Scott Freeman

Christ in Luke

I love history. From time to time I will go to the library and pick out a retelling of some historical event. I have a very simple method to separating good historical works from bad ones:

If I’m able to read it with the possibility that the outcome might be different, it’s good.

In other words, although I know how the story ends, I still read it as if it hadn’t happened.

One of the best examples of that was my reading of Taylor Branch’s masterful Civil Rights saga: America in the King Years. In the final installment of the three part series, At Canaan’s Edge, I knew that when Martin Luther King, Jr. went to Memphis that second time that he would be assassinated. But as I read the book I couldn’t help but hope against hope that the ending was different:
–That MLK used a different hotel,
–That James Earl Ray missed,
–Or he did not go out on the balcony of the Lorraine hotel.
Although I knew the outcome I still read as if the ending could still turn out differently.
That, to me, is the mark of a great historical work.
I’m currently reading Douglas Brinkley’s detailed account of Hurricane Katrina and it’s aftermath, The Great Deluge. Again, I’m reading believing that the ending might somehow change: that the hurricane will veer further off course, that the levees will hold, that the government will be prepared.
That is the mark of a great historical work.

That’s the impression I get when reading the gospel of Luke. Luke the physician is a master chronicler. He writes with the air and authority of the great historians.
Luke flows with context, content and climate. In Luke we see the Kingdom come to life through the Messiah of God. We see the hope of redemption for the outcast and downtrodden.
We see the Christ walking amongst the people pointing the way to Calvary.

What separates Luke from Mark is the insertion of a travelogue between His Galilean ministry and the Passion. In 9:51 when we read “When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem” the reader can sense a dramatic shift in the movement of the book.
Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem. In Mark that trip takes one verse. In Luke, it takes 10 chapters, a full third of the book. This travelogue is rife with the sayings of Jesus, but we are continually reminded that He is on His way to Jerusalem.
I couldn’t help reading this segment with the idea that it might be different: that there could be another way. That He wouldn’t have to die. That He would take His time to get to Jerusalem.
And I couldn’t help thinking what I would have done. He set His mind to go to Jerusalem knowing full well that He would die there.
I’m pretty selfish. It’s not an attractive quality but I know it’s still there. What would I have done if I had known that going to Jerusalem was a death sentence?
Here are some possibilities:
–I would have found a reason not to go;
–I would have dawdled in every city I entered;
–I would have started a smear campaign against my potential executioners to turn the tide of public opinion decidedly my way.

But that is not what Jesus did. He didn’t dawdle. He didn’t delay. He didn’t denigrate.
Instead, this is what He did:
–He warned. He told of the coming kingdom and warned the religious, the Pharisees and the legalists that love of money, dismissal of the poor and neglecting the forgotten was anathema to the way of God. His warnings were not for those outside of the halls of faith but for those of us who live as if we all have it figured out.
–He taught. He showed the the way to pray, the way to treat others, the importance of living Kingdom lives.
–He healed. The kingdom was announced through the miraculous power of the Son of God: The blind can see, the lame can walk, the prisoner set free.
–He forgave. Even the most blindly religious could find peace and hope. By laying down the chores, by giving, by being childlike, they too experience the fullness of the Kingdom.

Christ in Luke is determined, committed and persistent in fulfilling His mission. He lived His life on the margins where the people were. By setting His sights on Jerusalem He plotted a course that wound its way through the highways and byways where the lost, downtrodden and neglected were pushed to the side.
On that way He provided a message of healing and forgiveness, teaching the Kingdom purposes of loved and generosity of spirit. In that is great warning for those of us who have reduced Kingdom living to a list of rules, habits, disciplines and purposes. It’s not a list of rules but the road we travel that matters.
Ultimately the road He calls us to travel is the same one He did winding through the hearts and lives of people.
All the way to Calvary.
That is Christ in Luke.