a collection of the sayings of Jesus that they call “Q.” This source, however, has never been discovered in any independent way, so that its only existence appears to be in the common usage Matthew and Luke made of it. There are a few scholars who do not accept the existence of “Q” as a separate source. They account for the non-Marcan similarities in Matthew and Luke by suggesting that these similarities exist because Luke not only had access to Mark, but to Matthew as well, which suggests that what people have called “Q” is nothing more than Matthew’s redaction of Mark. I will not solve this debate, but just want to identify the issues and state that the conviction that there once existed a now lost document called “Q” is the overwhelming consensus of most American biblical scholars. For our purposes, we only need to note that there is substantial agreement in content beyond having Mark in common between Matthew and Luke. This also means that where Matthew and Luke diverge sharply, we need to enquire as to why.
	At least one of the sources of the primary differences between Matthew and Luke can be found in understanding the audiences for which each gospel was created. Matthew’s audience constituted a much more traditional Jewish community that saw Jesus as the fulfillment of Jewish hopes and dreams. Luke’s audience was more a community of dispersed Jews, who had adapted significantly to the predominantly Gentile world in which they found themselves living and who saw Jesus in much more universal terms as the one who transcended all human barriers and brought human life into a deeper sense of “Oneness.”
	When we survey the books of the New Testament we discover that Matthew and Luke alone provide us with stories about the birth of Jesus. Then we discover that these two birth narratives differ significantly from each other reaching the level of overt contradictions. Matthew introduces the birth narrative with a genealogy of Jesus that roots him deeply in Jewish life and history. Luke introduces his narrative of Jesus’ birth with a story set in a Jewish context, but then moves quickly forward to its more universal meaning. For example, Luke also has a genealogy, but he uses it not as a preamble to the birth of Jesus, but as a way to open Jesus’ adult ministry. Unlike Matthew’s genealogy that begins with Abraham, the father of the Jews, Luke’s genealogy goes back to Adam, the father of the entire human race. Luke’s genealogy is a number of generations longer than Matthew’s. He also avoids the royal line of kings of Judah, going not from David to Solomon to Rehoboam as Matthew does, but from David to Nathan to Mattatha. The two genealogies also differ as to who was Joseph’s father. Matthew says it was Jacob; Luke says it was Heli. Those who try to force the Bible into literal harmony cannot get past these dual genealogies.
	Luke also gives us a story of the birth of John the Baptist that is found nowhere else in the New Testament. The purpose of this particular nativity narrative is to indicate the subservience of John the Baptist to Jesus, which Luke does at every point. John’s birth was spectacular in that he was born to postmenopausal parents, a repeat of the Abraham and Sarah story. Jesus’ birth, however, was even more spectacular in that he was the son of a virgin with the Holy Spirit acting as his father. When John the Baptist was born, the neighbors all gathered to celebrate his birth, but that celebration pales beside the fact that when Jesus was born, angels broke through the darkness of the night sky to celebrate and to announce the birth of Jesus. Indeed, Luke goes so far as to say that while John and Jesus were both in the wombs of their respective mothers, Elizabeth and Mary, the fetus of John actually leapt to salute the fetus of Jesus, to demonstrate that, even prior to the birth of either, John’s secondary role to Jesus’ primacy had been established. This reveals the high probability that in the community for which Luke wrote, there was considerable tension between the movement that grew up around John the Baptist and the movement that grew up around Jesus. Luke was weighing in on that debate in order to claim the priority for Jesus.
	As we noted earlier in this series, in Matthew Joseph tends to be the focus of the story. In Matthew the annunciation is made to Joseph in a dream by an unnamed angel, while in Luke the annunciation is made to Mary by a specific angel named Gabriel and not in a dream, but in real time. In Matthew the initiative is consistently in the character of Joseph, while in Luke Mary is the focus.
	Luke’s story includes a number of songs that are sung by the principals in the drama, thus turning what might have originally been a nativity play into a kind of “operetta.” Zechariah, at the birth of his son John, is made to sing the words that have come to be called the “Benedictus.” Mary sings the words that we now call the “Magnificat” on her visit to Elizabeth, her kinswoman, who lives, we are told, in the hill country of Judea. The angels sing the words we now call the “Gloria in Excelsis” to the hillside shepherds. Finally, an old priest named Simeon sings the words that we know as the “Nunc Dimittis” when he sees the baby Jesus for the first time and recognizes him as the fulfillment of the promise for which his entire life had yearned.
	While Matthew has Jesus fleeing from the wrath of Herod into the land of Egypt, Luke has him being circumcised on the eighth day after his birth, being presented in the Temple forty days later and then leisurely making his way with his family back to his Nazareth home in Galilee. While Luke certainly asserts a virgin status for the mother of Jesus, he never tries to ground that reality in the scriptures of the Jewish people and once the story of Jesus’ birth is told, Luke constantly refers to Joseph as the father of Jesus.
	Luke’s birth story is by every measure the more popular and the best known of the two. It is Luke’s story line, not Matthew’s, which is followed in our traditional Christmas pageants. These pageants normally begin with the appearance of the Angel Gabriel to a virgin in Nazareth causing her to go to visit Elizabeth, her “kinswoman,” in Judea. These pageants then proceed with the journey of Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem to be enrolled. On this journey, Mary is described as being “great with child.” When they arrive they discover there is no room at the inn, so she probably had the baby in the open country and placed him in a conveniently located feeding trough. No stable is ever mentioned in Luke’s text, but human imagination has created that stable and populated it with cows and sheep. No animals are found in Luke’s narrative, however, not even one who says: “Do you see what I see?”
	There is no star and there are no wise men in Luke. Luke apparently did not care for “magi.” In the book of Acts, which is authored by the same person who wrote the gospel that we call Luke, he reveals that he has little use for either kings or magi. So Matthew’s three kings or magi are replaced in Luke by humble shepherds. Matthew’s star is replaced by a heavenly host of angels. The symbols Luke employs are not gold for a king, incense for a deity or myrrh to mark Jesus’ path toward death, but rather “swaddling cloths” and a “manger.” Luke appears to have taken both of these symbols from the Hebrew Scriptures. In the apocryphal book known as the Wisdom of Solomon, Israel’s most opulent king was made to say: “When I was born, I was carefully swaddled for that is the only way a king can come to his people.” The manger or feeding trough seems to have been lifted from the first chapter of Isaiah, where the people of Israel are criticized for not knowing that they eat from God’s feeding trough. They do not recognize that God is the source of everything that sustains them. Luke will thus introduce the story of Jesus by saying that from the moment of his birth this messianic figure will recognize his relationship with and his dependence on the God of Israel. He will be placed in the feeding trough and will relate to God as a symbol of faithfulness, unlike the historic witness of the Jewish nation. Through this Jesus, not only the Jews, but the people of the entire world, will learn of God’s infinite love for all that God has made.
	There is one other echo from the Hebrew Scriptures found in Luke’s story of Jesus’ birth and that is found in the figure of Samuel. In the story of Samuel, his mother Hannah is unable to conceive a child and she is found weeping in the sanctuary of God by the high priest, a man named Eli. Eli tells her that her prayers have been answered and that she will bear a son. Samuel’s birth is thus also surrounded by supernatural events. Hannah then in gratitude pledges her son Samuel to the service of God. When Samuel is born, Hannah sings a song that is very similar to the Magnificat sung by Mary; indeed most scholars think the Magnificat is based on Hannah’s song. When Samuel is of age, Hannah takes him to the worship center of his nation and dedicates him to the service of God under the tutelage of Eli, the high priest. That story finds an echo in Luke when Mary and Joseph take the twelve-year old Jesus to the Temple for Passover, probably in a kind of Bar Mitzvah ceremony. Finally, to return to the genealogy of Luke in which Jesus’ relationship to God is publicly announced, we now note once again that Luke says the father of Joseph was one named Heli. “Heli” is the Greek spelling of the Hebrew “Eli,” the name of the elderly high priest under whom Samuel served. Perhaps Luke was signaling in this name that he was drawing on the story of Samuel to tell his story of Jesus. Luke did that with other names, as we shall note when this series continues.
	~John Shelby Spong
	Read the essay online here.

	Question & Answer
	Frederick Somerville, from Sweden writes:

	Question:
	I wish to comment on the situation in Europe (being a resident of Sweden) described in your recent column.
	In Russia there is a re-emergence of religious power walking hand in hand with the political power. Heresy laws are being introduced. This is a state where religion was considered "for the masses" not too long ago. Anti-Semitism is on the rise in Hungary (have they forgotten WWII?) In Poland the Catholic Church is gaining political power. So you could say that with increasing uncertainty the religions are regaining their position as "reducers of angst" (angest in Swedish). This is not a positive thing to those of us who see the gospels as literary documents.
	I am personally lending our local pastors copies of your books and this is triggering some healthy debate. My goal is to have them carry the theological debate to the pew sitters in our area. With an average of perhaps ten persons in church on a Sunday, they have to do something. I have noticed that I can have a very deep theological discussion with a pastor and they openly admit that they too have problems in believing in the literal scriptures. However, the moment they stand before the congregation, they are back in Sunday School theology mode. It is as if they are programmed to state the standard point of view. For me this creates a huge credibility gap. I fully believe that if they dared to take their own doubts to the altar and be honest about them, pew sitters would feel much more at home.

	Answer:
	Dear Frederick,
	I am aware of some of the things about which you write but I am not convinced that they represent new trends so much as an attempt to reclaim the past, which some people almost inevitably do, especially in times of rapid change or a shift in consciousness.
	I see no evidence that Russia is about to become an Orthodox religion state. I do see Eastern Orthodoxy evolving, if ever so slowly, into a new and relevant self-understanding. My experience in Hungary is that major shame embraces the anti-Semitism of the past. I see no evidence that the Catholic Church is regaining political power in Poland. The Catholic Church was the ally of Lech Walesa, but the people strongly resisted any attempt on the part of that Church to regain political dominance. Europe is moving in an increasingly secular direction. A Christianity that can engage secularism rather than trying to convert secularism to yesterday’s religious forms is the direction I think Europe will go.
	I am glad you are engaged with the pastors in your community on a new way to look at Christianity. I am not surprised that when they return to their small and, I presume elderly, congregations, they revert to the patterns of the past. Until questioning people darken the Church’s doors, there are few churchgoers who are capable of hearing a new message. For Christianity to be revived in Europe, I think we must take it out of the churches; wrest it from domination by the various hierarchies and present it in a new form to those who have departed from the churches.
	Of all the nations I’ve visited, I think Sweden has the best chance to do this because of great leaders in the past and the present. I think of such heroic bishops in the past as K. G. Hammar, Claes-Bertal Ytterburg, and modern leaders like Hans Ulvrebrand and Marianne Blom.
	~John Shelby Spong

	Announcements

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	John Shelby Spong, bestselling author and popular proponent of a modern, scholarly and authentic Christianity, argues that this last gospel to be written was misinterpreted by the framers of the fourth-century creeds to be a literal account of the life of Jesus when in fact it is a literary, interpretive retelling of the events in Jesus' life through the medium of fictional characters, from Nicodemus and Lazarus to the "Beloved Disciple." The Fourth Gospel was designed first to place Jesus into the context of the Jewish scriptures, then to place him into the worship patterns of the synagogue and finally to allow him to be viewed through the lens of a popular form of first-century Jewish mysticism.
The result of this intriguing study is not only to recapture the original message of this gospel, but also to provide us today with a radical new dimension to the claim that in the humanity of Jesus the reality of God has been met and engaged.

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