Luke 19
A short man climbs a sycamore tree, a nobleman's servants are tested with minas, and a colt carries a king into the city of peace.
Summary
Zacchaeus, identified as a chief tax collector and a wealthy man, is short and cannot see Jesus over the crowd as he is passing through Jericho. He runs ahead and climbs a sycamore tree. Jesus reaches the spot, looks up, calls Zacchaeus by name, and tells him to come down quickly because he must stay at his house today. Zacchaeus comes down and receives him joyfully; the crowd grumbles. Zacchaeus stands and makes a public declaration: half of his goods he will give to the poor, and if he has defrauded anyone anything, he will restore it fourfold. Jesus pronounces salvation to the house — today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham — and states the mission: the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. Luke places the Zacchaeus scene as the last narrative before the entry, and it functions as a summation of the entire travel narrative's concern with the unexpected recipient of the kingdom.
The parable of the ten minas is given because they supposed that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately. A man of noble birth goes to a far country to be appointed king and return. He gives ten servants ten minas with the instruction to engage in business until he comes back. His citizens send a delegation opposing his appointment. On his return, he calls the servants to account: the servant who made ten minas from one is put in charge of ten cities; the servant who made five is put in charge of five cities; the servant who hid the mina in a handkerchief is told that even what he has will be taken away and given to the one who has ten. The master orders those who rejected him brought and slaughtered before him. The parable's violence has made commentators uncomfortable; its setting — in Luke's text, not Matthew's version — immediately precedes the entry into Jerusalem. Jesus proceeds to Bethphage and Bethany on the Mount of Olives, sends two disciples to find a colt on which no one has ever sat, and enters Jerusalem. The disciples spread cloaks on the road; the whole crowd of disciples praise God in a loud voice for the mighty works they have seen; Pharisees ask Jesus to rebuke them; Jesus answers that if these were silent, the very stones would cry out. He weeps over the city, predicting its destruction because it did not know the time of its visitation.
- Luke 1Chapter 1 opens with a formal literary preface — Luke addresses a certain Theophilus and claims to have investigated everything carefully, setting himself apart as a self-conscious historian among the gospel writers.
- Luke 2Chapter 2 contains the nativity scene that dominates Western cultural memory of the gospels: the census under Quirinius, the journey to Bethlehem, the birth, the manger, the swaddling cloths, the angels appearing to shepherds in the fields at night.
- Luke 3Luke situates John's ministry with extraordinary chronological precision — the fifteenth year of Tiberius, the governorship of Pilate, the tetrarchies of Herod and Philip and Lysanias, the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas.
- Luke 4The Spirit drives Jesus into the wilderness for forty days, where the devil offers him bread, political authority over all the kingdoms of the world, and divine protection — and is refused at each turn with a quotation from Deuteronomy.
- Luke 5By the Lake of Gennesaret, the crowds press against Jesus and he steps into Simon's empty boat to teach.
- Luke 6The chapter opens with two Sabbath controversies: the disciples pluck grain as they walk through fields, and Jesus defends them by citing David's eating the showbread when his men were hungry.
- Luke 7Three distinct episodes give chapter 7 its range.
- Luke 8Chapter 8 moves quickly across a range of narrative modes.
- Luke 9Chapter 9 is a turning-point chapter.
- Luke 10Jesus sends out seventy (some manuscripts say seventy-two) in pairs ahead of him into every town and place he intends to visit, with instructions similar to the twelve's but addressed to a larger group and a longer journey.
- Luke 11The chapter opens with Jesus praying in a certain place; when he stops, a disciple asks him to teach them to pray as John taught his disciples.
- Luke 12With ten thousand pressing around him, Jesus addresses the disciples first: beware the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.
- Luke 13Some report to Jesus about Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices.
- Luke 14Jesus goes to eat at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees on the Sabbath, watched carefully by those present.
- Luke 15The Pharisees and scribes grumble that this man receives sinners and eats with them.
- Luke 16Chapter 16 contains two of Luke's most difficult parables.
- Luke 17The chapter opens with warnings about causing stumbling — better to have a millstone around your neck and be thrown into the sea — and the obligation to rebuke and forgive a brother who sins seven times in a day and repents each time.
- Luke 18Jesus tells the parable of the persistent widow to teach that they ought always to pray and not lose heart: a widow in a city where a judge neither fears God nor respects people keeps coming to him demanding justice against her adversary; he eventually grants it not because of justice but because she is wearing him out.
- Luke 19Jericho contains the Zacchaeus scene, unique to Luke: a chief tax collector who is wealthy and short climbs a sycamore tree to see Jesus over the crowd.
- Luke 20Chapter 20 is a series of confrontations in the temple.
- Luke 21Looking up at those putting gifts into the treasury, Jesus observes that a poor widow puts in two small copper coins — the smallest unit of currency — and says she has put in more than all of them, because they gave from their abundance and she from her poverty gave everything she had.
- Luke 22Satan enters Judas Iscariot and he goes to the chief priests to discuss how to betray Jesus.
- Luke 23The assembly brings Jesus to Pilate, accusing him of perverting the nation, forbidding tribute to Caesar, and claiming to be king.
- Luke 24Very early on the first day of the week, the women — Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and others — bring spices to the tomb and find the stone rolled away.