Reader’s Guide: “The Word for Today” Saturday, February 9, 2013 Read – Luke 9:1-27 As we begin reading chapter 9 of Luke’s gospel we need to notice that while Luke is essentially following Mark, he has done some serious editing to his source. What takes Mark almost three chapters to relate, Luke tells in about one-half of a chapter. Luke begins by following Mark’s story of Jesus sending his disciples on a mission. Just as in Mark that mission is interrupted by the announcement of the death of John the Baptist. But, what takes Mark 16 verses, Luke tells in three! In fact, Luke does not tell the gruesome story of the beheading of John (Mark 6:14-29) but simply has Herod announce that he had John beheaded. Luke retains the questioning about just who Jesus might be – John the Baptist raised from the dead, or Elijah, or perhaps one of the prophets of old – but where in Mark, Herod thinks Jesus is John the Baptist raised from the dead (Mark 6:16), in Luke, Herod comes to the opposite conclusion – he knows Jesus is not John the Baptist since he had beheaded him and Herod seeks to see Jesus (Luke 9:9)! We need to recall that Luke had already removed John the Baptist from the scene way back in chapter 3 just before the baptism of Jesus. Luke is no longer interested in John. For Luke, a firmer line of demarcation is drawn between John and Jesus than in any other gospel – though all of them will deal with the relationship between these two. John also deals more fully with the relationship between John the Baptist and Jesus in his gospel than Mark or Matthew do. Perhaps this reflects an ongoing tension between John the Baptist’s disciples and Jesus’ disciples in the years following the death and resurrection of Jesus. There are hints that John the Baptist retained a following even after Jesus comes to the forefront. Luke’s omission of the material he found in Mark regarding John the Baptist may reflect his attempt to deal with that tension. Following Mark, Luke now relates the story of the feeding of the 5000 with little change. And then Luke begins his serious editing of Mark. Omitted by Luke are the story of Jesus walking on the water, the healing of the sick at Gennesaret, Jesus’ long discussion regarding the “tradition of the elders,” the story of the Syrophoenician woman and her daughter, the story of Jesus healing a deaf man, the feeding of the 4000, the Pharisee’s demand for a sign, the discussion of the yeast of the Pharisees and Herod and Jesus’ scolding of his followers for lack of faith, and finally the story of the blind man who needs to be healed twice in order to receive his sight. None of those stories are to be found anywhere in Luke! One can’t help but wonder why Luke has done this. The truth is that we will likely never be able to give a definitive answer. A few remarks about particular stories may help explain a bit – the stories of the deaf man being healed and especially of the blind man needing to be healed twice may have been offensive to Luke. Both of those stories fit together and seem patterned after each other and may be seen to not put Jesus in as favorable light as one would like. Perhaps Luke thought the story of the feeding of the 4000 was redundant since he had just told the story of the feeding of the 5000. Perhaps Luke did not particularly like Jesus’ controversy with the religious leaders over the “tradition of the elders” since Luke has depicted people like Zechariah and Elizabeth, Simeon and Anna, and others as faithful followers of OT tradition. Perhaps Luke does not share Mark’s negative opinion of the disciples and chose not to tell of their scolding. But the story of the Syrophoenician woman and her daughter would have worked so well for Luke – why did he leave it out? We’ll never know. Immediately following the feeding of the 5000 Luke moves to the scene where Jesus questions his disciples about his identity. This was a major part of Mark’s gospel – some have called it the hinge upon which Mark’s gospel swings. While the story may have importance for Luke it is far less crucial. We may remember that Mark created a block of material beginning with the double healing of the blind man (Mark 8:22-26) and concluding with the healing of blind Bartimaeus (Mark 10:46-55). In between Mark explores the identity of Jesus and Jesus’ attempt to reveal to his disciples that it is the suffering and death of Jesus that finally define who he is. Three times Jesus tells his disciples that he must suffer and die and three times they misunderstand. Mark’s argument is one of the most tightly and skillfully woven arguments in the Bible. Luke tears Mark’s tightly woven masterpiece apart and makes it nearly unrecognizable. We’ll need to think about that more as we move forward – because just as Luke has omitted much from Mark, he has also now added considerable material to Mark’s outline. Mark’s argument is told in three chapters. Luke will take almost nine chapters to get from Jesus’ first question about his identity (Luke 9:18-20) to the story of blind Bartimaeus (Luke 18:35-43)! Luke has totally recast Mark at this point. In Luke, when Jesus asks who people think he is, like Mark, Luke provides the same “wrong” answers – John the Baptist, Elijah, or one of the prophets. In Luke, when Jesus asks who the disciples think he is, like in Mark, Peter responds with the correct answer – Jesus is the Messiah. But now everything changes. When Jesus goes on to explain to his disciples what it means for him to be the Messiah – that he will undergo great suffering, be rejected, killed, and on the third day rise – we expect Peter to protest and Jesus to rebuke Peter. But that is not in Luke’s story!! There is no protest of Peter to be found – no rebuke – what was so crucial for Mark is simply absent from Luke! Why did Luke do that? Perhaps Luke does not see the disciples in the same way Mark did – Mark saw them as unknowing, bumbling failures, Luke sees them as the faithful representative of Israel who receive the Messiah! Luke preserves Mark’s description of what it means to be a follower of Jesus – to take up one’s cross daily, to lose one’s life to find it – and it appears that Luke thinks followers of Jesus are both capable of and will do this! Of course he retains the possibility that there are those who will be ashamed of the Son of Man too but the edge has been shaved off from Mark’s harsh rhetoric at this point in the story. Perhaps what we need to recognize when we are reading Luke is the obvious – we are reading a very different story than we were with Mark! We have lots to ponder today! Should we be troubled to discover these differences? What does closely reading the story do to our understanding of just what the Bible is and how we should hear it? Does the reality that Luke and Mark tell the same old story in remarkably different and sometimes contradictory ways excite us? Does it frighten us? Perhaps this story of Jesus and the Bible is far more fantastic than we might think. One thing for sure, we are going to need from here on to be careful to not let our understanding of Mark over-ride what we hear from Luke. We will need to resist saying – “but Mark said…” Luke is not Mark! Luke will stand on his own and he will proclaim to us a powerful gospel just like Mark did! We will need to let Luke speak on his own if we are to hear that powerful gospel.