Luke: third lecture – the passion

1. Luke: third lecture – the passion “Father, into your hands . . .

2. Luke’s passion • In general Luke (like Matthew) follows Mark’s narrative and chronology in passion narrative. • But with additions that make it some sense a different narrative, or a least a narrative with a new focus. • Some of these indicate Luke’s theme of reconciliation, forgiveness. • But others want to mitigate the responsibility of Rome over Jesus’ death. • And – above all -- different words of Jesus at his death.

3. Some details added by Luke to the passion narrative • Jesus’ prayer for Peter, just before the prediction of his betrayal: 22: 31-34. • The disciples sleeping “because of grief” during Jesus’ agony in the garden of Gethsemane: 22: 45. • Jesus to Judas: “would you betray the son of man with a kiss?”: 22:48. • Jesus heals the man whose ear is cut off: 22: 51. “No more of this!” • Jesus turns and looks at Peter after Peter’s thrice-repeated denial.

4. More Lucan details: Pilate and Jesus • Specifically political charges laid against Jesus: “perverting our nation, forbidding us to pay taxes to Caesar, calling himself messiah, a king”: 23: 2. • Pilate’s judgment of innocence: 23: 4. • And more political charges: 23: 5. • Pilate tries to avoid jurisdiction: Jesus sent to Herod: 23:6-12. • Pilate’s formal judgment of Jesus’ innocence: 23: 13-16. • Repeated at 23: 22. “no ground for the sentence of death.” • No mockery by the Roman soldiers (purple robe, crown of thorns, reed for scepter, taunting). • Pilate finally allows Jesus’ execution – but against his judgment of innocence.

5. Luke’s report of Jesus’ words on cross: • Forgiveness of the Roman soldiers: 23: 34. “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” • The good thief and the bad thief: 23: 39-43. “Truly, I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” • Above all: No despair on cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me” not spoken in Luke. • Instead, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” • Luke shocked by the words of despair? • And the centurion swears to Jesus’ innocence -- not to his being Son of God. • Why innocence instead of Son of God?

6. Luke’s version of the resurrection • Entering the tomb, the women find two men in dazzling apparel. • And unlike Mark’s narrative, the women do tell the disciples. • Apparently a larger number of women, Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James “and the other women with them.” • Peter goes to the tomb and also finds it empty.

7. Disciples on the way to Emmaus • Only Luke tells this resurrection-appearance story. • One of the two is named: Cleopas. • “Intertextuality” is one of the points of the story – the interpretation of the events just narrated in terms of Hebrew Scriptures. • Recognition in the blessing and breaking of bread. • Eyes opened in response to this, and hearts “burning” in response to interpretive work of relating events to Scriptural texts. • And they return to Jerusalem “that same hour.” • And tell how “he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.”

8. Carravaggio: the supper at Emmaus

9. Luke’s emphasis on the physicality of risen Jesus: • 24: 39: “Touch me and see . . .” He’s flesh and blood. • And he’s hungry! Grilled fish. • Only Luke emphasizes the physical bodiliness of the risen Jesus. • And opens their minds to understand the scriptures – as in Emmaus episode. 24:46 • And the necessity of staying in Jerusalem • Return to Jerusalem – “beginning from Jerusalem”: 24:47, • Disciples “continually in the temple blessing God.”

10. Two final questions on Luke • Why does this gentile writer, as it is generally assumed, insist on Jerusalem, the Temple, the background in the Hebrew Scriptures, and the essential Jewishness of Jesus? • What in the late first century prompts this textual need for a deep historical sense of the connectedness of Jesus to Israel?