Looking At Luke’s Big Picture!

Seeing the forest for the trees in the Gospel of Luke

A few months ago, I wrote about trying to see the bigger picture beyond the Sunday snippets of Mark’s gospel in Cycle B of our church year.

With guidance from some scripture commentators, I began to see the individual pieces of Mark’s Gospel as part of a much richer picture puzzle than I had before. This Mindwalk tries to find the “Big Picture” behind Luke’s Gospel.

Why Luke? Simply because gospels in Cycle C of our three-year program focus on Mark. So much so that out of 52 weeks in Cycle C more than forty Sunday Gospels are drawn from Luke. It is important to see the forest from which the individual Sunday snippets came.

A pastor writes to his people

Again, with the help of commentators, I have begun to realize that each of the four gospels could be described as extended “letters” written for a particular group of Christians. Mark wrote to a discouraged community dealing with rejection and outright persecution from the Romans.

It seems that Luke faced a similar problem. Gentile Christians were not being accepted by the traditionalist Jewish people, especially those in Jerusalem, the ecclesiastical Rome of Luke’s day. This group emphasized Jewish traditions to extent of saying the Gentile Christians had to accept all the Jewish traditions including dietary laws and circumcision.

With the help of scriptural commentators, I am only now appreciating the polarization and the ferocity of the “culture wars” of Luke’s time. Luke was a pastor trying to hold his flock together.

In his Gospel, he selected material that pointed out the Jewish roots of those steeped from birth in Greek culture. On the other hand, he affirmed the legitimacy of Gentile Christianity as the fulfillment of what the Jewish people longed for. He did this by writing what amounts to the first Christian history in the two volumes we call Luke-Acts.

In the Gospel, he lines up Jesus’ stories and actions to show continuity while at the same time pointing to the new things Jesus is teaching. In Acts, he tells the story of how the principles of reconciliation came about at the first Council of Jerusalem. He then focuses on how together they carried out the mission they received from Jesus.

Another Dimension of the Parable of the Prodigal Son

We all know the story of the prodigal son. We have heard of the mercy of the forgiving father and the repentance of the son. And it is truly applicable to the way we should long for those who have gone astray. There is also the challenge for the older brother to accept the younger brother.

What if we read the parable in light of the culture wars of the early church?

The prodigal son can serve as Luke’s perception of the relation between Gentiles and Jews in the household of God.  Luke chooses to use the story to challenge the divisions he saw.

The church, as a community, must be willing to accept both the older brother, the faithful brother, the Jews, alongside the prodigal son, the gentiles, who had lived a life away from the father for so long but now in the church were to be welcomed back with open arms.

Luke’s big picture and guiding vision are of a unified humanity in the church that brings all of God’s children back together.

Echoes today

• Can we see the big picture of our divisive culture wars in the snippets we read on Sundays?
• What can we learn about divisions today from our Sunday gospels in this cycle?

Click below for an audio version of this Vincentian Mindwalk