Luke — themes & analysis

The pattern is set in the opening chapters. The first canticle in the gospel is the Magnificat, sung by an unmarried pregnant teenager from a small town in Galilee, and it is one of the most politically charged poems in the Bible: he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts, he has put down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of low degree, he has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty. The first witnesses to the birth, in chapter 2, are not magi from the east but shepherds — herdsmen on the night shift, the kind of working men no other Mediterranean infancy narrative would have bothered to put in the room.

Luke gives Jesus his programmatic sermon at Nazareth in chapter 4, where he reads from Isaiah: the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed. The audience starts proud and ends ready to throw him off a cliff. Luke alone tells the parable of the good Samaritan, in which the foreigner outperforms the priest and the Levite. Luke alone has the line about the women who travelled with the disciples and supported the ministry out of their own resources. Luke alone has the parable of the prodigal son's father, who runs to embrace a returning son in a culture where dignified men did not run.

The accumulation is not accidental. Luke is making an argument by selection. The kingdom of God arrives in his telling among the people the world has not been counting. The proud and the rich and the religiously secure are not damned in his gospel — but they are warned, repeatedly and specifically, that the kingdom is coming for the others first, and that whether they will recognize it when it arrives is an open question.

Where to follow it: Luke 1 (the Magnificat), Luke 4 (Isaiah at Nazareth), Luke 10 (the good Samaritan), Luke 15 (the prodigal son).

The pattern begins in the first chapter. John the Baptist is filled with the Holy Spirit even in the womb. Mary conceives by the Spirit. Elizabeth, when Mary greets her, is filled with the Spirit and recognizes what no one else yet knows. Zechariah, when his tongue is loosed at the naming of John, is filled with the Spirit and prophesies. Simeon comes to the temple led by the Spirit and recognizes the child. The Spirit descends on Jesus at his baptism in the bodily form of a dove; the Spirit drives him into the wilderness; he returns to Galilee in the power of the Spirit; he reads at Nazareth the verse the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, and announces that today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.

The Spirit is the through-line. Luke does not present a Jesus who acts on his own initiative against a backdrop of divine absence; he presents a Jesus moved at every step by the same Spirit who has moved every other significant figure in the gospel. The pattern is what makes the second volume of Luke's work — Acts — make sense. When the Spirit comes on the disciples at Pentecost in Acts 2, it is not a new development but the continuation of what the Spirit has been doing throughout the gospel.

The doctrine has practical edges. For Luke, the Spirit is the engine of inclusion. In the gospel the same dynamic is already visible: the Spirit moves the story toward the people the religious establishment is not expecting. To read Luke without attending to the Spirit is to miss the gospel's account of how God works. He works, on Luke's reading, by getting inside ordinary people and changing what they can do.

Where to follow it: Luke 1 (Spirit fills Elizabeth, Zechariah), Luke 3 (descent of the Spirit at baptism), Luke 4 (Spirit drives Jesus to the wilderness), Luke 11 (the Father gives the Holy Spirit).

The good Samaritan, in chapter 10, in which a man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho is robbed and left for dead, and a priest passes by, and a Levite passes by, and a Samaritan — a member of a despised neighbouring people — stops, treats his wounds, takes him to an inn, and pays for his care. The parable was told to a lawyer who had asked who counts as my neighbour, and it answers his question by changing it: not who is my neighbour, but who acts as one.

The prodigal son, in chapter 15, in which a younger son demands his inheritance, leaves home, wastes it in a far country, comes to himself in a pig pen, decides to go home as a hired servant, and is met on the road by his father, who runs to him, embraces him, kisses him, and orders the fatted calf killed for a feast. The older son, who has stayed home and worked, refuses to come in. The parable ends with the father's pleading and not with the older son's answer; the question of whether the older son will come to the feast is left to the reader. Luke's careful word choice — the father saw him while he was yet a great way off, and had compassion, and ran — is unmatched in concision in any of the gospels.

Lazarus and the rich man, in chapter 16, in which a rich man feasts daily while a beggar named Lazarus dies at his gate covered in sores, and after death Lazarus is carried to Abraham's bosom and the rich man is in torment. The Pharisee and the tax collector, in chapter 18, in which the Pharisee thanks God that he is not like other people and the tax collector stands far off and beats his breast and says God be merciful to me a sinner, and goes home justified. Zacchaeus the chief tax collector, short, climbing a sycamore tree to see Jesus pass, and Jesus calling him by name. What these parables share is precision and reversal: the expected hero fails; the despised outsider acts; the careful religious man goes home unjustified; the wastrel is welcomed.

Where to follow it: Luke 10 (good Samaritan), Luke 15 (prodigal son), Luke 16 (Lazarus and the rich man), Luke 18 (Pharisee and tax collector).

The phrase he set his face is biblical and old. It echoes Isaiah 50:7 (I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame), part of the suffering servant material that Luke and the early Christians took as foundational. The Greek verb stērizō means to set firmly, to make resolute, to fix in place. Jesus is not drifting toward Jerusalem; he is going. He knows what is there. He has already told his disciples, three times, that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and on the third day rise.

What Luke uses the long journey for is teaching. Most of the distinctive material — the great parables, the controversies, the meals with sinners and Pharisees, the warnings about wealth, the instructions to the seventy — is gathered into these chapters. The disciples do not yet understand what Jerusalem will mean. The crowds do not yet understand. Jesus teaches them on the road. The reader, who knows what is coming, watches the teaching land or fail to land in figures who have not yet been told everything the reader has been told.

By the time the travel narrative ends and the entry into Jerusalem begins in chapter 19, the reader has been on the road long enough to feel the weight of the destination. The structure is one of the most sophisticated narrative devices in the gospels, and it is uniquely Lukan.

Where to follow it: Luke 9:51 (the pivot), Luke 13 (lament over Jerusalem), Luke 19 (the entry), Luke 21 (Jerusalem discourse).

Two disciples — one named Cleopas, one not named at all — are walking from Jerusalem to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from the city. They are talking about everything that has happened. A stranger joins them on the road. He asks what they are discussing. They are amazed he does not know. They tell him the story: a prophet mighty in deed and word, condemned, crucified, the women's strange report this morning of an empty tomb. We had hoped, they say — three of the saddest words in the gospels — we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.

The stranger answers them. He begins with Moses and goes through all the prophets, interpreting to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. They reach the village. He acts as if he is going further. They press him to stay; the day is far spent. He goes in. At the table, he takes the bread, blesses it, breaks it, gives it to them. Their eyes are opened. They recognize him. He vanishes from their sight. They get up that same hour and walk the seven miles back to Jerusalem.

The Emmaus scene is one of the most carefully written narratives in the New Testament. Luke does not have his risen Lord burst into the room in glory. He has him walk seven miles with two disappointed people who do not know who he is, listen to their grief, answer it from the scriptures, and reveal himself only at a meal, and only for a moment. The chapter is a warning to every reader who wants the resurrection to be obvious. In Luke, it is not obvious. It happens at table, it is recognized only afterward, and it sends the people who saw it walking back through the dark to tell what they have seen.

Where to follow it: Luke 24 (the road to Emmaus), Luke 22 (the last supper — bread and cup).