Advent 1C 1006 Luke 21:25-31

Beginning today we are in Lectionary Year C, having left year B and the Gospel of Mark behind us last Sunday. Year C is the year devoted primarily to reading the Gospel according to Saint Luke.

So today we will take a general overall look at Saint Luke’s Gospel, and what its context and purpose were and are, and to whom it was originally addressed and why. This will, I hope, help to provide a framework for the year ahead.

The tradition has it that this Gospel, also known as the Third Gospel, and Acts of the Apostles were written by the man known as Luke the Physician. Taken together, the Gospel according to Saint Luke and Acts of the Apostles comprise one fourth of the length of the New Testament.

The tradition – and some internal evidence in Acts – suggest that this Luke was the sometimes travel and prison companion of Saint Paul, who also mentions Luke in three of his letters (Col 4.14, Phil 24, 2 Tim 4:11). Luke probably was an eyewitness to many of the vents described in Acts of the Apostles. And Saint Paul attests himself in his second Letter to Timothy that Luke alone remained with him during Paul’s final imprisonment in Rome before his execution. Indeed, many of the sections in Acts of the Apostles have an eyewitness feeling to them.

But Luke was not an eyewitness to the events he recorded in his Gospel nor did he claim to be. He probably wrote sometime between 85 and 95 AD, certainly after the Fall of Jerusalem to the Romans and the destruction of the Temple. Luke was clearly familiar with these events.

Mark’s Gospel and Paul’s earlier letters are filled with the expectation of the imminent Second Coming of Jesus Christ. But not so Luke. Luke is writing for a 3rd and 4th generation Church which was mostly Gentile Christian. It was a Church attempting to come to grips with the fact that the Second Coming had not occurred and was beginning to believe that it was not imminent and would not occur soon.

Luke wrote as both historian and theologian: “Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account …so that you may know the truth….

In fact, Luke combined both disciplines into a particular Lucan “theology of history: Let’s get the facts straight, and then explain what they mean.”

Luke understood history and God’s revelation of himself as divided into three eras:
The first was the time of the Old Testament, the time of Israel, a time now finished.
The second was the brief time of the earthly presence of the Son of God, the historical Jesus Christ, the key to understanding history.
The third was the time of the Church, the time of and in which Luke was writing, and which would extend into an indefinite future, until the Second Coming actually occurred, whenever in God’s time that would be.

In the Third Gospel there is clear continuity from one era to the next: Clear continuity between the Law, institutions, and prophecies of Judaism and Jesus himself. And between Judaism, Jesus, and the earliest small church established in and by the small band of disciples present at the Last Supper – their Jewish Passover feast.

Because the Second Coming had not occurred, the Christian’s of Luke’s Day – and especially Gentile Christians needed – needed a clear sense of their past and its continuities into the present in order to move on into the future. Luke’s Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles responded to that need. So for Luke the historian. (1)

The message of Luke the theologian, what does this history mean, is this: Luke’s presentation of the saving work of God done through Jesus Christ is shaped by Luke’s understanding of God’s gracious outreach and wide embrace of all of the children of God. The work of Christ is particularly redemption, of release from, and the overthrow of, all that holds people in the clutches of powers that restrict the fullness of life that God wills for them. Luke understands God to be most of all merciful, reaching out to all people in a creative and forgiving acceptance.

Luke understands Jesus as having a special concern for women and those who are on the fringes of society and respectability: the poor, the outcast – Samaritans as well as the tax collectors, prostitutes, and the other sinners with whom he had a habit of eating and drinking. (2)

A brief word about signs: “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth, distress among nations….”

Signs are not a new thing to us; we are surrounded by them. We aren’t frightened by signs, only by their absence. We follow signs everywhere we go: road signs to wherever it is we wish to arrive on a particular day, signs telling us the name of our destination and how many miles to go. House and building numbers are signs telling us how close we are to an address. The signs of Thanksgiving when Halloween decorations go down and Christmas decorations go up. How many of us remember the old Burma Shave signs? Crosses and road sign shrines at the sites of fatal accidents.

Signs of the season, Leaf Fall, Winter cold, Spring leafing, Summer heat. “Look at the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves, you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near.”

Which signs are we going to follow this advent? The ones to the kingdom of God? How about the signs to Bethlehem and the Christ Child we will meet there anew?

AMEN


1. Sermon of Advent 1C 1994, revised.
2. Franklin, Eric. “Luke”, in John Barton and John Muddiman, editors, The Oxford Bible Commentary, Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 925.

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