‘ if speaking is silver, then listening is gold…’

The greatest compliment you can pay a person is to listen to them. To seek to put aside your own agenda, your own cherished opinions and be genuinely open to another person – these are the commitments on which healthy relationships are built.

And it is this challenge which faces us as we read Luke’s gospel. Having been immersed in Matthew and Mark for the past couple of months, the temptation when we reach Luke is to skim read, assuming that we have heard the stories before and that Luke is simply regurgitating old material. Our culture has taught us to reduce knowledge and truth to the bare minimum – get the facts and move on. So reaching another gospel with seemingly the same material packaged up again is a challenge to faithful reading.

However, an encouragement – Luke is well worth the effort of listening to! His Jesus story is carefully thought through, crafted, subtle and multi-layered. He drops hints and clues throughout his story like the best detective writer. Luke is also a profoundly challenging gospel, especially for us in the affluent West. So, over the next few weeks, let’s try to feel the texture of his Jesus story, get caught up his sights and sounds, his peculiar motifs and emphases.

So what does listening to Luke 1–2 tell us? Much. But perhaps we first need to drown out some other competing voices.

Whether we are Christians or not, we all have history with these chapters. They are part and parcel of our cultural fabric – from carol services, to Christmas cards, to tackily illuminated front-yard nativity scenes. My own history with Luke starts circa 1985 with what was universally agreed to be have been a command performance as a sheep in the Manor Court Baptist Church nativity play.

All this background informs our reading of these chapters and furnishes us with a ready-made interpretive grid. These chapters are about the Second Person of the Trinity being incarnated among us for our salvation. Just look at all the angelic amateur dramatics. Veiled in flesh the godhead see, hail the incarnate deity. And yet…

Have you ever wondered how little Luke makes of the virgin birth, of the angelic visitations, or the prophecies to prove Jesus divine credentials? Cleary something supernatural is happening but we will look in vain in Luke (and the rest of the New Testament for that matter) for the argument ‘Jesus is born of a virgin, therefore He is the second person of the trinity QED. (Perhaps instead echoes of Gen 1 and the ‘spirit of god’ hovering over the primordial waters is a more helpful context for understanding what is happening with the virgin birth…).

So if Luke is not presenting a treatise on the nature of the Godhead, what is he saying? He is certainly suggesting that this boy is very special indeed and that in some way he is linked to Jerusalem, King David and the temple - notice how nearly all of the action takes place in Jerusalem, the royal city - and that his life will directly affect the fortunes of the nation. However, Luke doesn’t take us any further than this in his first two chapters. By importing our Trinitarian theology into these passages, we risk short-circuiting Luke, removing Jesus from his historical reality, and marooning him in the land of systematic proposition. Instead of a first century Jew living under the oppressive domination of a ruling empire, Jesus becomes a pseudo- superman jettisoned in from Krypton, ready to exercise supernatural divine powers.

It is a bit like reducing Lord of the Rings to the first and last pages and missing out on meeting Tom Bombadil, journeying with Samwise Gamgee, and feeling the terror of Mount Doom. Better to risk delayed gratification and allow Luke to lead us further into this remarkable boy’s story.

So what then is Luke saying?

As we travel through Luke, we will meet again and again the theme of ‘reversal’. Social, economic, religious, political; power relationships will be constantly challenged and overturned throughout Luke’s gospel. And we first encounter this key theme in Luke 1–2. While Matthew sees fit to start his gospel with a genealogy of Jesus’ male ancestors and Mark with an account of John the Baptist, Luke chooses to dedicate the first chapters of his ‘ordered account’ with a sustained focus on women. Amazing. These chapters are perhaps the first time in the whole of the bible that women take centre stage above men. The focus is on Elizabeth over the dumb Zechariah, and wonderfully on Mary over the bit part player Joseph. Anna is just as influential as Simeon and not only does Luke focus on domesticities – with the Magnificat Luke puts in the mouth of Mary a truly revolutionary speech.

Reversal is everywhere in these two chapters. Elizabeth’s shameful barrenness is reversed to great joy and importance. Mary’s shameful ‘illegitimate’ pregnancy is reversed. There are hints that the power of Emperor of Augustus, while not yet reversed, is under review. The socio-economic lowliness of the shepherds is reversed by the visit of angels. And the religious power of the teachers is reversed by a 12 year old boy.

Something very strange is happening in these chapters! The world is being turned upside down (a phrase Luke himself might be familiar with in Acts….) by the birth of little Jewish boy.

We wait with baited breath for the next installment of Luke’s Jesus story….

Questions for reflection:

1. How are power relationships ordered at in your sphere of life; at work, at home, in your faith communities?

2. Do these power relationships mirror or challenge the relationships you find within wider society?

3. In what ways can these relationships be re-ordered where necessary to be life-giving, rather than oppressive?