Bear Fruits Worthy of Repentance

Week Two - Day 5

Today's Reading -- Luke 2:39 to Luke 4:44

To follow up a comment I made yesterday regarding Luke’s gospel being geared towards a gentile audience, let me add that this is not to say that Luke was uninformed or uninterested in the continuity of his story with Judaism.  While Matthew often quoted from the Hebrew scriptures to argue for their “fulfillment” in the life of Jesus and his ministry, Luke introduces them for instruction prefaced with the words “it is (or was) written”, a formula used five times in today’s reading (3:4, 4:4, 4:8, 4:10, 4:16), once even by the devil himself.

Also in today’s reading is the only New Testament story of Jesus between his infancy and adulthood (2:41-52).  Only Luke tells of the twelve-year-old Jesus visiting the temple in Jerusalem with his parents.  It is a tantalizing tidbit into Jesus’ possible own self-awareness of the direction his life was to take, and ends the special material that Luke alone uses to introduce the gospel story.

Chapter 3, which some scholars would say is the true beginning of Luke’s account of the gospel, recalls the start of the preaching of John the Baptist.  Luke portrays John as doing more than proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  The crowds press John to know what they must do after he has chastised them and warned them that could not rely upon their view of themselves as children of the great patriarch Abraham to give them any special privileges with God, but must  “bear fruits worthy of repentance” (3:8).  In response John tells people from all walks of life how to live more holy lives within their everyday circumstances.  John’s words to the crowds, tax collectors and soldiers reveal Luke’s attention to social and economic inequities within the community.  Repentance requires a change in behaviors and relationships.

All of this is in preparation for the appearance of Jesus, whose ancestry Luke traces back through and passed Abraham all the way to Adam, and then to God.  Jesus, Son of God (as the angel Gabriel revealed to Mary in chapter 1, verse 35), begins his earthly ministry alone with temptations from the devil, rejection in his hometown, and various stops for healings and teachings.  And he hasn’t even called any disciples to join him, but more on that tomorrow.