The Meaning of Jesus' Birth to the Romans of the Ancient World

Luke’s Counter-Cultural Christmas Story:

Jesus’ path to peace and joy

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2014/12/16/lukes-counter-cultural-christmas-story-paul-penley/

By Paul T. Penley

December 16, 2014

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Was Jesus born to save us from this world or bring peace to the earth?

Luke’s counter-cultural Christmas story answers this question.

What a Birth Means to a Mom

For many of us the story of our birth doesn’t answer questions about the purpose of our life. Birth stories typically amount to no more than nostalgic moments at family gatherings. One parent (if you’re so blessed to have a relationship with one) smiles wide and recounts an anecdote for the hundredth time to the chagrin of all who must endure it. My mother is guilty of it all the time.

Her favorite tale is my in utero umbilical cord trick. I had tied the cord in a knot while in the womb. When I popped out, the doctors knew I was a few good pulls away from starving myself. “It is a miracle he’s alive today,” my mom always says, normally adding, “God must have created him for an important purpose.” With this statement, my birth story turns into a mandate. It puts serious pressure on me to do things that matter. Every good thing I do now becomes potential material for my mother to link back to my providential preservation at birth. I really need to start producing some of that material.

The Meaning of Ancient Births

Ancient biographies of great figures such as Alexander the Great and Caesar Augustus use circumstances at birth to predict greatness. The Greek historian Plutarch recounted two particular signs predicting Alexander the Great’s conquest of the known world. First, the Temple of Artemis burned down in Ephesus when Alexander was born. Second, his dad’s triple victory on the day of his son’s birth tipped off the prophets to his significance.

“On the same day, three pieces of news reached Philip (Alexander’s dad), who had just captured Potidaea: Parmenio’s defeat of the Illyrians in a great battle; the victory of Philip’s racehorse at the Olympic Games; and the birth of Alexander. Pleased as he surely was with these tidings, Philip was even more elated by the prophets, who declared that his son, as he had been born on the day of a triple victory, would be unconquerable” (Plutarch, Life of Alexander 3)

What did all this mean? Magi in Ephesus believed the burning of the Temple to Artemis foreshadowed the coming destruction of the Persians who ruled the area. And they were right. Alexander did exactly that during his unstoppable conquest across the known world building the Greek Empire. The activity around his birth prophesied that conquest. It was no coincidence. That’s why ancient biographies of heroic figures began with a birth story.

If the signs around ancient births deliver symbolic messages, it makes me wonder what missing messages are tucked into the birth narratives of Jesus. What statement is being made by the sequence of events around Jesus’ birth that we overlook today?

The Birth of Two Different Saviors

You might know that only Matthew and Luke wrote birth stories. The earliest Gospel Mark provides no such account, and John’s Gospel focuses on divine origin rather than physical birth. When we analyze the biblical accounts of Jesus’ birth, we find two very different stories. We find logistical differences in the genealogies. We find different geographical movements:

Matthew starts in Bethlehem and sends the family to Egypt after the birth.

Luke starts and ends in Nazareth with a trip to Bethlehem for the birth.

It’s important to ask why.

In the big picture, Matthew’s account presents Jesus in terms most meaningful to Jews immersed in Scripture. Luke describes Jesus’ birth for Gentiles immersed in a Greek-speaking Roman world. Their audiences demand two different depictions of Jesus’ birth. For each Gospel to foreshadow greatness at birth, they could not tell the same story to two different audiences.

So how do Matthew and Luke contextualize their birth narratives for different audiences? To summarize, Matthew proclaims Jesus will “save his people from their sins.” Luke’s Jesus will save “all people.”

Matthew connects Jesus to the “Immanuel” Isaiah prophesied

who is born in Bethlehem where Micah predicted.

 Essentially Matthew introduces the “ruler of the Jews.”

The elements of his birth story derive from messianic expectations of the Jews carefully tied to Scripture.

Luke introduces the “Lord of the world” to Gentiles. So he goes in a different direction.

Luke 2 and the Roman Empire

Luke avoids exclusivity and calls Jesus a Savior “for all people.” Jesus will bring “peace on earth.” He is the Lord of all not just king of the Jews. However, Luke is not just presenting a generic “Jesus for everybody.” Luke is doing something more specific than we typically realize. Remember Luke’s audience grew up in a Greco-Roman world around modern-day Turkey. They had specific traditions from the Greek-speaking Roman Empire that Luke was challenging in his presentation of a new Savior.

How do I know? Good question. In Luke’s birth story, he immediately connects it to a Roman census issued by Caesar Augustus. Luke 2:1 reads, “In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered.” Of all the events and figures he could have mentioned, Luke wants his readers to place Jesus’ birth during the reign of Augustus in the Roman Empire. Being the only mention of Augustus (at least by name) in the entire New Testament, it stands out and begs the question: “Why?” What is it Luke wants us to see? How exactly does the birth of Jesus relate to Augustus’s Roman Empire?

For those 3 of you out there who have been asking this question your whole life, get ready for your thirst to be satisfied in this excerpt from my book Reenacting the Way (of Jesus). For the rest of you, just go with it for a few paragraphs. It’s going to get good.

The Gospel of Augustus

In 9 BCE the Proconsul of Asia, Paulus Fabius Maximus, advised the koinon of Asia (i.e., the governing assembly of the Roman province of Asia) to change their calendars from the local lunar calendar to the solar calendar used in Rome. I know. It’s such a big event you are wondering how you hadn’t heard about it before.

Asia Minor moves from a lunar calendar --> to the Roman solar calendar

The Proconsul specifically recommended the first of the year be placed on September 23, the birthday of Caesar Augustus. His reasoning was simple. Since the birth of Augustus ushered in a new age of peace and prosperity, his birthday should be the first day of every year.

The governing assembly loved the idea. They all knew it would please the emperor and possibly attract more imperial tax dollars. So they put together a good PR campaign to milk it for all it was worth. They posted a declaration of their decision in every major city. Read this translation carefully and listen for the same language you’ve read in Luke’s birth story of Jesus:

Providence has filled Augustus with divine power for the benefit of humanity, and in her beneficence has granted us and those who will come after us [a Saviour] who has made war to cease and who shall put everything [in peaceful order] . . . And Caesar, [when he was manifest], transcended the expectations of [all who had anticipated the good news], not only by surpassing the benefits conferred by his predecessors but by leaving no expectation of surpassing him to those who would come after him, with the result that the birthday of our god signaled the beginning of good news for the world because of him. (Lines 34-41 quoted from Graham Stanton, Jesus and Gospel [Cambridge: Cambridge Univ Pr, 2004], 32)

For the Christian reader this inscription sounds full of heretical language. It seems to apply titles and roles to Augustus that are religious in nature and only appropriate for Jesus. Yet, the language is fully political:

In the time of Augustus, a Savior full of divine power whose birth signaled good news for the world was nothing other than the emperor who brought political and social stability. The birth of Caesar Augustus created the Pax Romana, or Roman peace. He saved the civilized world from disarray. So his birthday is a gospel to proclaim.

The Gospel of Jesus and Augustus

How does the “good news” of Jesus’ birth relate to the “good news” of Augustus’s birth? In the gospel of Augustus above and the gospel of Jesus in Luke, both are “Saviors.” Both bring “peace to the whole world.” Both are sent by divine providence.

In a Roman world, the arrival of a Savior would not mean a few individuals can now be snatched away to heaven from the perils of this planet or the afterlife. Luke and his audience wouldn’t see Jesus as a personal savior who intends to bring peace to one’s soul. It is much bigger than that. It is a direct challenge to Caesar. Jesus arrives to rule the world and restore order.

Why does hearing the precise meaning of Luke’s birth narrative matter? Because many of us associate “savior” with someone who just takes care of our sins or personal needs or fears of the future. “My savior solves my problems.” While those issues may be addressed in the Bible elsewhere, Luke’s vision for saving goes way beyond a personal spiritual experience. It has ramifications for the entire world and all of its social structures. Jesus’ birthday in Luke anticipates justice in society not personal justification in heaven. It concerns the same realm over which Caesar exerted his control.

But, Luke’s intricate connection between Jesus and Caesar doesn’t stop there. The entire scale of his birth narrative mocks an ancient practice of flagrant Caesar self-promotion.

Singing Caesar’s Praises

The angels in Jesus’ birth story don’t get much attention. We typically pay attention to what was said not who said it. However, that wasn’t the case for Luke and his Greco-Roman audience. When an army of angels takes center stage to sing about Jesus the Savior, Luke knows his audience will make another connection. The singing angels weren’t the only chorus in town that sung about the good news of saviors and lords.

In many eastern Roman provinces, the [reigning] Caesar was honored at athletic competitions and worshipped at imperial temples. At the time of Jesus’ birth, temples to the god Augustus and the goddess Roma stood in key cities where Luke and Paul did ministry together (e.g., Pergamon of Asia, Ankyra of Galatia, and Nikomedia of Bithynia). People worshipped the emperor like a god at these temples.

At the city of Pergamon (one of the seven churches of Revelation located in the Roman province of Asia where Luke travelled), organizers named their athletic competition the Kaisareia [Caesaria] in honor of the Caesar. The Caesars loved the flattery. And the organizers knew it. Besides running and wrestling in honor of Caesar, the competitions expanded to kiss Caesar’s [royal] ass through poetry and song. Performers composed verse like Horace’s Odes (see Ode 1.12) to thank God for sending Caesar Augustus to save the world.

Heavenly Angels One Up Caesar’s Choir

So what do these Caesar-loving songs have to do with the singing angels in Luke 2:1-20? I’m glad you asked. Early in Augustus’s reign he visited one of Pergamon’s celebrations in his honor and heard a chorus of men sing his praises. He was quite taken by their melodic compliments. The gesture of the Asian chorus so pleased the emperor that he ordered the singers to become a permanent fixture in Asia’s honorary contests.

To make it feasible Augustus established a special levy to financially support the existence of a forty-person male chorus. The chorus quickly became an elite social club with hereditary rites. They gathered at one event after another to sing the praises of the Caesars. They guaranteed top-quality sycophancy for stroking every emperor’s ego.

When Luke’s audience heard about a massive angelic chorus singing the praises of God and his appointed Savior, the closest experience would be imperial singers. They had heard the songs sung by the choir praising Providence for Caesar’s peaceful rule over the world.

But the comparison would quickly become a contrast. Jesus’ birth elicited the presence of countless angels from heaven. Caesar Augustus had to pay a group of men to show up and sing his praises. One of those choruses is clearly superior. One of those births must be more important. Luke’s contrast would have made a statement to any Hellenistic audience who had grown up in the Pax Romana [the Peace of Rome] established by Caesar Augustus. There is a new emperor in town. He is a much bigger deal. And his name is Jesus.

Jesus Delivers What Politicians Propagandize 

Jesus’ birth should be heard as a polemic against political pretenders promising to deliver what only he can. As Luke makes clear, Jesus is savior and not some Caesar. His birth is the real good news. He is the one who will bring peace and joy to the whole world—even beyond Rome’s Empire. That is why endless angels from heaven sung about Jesus’ greatness whereas Caesar had to settle for some dudes he paid. Rome is only a parody of the reality found in Jesus.

To honor Luke’s counter-cultural Christmas story, don’t just watch the 50th anniversary special of Charlie Brown’s Christmas. Instead, embrace Jesus’ delivery of what the Roman Empire promised. He is the restorer of order and peace. Our lives should be ordered around him like the Asians rearranged their calendar around Augustus’s birthday to acknowledge how he authored a new world.

Jesus has the way to bring peace and justice to every society. Not surprisingly [then], Jesus’ method for remaking the world doesn’t look like Rome. Jesus does not bring about revolution through conquest and fear of reprisal. He doesn’t silence dissidents with the sword or subjugate nations involuntarily. Jesus delivers in a whole new way. Jesus’ kingdom policy involves compassion, justice, suffering to serve others, and empowering the oppressed and ostracized. Enemies are loved rather than slaughtered and arrogance is replaced by humility. These are the hallmark moments of Luke’s Gospel.

Social transformation results from personal transformation demonstrated publicly. Jesus’ kingdom is no spiritual escape from the complexities of life in this world and its societal structures. It is designed to reorder it all. It intends to address the same problems for which politicians develop policies and programs. Luke’s counter-cultural Christmas story calls us to re-commit to the way of Jesus rather than methods of unjust power brokers. Jesus can create peace in situations where human factions only foster violence.

Jesus Can Resolve Tribal Conflict

What does it look like for Jesus’ plan for peace to confront Rome’s lust for power? Return for a moment to the tribal genocide of Rwanda back in 1994. According to one eyewitness report, a group of roughly 13,500 Christians gathered in a small village 13 miles from Kigali to find refuge from the fighting. Although millions sought safety away from city centers, this particular gathering set itself apart because of their unique constituency. There were both Hutu and Tutsi people together.

These tribes were supposed to hate each other. If these Christians had adopted the cultural values of the militants, they would have been fighting one another instead of hiding together. This type of mixed gathering was unacceptable to the militias.

Their safe haven was eventually exposed to rebel militia who rounded them up at gunpoint. The rebels demanded the Hutus and Tutsis separate so that only the inferior tribal people would be killed. In response, the leadership of this Christian gathering proclaimed, “We will not separate. For we are all one in Christ.” The apostle Paul would have been proud. He had used that same line to stop senseless conflict between Jews and Gentiles.

The recognition of each person’s equality before Christ provided an alternate path to peace that day. The tribal conflict was swallowed up for a moment in the superordinate identity of one true humanity. Unfortunately, that moment did not last long.

The potential power for peace was quickly silenced by the sounds of machine guns spraying bullets and spilling the blood of all those gathered in the name of Jesus. Although Jesus’ kingdom policy had resolved the division and conflict between thousands of Hutus and Tutsis, a few men with Romanesque military tactics believed more strongly that violence would relieve their fears and accomplish their cause. The ensuing murderous scene is too horrifying to imagine.

On the one hand, the massacre stands out as a sign that Caesars are still promising peace and joy by means of bloodshed and dominance. On the other hand, the shared death of Hutus and Tutsis is a symbol of promise for a world that needs to be saved from more projects of dehumanization and destruction.

Jesus can save the world. He can bring peace “on earth” if we embody his ways. That is the “good news of great joy” to proclaim to all that have succumbed to the illusory promises of establishing peace through death, joy through terror, and salvation through domination.

The Gospel Is Bigger Than You

Jesus’ global plan for peace and joy is rarely the gospel we announce. Too often we settle for a tiny, personalized announcement of inner peace. Or we give up on seeing large-scale peace for all people today and relinquish our hopes to an afterlife or idyllic world to come. I hope these failures on our part only reflect a misunderstanding of Jesus and not our fear to follow him.

For a deeper look at Luke’s birth narrative in Roman context and concrete ways Jesus is bringing large-scale peace to the world, read chapter 2 in Reenacting the Way (of Jesus).

Does God Care About the Bible As Much As We Do?

Without getting too hot or bothered about Zach Hunt's article in Huff Post today I would like to say that he's on to something. Sure, I might disagree with his (purported) supposition that Jesus blew off the Old Testament (OT) Scriptures to start a Love Movement on His own. Or that the OT Scripture is a jumble of problems best left unread and unfollowed if one is to follow hard after the living God. Or that the past 2000 years of church dogma has pretty much left society screwed up, fragmented, and more hardened to God than ever before. Or even that the best divine authority in life might better be found outside the Bible and especially outside of the people of God for whatever reason we wish to throw out there (and there are many).

On the other hand, might we have become a bit too cynical or disbelieving in our minds and hearts to do the hard work of theology, leaving lesser lights from the pulpit and civic podium to measure its contents and speeches for us? Or perhaps have discovered that in order to hear God's Word again we just might have to change our cultural perspectives and hardened mindsets (horrors!) so that we actually can hear God speak to us again? Or that with time-and-distance from the God-event of the OT, Jesus knew then, as I've been thinking myself, that God might have to speak in a new way that might shake up the church establishment in order to get both church and mankind to listen again to His heart's passions? That with years of indifference, spiritual disregard, casual worship, brotherly bickering, tribal in-fighting, national exile, and divine judgment, the OT Scriptures became so "lost" to its intended themes and topics that Jesus pretty much had to "re-interpret" God's Word... which, in this instance, was the very God Himself speaking His own heart and mind to mankind. Not simply as a great prophet. A revered priest. Or beloved scholar. But very God of very God come to live, and breathe, and example, God's redemption to those who would stop, hear, and listen.

However we may disagree or fuss over Zach Hunt's comments I think we would do him a great injustice if we didn't seriously consider his argument that the church has made the Bible a holy relic that cannot be touched lest the whole God-thing-system comes crashing down on its head. Its what we call in religious circles as "bibliolatry"... the worship of the book over the Author. The lifting-up of our own religion through its religious pages to the ill-and-fate of others less fortunate to be in our "happy band of merry men." From bibliolatry comes folk religion... a colloquial name bestowed upon popular Christian movements, cherished christened ideologies, unquestioned church norms and beloved traditions that would cause its followers, members, joiners, and congregants, to think and do very "un-God-like" things. Things which seem to ring true in our religious (or is it legalistic?) and prideful hearts, but are very untrue and false when held before the Light of the Lord as He hung on the Cross forgiving His betrayers. Abandoned even of His own Father when taking on the idolatrous sins of His people upon Himself. Torn and rent by the hard pride of religious sin and desperate lust for self-righteousness.

Hence, let's not be too hard here today. And don't think that we must swing to the deep end of mysticism and magic, dreams and trances, agnosticism and atheism, in order to hear God again (of course I might sympathize with Christian agnostics and atheists if they do go this route). However, I am a firm believer that God's Word is enough, and that the church is redeemable through His people as His earthly hands and feet. But it is also true that we need a little Spirit-filled common sense, a bit of a backward glance towards past church histories filled with both its mistakes and failures as well as its successes and gains (I think of Christian martyrs like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, for one). And some outside help - even it were to come from the ranks of the "heathen" speaking in the name of science, philosophy, and scholarship. God has given to us reason and experience to be used and not abandoned. Let's use them in good order beginning with a prayer of help to the Lord to illumine our darkened hearts. Amen.

R.E. Slater

January 22, 2014

The process of interpretation -
Its not all that easy!

Does God Care About the Bible As Much As We Do?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zack-hunt/does-god-care-about-the-b_b_4611410.html

by Zach Hunt

January 21, 2014

For many in the church today, using the Bible as the go-to, definitive, and final answer for everything is the whole point of the Bible.

Otherwise, God wouldn't have chopped it up into nice chapters and verses that we could weaponize at the drop of a hat, right?

(Fun fact: The chopping didn't start until at least a 1,000 years after the New Testament was finished.)

But what if God had other intentions for the Bible? What if God didn't intend for it to be the unquestioned final authority on everything that we've turned it into? What if, dare I say it, God doesn't care about the Bible as much as we do?

I don't mean God thinks that it's worthless, but what if we think more highly of the Bible and its authority than we should?

I know that might sound crazy, but I have a sneaking (biblical) suspicion why that might actually be the case.

My suspicion begins in the Gospels where time and time again we hear Jesus declaring, "You have heard it said... but I say...." Now, sometimes he's just talking about tradition or the teachings of other rabbis. But a lot of times, he's talking about scripture itself, what we would today call the Old Testament. We tend to gloss over Jesus' words as nothing more than a rhetorical device, but when we do we miss the gravity of what he's actually doing.

He's breaking the bonds of scripture to bring new truth and breath fresh life into the people of God. He's refusing to be held captive to the words on the page in order to get to the real heart of faith.

And he's calling us to go and do likewise.

But the liberation doesn't stop there.

It culminates at the birth of the church. In particular, the story of the apostle Peter and the sheet that fell from heaven.

According to the book of Acts, the apostle Peter was at a house in the town of Joppa when he decided to go up to the roof and pray while lunch was being prepared. Not long after he had began praying, he fell into a trance and had one of those famous biblical visions from God. In the vision, he saw a sheet fall from heaven full of all sorts of creatures -- "four-footed creatures and reptiles and birds of the air" -- and he heard a voice saying, "Take and eat." Peter said "no" because scripture forbade him from doing so. The voice told him again to take and eat and once more Peter refused. This happened three times and three times Peter said no, citing scripture.

It's an odd vision that only becomes odder when you step back and realize what's really going on.

That voice from heaven was God and God was telling Peter to violate scripture.

We like to gloss over this too as part of the whole "we're no longer under law, we're under grace" thing as if that was some how a fulfillment of scripture -- but it wasn't. Sure, there was a promised Messiah, but there was no sense in the Old Testament that the law would pass away and be replaced by a covenant of grace. Even if there was, the law was at the very heart of the people of God's identity. Saying the people of God are no longer under the Law, but under grace is nothing short of a revolution.

What's happening, then, in Peter's vision, the book of Acts, the Gospels, and throughout the New Testament is a fundamental and radical shift from the old way of doing things (no more sacrifices), from how God related to God's people (no more need for a high priest), and from scripture itself (no longer bound by the law).

It's not a complete break because the continuity is critical, but it is a seismic shift to something radically different than what had come before.

So why was God doing something so radical and so obviously contradictory to scripture?

Because God decided to do a new thing in Jesus and through the church, a Spirit thing that couldn't be bound by scripture, and either Peter (and the rest of God's people) could come along for the ride or stay shackled to the past.

When we hear this story taught in Sunday school, most of us respond the way we always respond when Peter sticks his foot in his mouth -- we're baffled that he could be so dense when God was being so clear in what God wanted and expected from him. But as much as we might like to think we would have responded differently if we had been in his position, I think the truth is most of us still use the Bible the same way Peter did -- as an idol to be blindly followed. An idol even God is answerable to.

Imagine if we had responded to the vision then like we do today to things we think are against the Bible:

• We'd start off with an internet rant about wolves in the church trying to deceive the faithful,

• then we'd string together a bunch of Bible verse to "prove" we're right,

• then follow that up with a thorough trashing of our opponent's knowledge of the Bible,

• and finally wrap things up by denouncing them as a liberal heretic.

And then when all our "righteous work" was done, just like Peter, we would have successfully quashed the movement of the Spirit.

I think our fundamental problem in all of this is that we've forgotten that the Bible is meant to be a guide on how to live and love in this life and the next, but instead we've turned it into a jailer that shackles us to ideology, dogma, and legalism.

Instead of letting the Bible lead us the Truth, we use it as a weapon to attack our enemies and defend our ideological idols.

If Peter had continued to use scripture the way we do today, instead of getting out of the way for God to move, then the power of the Spirit would have been stifled and the church would not have gotten off the ground. If Paul had used scripture the way we do today, he could have never taken the gospel to the ends of the earth and ministered to the Gentiles because they were outside of Israel's covenant as described in scripture. And if Jesus had used scripture like we do today, his ministry would have never left Nazareth.

Answering the call of God to join the new work of the Spirit doesn't negate the inspiration or authority of scripture. It simply puts it in proper perspective and allows it to serve its proper function -- as a guide to be followed, not an idol to be worshipped or a weapon to be wielded.

How do we let it guide us?

The same way the church has always let scripture guide us before we fell for the delusion of sola scriptura -- tradition can lead us, the church teach us, reason inform us, and experience shape us into the people of God formed but not shackled to the Bible.

So, does God care about the Bible as much as we do?

It doesn't seem so.

Though, of course, I can't speak for God, so I can't say for sure.

But I do think the Gospels and the story of Peter in particular should give us pause before we fill up anymore Facebook threads, message boards, comment sections, or Twitter feeds with never-ending strings of Bible verses.

In other words, we need to be careful.

Because God may be doing a new thing in the church today and, if God is, we may get left behind because we're so busy quoting Bible verses and holding God hostage to scripture that we can't see the work of the Spirit unfolding like a sheet from heaven right before our very eyes.

Grace and Peace,

Zack Hunt

Follow Zack Hunt on Twitter: www.twitter.com/TheAmericnJesus

Luke 7: A Gospel of Reversals - "Who Are the Invited? And Who Are the Sinners?"

 

Photographed by Peter Ruprecht

Three words come to mind when giving a meal or a dinner to invited guests: "Honor. Hospitality. Hosting." And so we see these three very important words re-enacted by Simon Levi, a tax collector who invites his friends to meet Jesus who had called him into discipleship. Earlier, Jesus had healed a leper and a paralytic. Now we find Jesus calling a despised tax collector by the name of Simon Levi. And behind each passage of Luke's accounts we find the ever-present religious Pharisees lurking around the edges questioning Jesus' every move and motive.

As the saying goes, "If Jesus were running for public office He might've been more careful about the company He was keeping." But Jesus has a higher mission than one of popularity:

 

¹⁸ “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
    and recovering of sight to the blind,
    to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
¹⁹ to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”

 

- Luke 4.18-19 (as quoted from the prophet Isaiah)

 

In first century Jewish culture the needy weren't always clean or respectable. Especially the hated tax collectors of Rome who requisitioned impossible duties upon the burden of the public in order to meet Rome's ever increasing demands for empire and their own ever-expanding appetites for material wealth and political power.

 

Into this environment Jesus calls Simon Levi to leave his employer and to become His own disciple in a ministry of collecting and disbursing the Kingdom of Heaven's funds from Jesus' wealth and store.

 

Within Luke's account (written on behalf of the Apostle Peter) we find seven meals where Jesus was present: twice with Simon Levi, at the feeding of the 5000, a meal with the Pharisees (where we find Jesus immediately breaking protocol in heated debate), a wedding banquet with its corollary Kingdom call, at a last Passover Meal with His disciples, and a final evening meal with Cleopas and his wife Mary after their long walk along the dusty road of Emmaus:

Luke 5.27-32 - Jesus calls Simon Levi then invites his friends to a meal with Jesus:

²⁷ After this he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth. And he said to him, “Follow me.” ²⁸ And leaving everything, he rose and followed him.

²⁹ And Levi made him a great feast in his house, and there was a large company of tax collectors and others reclining at table with them. ³⁰ And the Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at his disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” ³¹ And Jesus answered them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. ³² I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”

Luke 7.36-52 - A Pharisee questions Jesus at Simon's meal about an uninvited woman who bathes his feet with her tears:

³⁸ and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment.

Luke 9.10 - 17 - Jesus feed the 5000

 

Luke 11.37-52 - Jesus attends a meal with the Pharisees:

 

³⁷ While Jesus^[e] was speaking, a Pharisee asked him to dine with him, so he went in and reclined at table. ³⁸ The Pharisee was astonished to see that he did not first wash before dinner. ³⁹ And the Lord said to him, “Now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. ⁴⁰ You fools! Did not he who made the outside make the inside also? ⁴¹ But give as alms those things that are within, and behold, everything is clean for you.

⁴² “But woe to you Pharisees! For you tithe mint and rue and every herb, and neglect justice and the love of God. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. ⁴³ Woe to you Pharisees! For you love the best seat in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces. ⁴⁴ Woe to you! For you are like unmarked graves, and people walk over them without knowing it.”

⁴⁵ One of the lawyers answered him, “Teacher, in saying these things you insult us also.” ⁴⁶ And he said, “Woe to you lawyers also! For you load people with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers. ⁴⁷ Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets whom your fathers killed. ⁴⁸ So you are witnesses and you consent to the deeds of your fathers, for they killed them, and you build their tombs. ⁴⁹ Therefore also the Wisdom of God said, ‘I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and persecute,’ ⁵⁰ so that the blood of all the prophets, shed from the foundation of the world, may be charged against this generation, ⁵¹ from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who perished between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you, it will be required of this generation. ⁵² Woe to you lawyers! For you have taken away the key of knowledge. You did not enter yourselves, and you hindered those who were entering.”

⁵³ As he went away from there, the scribes and the Pharisees began to press him hard and to provoke him to speak about many things, ⁵⁴ lying in wait for him, to catch him in something he might say.

Luke 14.1-24 - "A Sabbath Healing" and "Inviting the Uninvited"

 

Luke 22.14-38 - Jesus' last Passover Meal with His disciples on the eve of His trial and crucifixion.

 

Luke 24.28-32 - Jesus has an evening meal with two of his disciples, Cleopas and his wife Mary (one of the women who had visited Jesus' tomb earlier that Resurrection morning), after their travels to their village of Emmaus:

 

²⁸ So they drew near to the village to which they were going. He [Jesus] acted as if he were going farther, ²⁹ but they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, for it is toward evening and the day is now far spent.” So he went in to stay with them. ³⁰ When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. ³¹ And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight. ³² They said to each other, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?” ³³ And they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem. And they found the eleven and those who were with them gathered together, ³⁴ saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!” ³⁵ Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he was known to them in the breaking of the bread.
 

 

My interest today is in the Luke 7 account where Simon Levi's Pharisee friends are appalled by the presence of an uninvited, unclean woman who repeatedly weeps upon Jesus' feet while washing and perfuming His feet with her hair. As the story unfolds we find a crowd that has gathered to a meal; a host we now know by the name of Simon Levi; a honored guest, Jesus, who has been invited by Levi to attend as the designee of distinction; an uninvited woman who enters off the unwashed streets (otherwise known as a woman of prostitution servicing the men of the area); and an ensuing disruption of the first order that immediately splits the gathered guests in two - between those who believe Jesus to be Israel's prophet sent by God to release their shackles from under the bondage of the Roman empire, and those still in doubt.

 

From the outset we find Simon Levi, ever the political aspirant, socially arranging to have his well-connected associates meet Jesus so that he might introduce this self-proclaimed prophet of Israel to them and begin bringing about the support money and the political connections that Jesus would need.... Or so he thought. But the one who was also calling himself Israel's Messiah (Savior) had a far more sublime message than the one Levi had contemplated. Believing only that Jesus had called himself into service (e.g. "discipleship") so that through his connections he might be able to help Jesus create the political momentum required for Israel's insurrection from Rome. But it was to an insurrection that he had not surmised... one that would have surprising consequences for both himself and his guests as he would soon find out.

Into the midst of this auspicious gathering a social disruption soon occurs where no one can withhold from heated comment. A disruption that causes the invited guests to vent their considerable feelings upon a social faux-pas that wasn't acceptable. And quickly taking the lead were the "honored ones" within the ranks of Levi's guests - those that spoke for the Jewish community - who should naturally speak out their alarm to Levi their host. So that at once the Pharisees present at the dinner party turn to Levi demanding that he remove a woman of ill-repute who had come into their midst unwelcomed and socially stained. Into which fray Jesus has been benignly thrown into as this same woman falls upon His feet and begins to weep and anoint his feet over and over, again and again. A woman who understands Jesus' truer identity and more radical insurrection to be directed at the very foundations of Jewish society itself. And ultimately to every man and woman's faith and heart.

Meanwhile, in gapped silence everyone awaits Jesus' auspicious response. But His response is totally unlike their pronounced expectations. Instead, Jesus continues to allow the unwanted woman her remarkable prostrations to the horror of both the crowd and their societal representatives, as they each begin doubting Jesus' prophetic ambitions He had earlier announced in Luke 4, and demonstrated by the healing of the sick at the onset of Luke 5. Jesus does exactly the opposite of what they were expecting.

Growing bolder, and more dogmatically angry, the Pharisees none-too-politely ask Levi the question everyone is by now asking, "That if Jesus is a prophet He would've known whom this woman is!" they demanded and hissed as-in-one-breath. And by one fell utterance from the councils of high Jewish society both the woman and Jesus are rejected along with all pretentious claims made by Levi, their dinner host, to the same. Jesus' mission comes into immediate and deep ruin, and with it, any pretensions to what the guests had earlier thought about Jesus' claim of Davidic kingship and rule by power and might.

Most poignantly we, the readers and hearers of Luke's story, now understand that the argument was not so simply about compassion or love, mercy or forgiveness. But about who was really in, and who was really out, according to the covenantal dictates of the invited teachers, rabbis, and priests at the dinner table. In one collective voice Jesus was out. Why? Because He failed to recognize the harlot in their midst as they had: "How could Jesus be Israel's prophet, much less their Messiah King!" And the differences become even more startling when realizing that even as Simon had not washed, nor kissed, nor anointed Jesus' feet, even so had this woman done so with her hair (yet another symbol of heavy shame in the perspective of Jewish culture as related to her sexual trade). And to stretch the dishonor out completely, Jesus is now dishonored along with the woman, even as Simon Levi's quickly diminishing hopes plunged to the ground before his honored guests.

But in a role of reversals we quickly see Jesus lifting up this woman of ill-repute and claiming before one-and-all that she is the truer host and honored guest at the dinner party by virtue of her actions and function. And with one sling of accusation directed towards His newest recruit, Simon, but directed towards all found in attendance, Jesus asks who really were the blind among them? Who really was the spiritually sick and leper of society? Who really was the one that has truly honored Him? Who really was the sinner in their midst? Who really were the symbols of shame in this story? And just as quickly Jesus forgives the woman's sin and tells her to go in peace. That she is welcomed and honored before the presence of God for her repentance and faith. And by these pronouncements Jesus deftly demonstrates both His prophetic status sent against the wickedness of Israel, His Messiahship as one come to forgive sins, and the quality of His wisdom as Israel's newly resurrected Davidic King.

At which point the story is left unfinished. We don't know if a riot immediately ensued; if Levi collapsed into his seat in dispirited conviction; if those remaining began to understand how horribly wrong they had gotten everything; if the Pharisees found themselves divided in their opinion over Jesus; or, even if the police were called to throw Jesus out of the city. But within the story itself we find it ended so that we - the readers and listeners - become those who are gathered around the banquet table asking the same questions and thinking the same thoughts as those present in the story. A story which calls us to ask who I really am? What might I have done in this same situation? How blinded might I have been if present at this dinner in my opinions about Jesus, myself, or to others considered disrespectable? And whether I would've responded even as the woman of the story did in repentance and faith - rather than as the guests did in anger and disruption, hatred and despise?

If whether we might allow our Father God to take the things that shame us and to turn them around for His own glory and our own shalom. For without a doubt we are the invited ones to God's table who asks us to fully participate in His sacrificial love.... Even as we are to embrace all whom we might consider "unclean" and "unwashed" that comes to this same insurrection table laden with redemption and hope. And at the last, we are the ones who are to enjoy God's banquet meal of love and forgiveness, mercy and compassion, especially with all those around us who have also come to the Passover table of peace and rest, fellowship and refuge. To be wary of following Jesus for any other motives than His call to insurrection to this wicked world of ours. To reclaim it for God by giving up everything we have - even as Simon Levi had belatedly discovered when God stripped him of any last lingering vestiges of worldly hopes and dreams before his peers and honorees. And there discovering that he had it all most horribly wrong. That it wasn't he that could help Jesus, but Jesus who had come to help him, and to deliver him into a more worthy service than his present masters of mammon that he served.

Levi's call was a costly call. And so we will find even in our own lives. That God's Spirit will not rest until all has been undone in our wicked lives of wail and woe until we have come to the end of ourselves and understand it to be chattel worthy only of fire and ash. That in calling us to Himself God is redeeming our souls in every way that a man or woman may be saved. From ourselves and from our crooked worldly aspirations to a life of insurrection meant to restore God's lost Kingdom into this broken world of ours. Who will use all our talents and abilities to wreck this world system we live in if only by heaven's diamond-hardened tools of love and forgiveness. Out of which God Himself will bring about the salvation of all as only He can. Even so Lord Jesus quickly come... coming through us as your human instruments of truth and justice, beauty and judgment, hope and dreams, to be used as swords and battlements to your all-glorious name. Even so, now come. Amen.

R.E. Slater

July 29, 2013

sic, The Cost of Discipleship in Luke - Mars Hill