The Bible in a Year – 15 November

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

15 November. Luke chapters 4-5

Each of the Gospel writers has different emphases.  Luke was a physician and so it is not surprising that he focuses on the healing miracles of Jesus. But he focuses on other things too.  Unlike Matthew and Mark who suggest that Jesus went straight into a preaching ministry after his baptism, Luke shows Jesus preaching in the synagogues after his baptism (and after the desert temptations).  Only when he is asked to preach on the text from Isaiah about the good news being shown by good deeds does he begin to heal (4:14-19). Even then, “making the blind see” is one of only three signs of the Gospel in that passage, the other being releasing captives and freeing the oppressed.  So for Luke, physical healing from illness or disability was only one aspect of the wholeness that Jesus brought: a right understanding of God and his laws, and freedom from being put down in any way by other people, were at least as important.

Another difference is that Luke has a particular interest in demons and devils.  This is shown in chapter 4 not only in his own desert temptations, but in the demon at Capernaum (34), and the many in Nazareth (41), that recognised him as the “Holy one of God”.  It seems that Jesus knew he had to fight the devil, but wanted to put off that moment as long as necessary.  By resisting the three temptations of working miracles, seeking earthly power and putting God to the test, he made the devil go away “until an opportune time” – which might be seen as the attempt by the men of Nazareth to kill him not long afterwards (29), or as the plots of the Pharisees and the betrayal of Judas that led to his crucifixion three years later.  In between those times, Jesus seems to have been untroubled by demonic activity himself.  Apart from the very few people who genuinely suffer demon possession, for most of us the devil tempts us from time to time, but he does not stick around for long if we don’t take his bait. “Resist the devil and he will flee” (James 4:7).

Finally, I would just like to share an unrelated thought that just came to me as I read about the calling of Levi (5:27-28): “After this he went out and saw a tax-collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And he got up, left everything, and followed him.”

What happened to Levi’s money?  This money-obsessed man had been sitting at his booth all day raking in the taxes (some of which he would have kept for himself) then accepted Jesus’ call to follow him, and without further ado walked away.  The people around must have wondered when he was going back, but when they realised he was not returning, surely they would have rejoiced and reclaimed the piles of cash for themselves?  When Jesus calls someone to follow him, it is others who benefit.

The Bible in a Year – 6 November

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

6 November. Mark chapters 4-5

What strikes me from today’s reading in that great crowds gather round Jesus.  As I remarked yesterday, from time to time there are great preachers (though obviously none to equal Jesus himself), who draw similarly large crowds. Some of them also have the gift of healing, but not all – Billy Graham, for example, attracted many converts just with words and music, and made no claim to be a spiritual healer.  What all churches do have, though, is the Bible, and particularly the record of Jesus’ teaching in the gospels.  Why is it then that so many churches find it difficult even to get their regular members enthusiastic about Jesus’ radical teaching, let alone draw people in from outside?  Whole books have been written on the subject, but “culture” often seems to be presented as a reason – “you can’t make this ancient religion relevant to modern people”.

All Anglican clergy, and Readers such as I, are charged by the Bishop at our licensing with “Proclaiming the Gospel afresh to each generation”.  The idea is that the message never changes but the best way to present it, and the practical implications of it, do change from one place to another across cultures and down the generations.  The fact that within forty years after Jesus’ resurrection (and crucially the gift of the Holy Spirit) the Church had spread across the widely varied cultures from the Near East to India in one direction, North Africa in another, and to the pagan city of Rome, shows that culture should not be a barrier to spreading the Christian faith.  Nor is the lack of education –  many of Jesus’ hearers in Galilee would have been illiterate, which is why he spoke in the picture-language of parables, and the Church is growing today more in poorly-developed countries than in sophisticated Western or Asian ones.

One clue can be found in the story of the Gerasene man in chapter 5. Sometimes I am sceptical about the idea of “demonic possession” whether in the Bible or today – I think it has often been misused to describe people with a range of psychiatric illnesses.  But there are some cases such as this one where there is no other explanation – if he was merely mentally ill, why would he have shown superhuman strength, or why when he was healed would the pigs have rushed lemming-like into the lake?

Most of the people Jesus healed were told not to spread the word about him, but simply follow the Jewish ritual for being officially cleansed. But this man across the other side of the lake was not a Jew, as can be seen from the fact that his people kept pigs.  And Jesus actively told him to spread the word.  Why?  I think it was because Jesus knew that he himself would not be accepted by people whose whole culture and history made them opposed to the Jews. So he had to raise up witnesses – apostles – from within those Gentile cultures to be credible speakers to their own people.  We see this happening in the book of Acts, but perhaps it is this unnamed former ‘demoniac’, rather than St Paul (a Jew) or St Thomas, who truly deserves the title of “first apostle to the Gentiles”.  And whom will God raise up within your own local community, or mine, to preach the word to their neighbours, if we ask him?