Reader’s Guide: “The Word for Today” Tuesday, February 5, 2013 Read –Luke 6:17-49 Without missing a beat Luke switches sources on us! After his brilliant introduction in the first two chapters of his gospel – material that Luke shares with none of the other gospel writers and material that clearly exhibits his writing genius – Luke has essentially been following Mark’s story in Mark’s order. We have noted a few modifications that Luke made but the backbone of the story is essentially Mark’s. Now we hear words that we will not find anywhere in Mark’s gospel. However, they are words that are quite familiar to us. We know them best as the “Sermon on the Mount” from Matthew’s gospel. To be sure Luke’s version is considerably shorter and some parts of the “Sermon on the Mount” will show up elsewhere in Luke, but the main framework of the story Luke tells is very much like the sermon Matthew relates in gospel. Readers of the Bible have long asked what this means – how is it that Luke and Matthew sound so much alike? What does it mean to discover that Mark does not include any of this material? Most readers have come to the conclusion that Luke and Matthew share a common source that Mark either chose not to use or more likely was not aware of. I have written about that earlier. For convenience sake this source Luke and Matthew share has been called “Q” by scholars after the first letter of the German word for “Source.” I think this makes a great deal of sense. Luke has told us that he used sources to write his gospel (Luke 1:1-4), so we should not be troubled to discover exactly that and we should also not be troubled to suppose that Matthew also used sources though he does not tell us that he did. Luke’s introduction (Luke 1:1-4) unveils a great deal of insight into how our gospels likely came into being – they are the work of brilliant people who gathered material together to proclaim the gospel of Jesus! It’s my judgment that Mark was the first to write a gospel – but even Mark wrote his gospel from sources of material available to him – Mark is the creator of his own storyline and thus the storyline that we have come to view as the story of Jesus. Actually, John also created a storyline and it is significantly different from Mark’s! Both created the “story” we have come to view as “what really happened” to Jesus although it is highly likely that neither Mark nor John has the order exactly as it was! We simply don’t know the exact chronological order of things! And it doesn’t matter! So, Luke has picked up another of his sources, leaving Mark behind for the time being. As mentioned it is likely that Luke and Matthew share this source although such a source has never been found. Since we have Mark it is much easier to compare Mark and Luke, or Mark and Matthew for that matter since it is apparent that Matthew also used Mark. The first thing that we should notice is that while it seems apparent the Luke and Matthew are using the same source, they are much freer in their use of it. Both Luke and Matthew follow Mark much more fully and carefully than either seems to follow “Q” – the source they share apart from Mark. That may well be true because the “Q” source appears to be a collection of the sayings of Jesus and not a narrative. At any rate both Matthew and Luke seem to glean more freely from “Q” than from Mark. The setting of Matthew’s “Sermon on the Mount” is a mountain. Luke places the setting on a plain which has led many to refer to this section of Luke’s gospel as the “Sermon on the Plain.” The hearers at the beginning of Matthew’s sermon are the disciples. For Luke the hearers come from far and wide. Does this mean that Jesus gave the same sermon twice? Perhaps, however it may well be good to think of it in this way – neither the “Sermon on the Mount” nor the “Sermon on the Plain” is a verbatim recollection of an actual sermon but the combining of teaching that Jesus likely did in a variety of settings and repeatedly. So, Luke’s sermon and Matthew’s sermon are better seen as Luke’s and Matthew’s creation than Jesus’ – not that Jesus didn’t say the words but likely that Jesus did not say them necessarily in the order of either sermon. What this leads us to do is to think about what Luke is trying to say through the way he collects Jesus’ teachings and what Matthew is trying to say through the way he collects those same words. The overall message of the “Sermon on the Mount” and the “Sermon on the Plain” is quite similar – that’s why we recognize that they have the same source! However, Luke is much more concerned with the poor and the outcasts than Matthew is – for Matthew it is the “poor in spirit” who are blessed, for Luke it is those who are actually “poor.” Luke is much more confrontational in speaking to the actual economic circumstance of his world, and ours, than Matthew is! Depending on whether we are well off or not, we might like Matthew better than Luke! Both Matthew and Luke – and more importantly Jesus who actually first spoke the words – are attempting to create a new community of followers of Jesus with a new ethical code of behavior. Both Matthew and Luke, and Jesus before them, expect the followers of Jesus to hear and to do what Jesus calls for in this sermon! As we read these sermons we are likely struck by the impossibility of actually becoming the kind of community imagined in the sermon. Matthew is far more blunt in highlighting that impossibility – he raises the stakes to and extremely high level – and most of us end up simply saying that we can’t live like that. But Luke also raises a high standard – a standard that is really confrontational to people like us who live in a country as prosperous as ours. We are tempted to not take either Matthew or Luke literally – we actually like the way Matthew has “spiritualized” things in his use of the phrase “poor in spirit” rather than just poor! We are tempted to think that Jesus certainly could not have meant to interpret social justice in the way that is proclaimed in either sermon. We need to ask what would happen if we really did take Jesus seriously in our reading of these sermons. Actually, several people have taken Jesus seriously and attempted to implement the teachings of the “Sermon on the Mount” and the “Sermon on the Plain”. Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. developed their movements on the basis of the teachings of Jesus found in these parts of the Bible. Gandhi never professed to be a Christian, in fact he was said to say that he might have become a Christian if Christians had lived more like Jesus called them to live. Martin Luther King proclaimed a powerful gospel message that resonated with many and made a lasting and significant mark on the culture of our country. I think we would do well to take Jesus seriously and let the words of the “Sermon on the Mount” and the “Sermon on the Plain” inform and shape our political and social values and thinking. The themes that come together for Luke in the “Sermon on the Plain” will carry forward into the rest of his gospel – a gospel that advocates for the poor and the outcasts of every society.