Bible 101: Part 10: GOSPEL
Luke 7:18-23, John 21:20-35
August 30, 2009 – Rev. Jerry Duggins
At long last… the gospels! We spent eight weeks in the Old Testament. Last week focused on Revelation and now in the tenth part of our series on the Bible, I’m going to talk about that section of the Bible where I almost always encourage people to begin. In fact, if you read nothing else, at least read the gospels. They are the best record we have of Jesus’ life and teachings and since we are Christians, that is, followers of Christ Jesus, we ought to know something about him.
What we might call the “modern” interest in Jesus began in the 18th century with the first “quest for the historical Jesus.” It became popular about the middle of that century for academics to write their own version of Jesus’ life. Most of these lives reflected attempts to humanize Jesus by downplaying the original gospel claims to divinity and offering rational explanations for the healings and miracles. But even with this common interest in bringing Jesus into the modern world, the various lives were quite different.
The same thing was true for the second quest at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. Albert Schweitzer’s, The Quest for the Historical Jesus was the best known work of this period. Under attack was the gospels’ claim that Jesus was the messiah. Schweitzer portrays Jesus as essentially a tragic figure who was mistaken about his identity and only realizes his mistake too late. As in the first quest, Jesus’ teachings seemed to be the most salvageable aspect of Jesus’ life. But even focusing on these yielded a variety of different pictures. A later third quest and fairly recent fourth quest have achieved the same results.
Part of the third quest gathered together a group of scholars known as the Jesus Seminar. Their task was to look at Jesus’ sayings in the gospels and determine the probability of Jesus having actually said that. What did Jesus really say?
You may be asking yourself, “Why all this difference of opinion? Don’t we have the gospels to tell us what Jesus said and did?” Yes we do. In fact, we have four gospels, but they differ from each other in important ways.
It’s easy to see the difference between John and the other three (Matthew, Mark and Luke). John has a philosophical feel to it, whereas the others have adopted a straightforward narrative approach. This narrative style is what led scholars to refer to Matthew, Mark and Luke as the synoptic Gospels (synoptic meaning “seeing the same”). But even the synoptics differ enough to make the image of Jesus unique in each gospel.
To understand the reason for this, we need to once again let go of our modern assumptions. The gospels are not attempts to write a biography of Jesus. Writers of that day did not share the modern historian’s value of factual accuracy. They weren’t trying to create a record of events but to offer impressions of a person. The gospels, in this respect, are not “accounts of events” but reflections on them. In other words they incorporate their understanding of Jesus’ meaning into the events themselves. Bear in mind that the gospels are written after the epistles, from fifteen years later to as many as 50 or 60 years later. Mark, the earliest gospel is written about 35 years after the crucifixion.
There were some early attempts to “harmonize” the gospels, but these resulted either in failure or a bland portrait of Jesus that none of the gospel writers would recognize. The truth is that these differences contribute a richness to the New Testament that would not otherwise be there.
Like the rest of the Bible, the gospels are neither a history nor a science text. In many ways the various searches for the historical Jesus and the work of the Jesus’ seminar only reinforce this observation. The facts don’t matter. The editors and writers of the Bible intended to lead their readers into truth, something they considered far more valuable than the facts.
So we ask not whether the angel spoke to Joseph concerning Jesus’ birth, as Matthew tells the story, or to Mary, as Luke tells it. We ask why each tells the story the way he tells it. We ask not whether Jesus’ birth was attended by Magi, as Matthew tells it, or by shepherds, as Luke tells, but why the Wise men were important to Matthew and the shepherds to Luke. We ask why Mark records no birth narrative and John’s is framed in the language of theology.
What I’d like to do this morning is offer a few brief comments on the perspective of each gospel that can provide a handle as you read through them on your own, but first one more comment about gospel in general. There is something that pulls all the gospels together. Martin Kahler once described a gospel as “a passion narrative with an extended introduction.”
The gospels all tell the story of Jesus’ death, and in every case this forms the climax of their narrative. In one sense the gospels are not as interested in giving an account of Jesus’ life as they are in interpreting the meaning of his death. Crucifixion lies at the center of Christianity’s beginning. Certainly resurrection is part of it too, but I need not remind us that there is no Easter morning without Good Friday. Even if you missed the Good Friday service, that day still remains in the background of Easter. This is one reason why the children’s books on Christmas far outnumber the Easter books.
Death is hard to understand, and the meaning of Jesus’ death continues to fill volumes being produced by theologians and biblical scholars today. We’d do well to remember that interpreting Jesus’ death was also the gospel writers’ chief concern.
If this were all there were to gospel, Mark would be as close to “pure” gospel as one could get. He seems fixated on images of death and suffering. The action is fast-paced as if Mark (or Jesus) were in a hurry to get to the cross. I went to an event once where Bible storyteller Dennis Dewey recited from memory the entire gospel of Mark. Every time Jesus moved, Dennis moved to a new place in the sanctuary. He was all over that sanctuary. He emphasized words like “immediately” and “at once” which occur frequently in the gospel.
The other thing you noticed in his presentation was the way “fear” seemed to permeate the whole story. You may have noticed in your Bible some footnotes that indicate various endings to Mark depending on the manuscript. Most scholars believe the original version ended with the women fleeing the tomb in fear at the announcement of Jesus’ resurrection.
There are in Mark only small sections of teaching, most of which focus on discipleship and its cost. Jesus casts out demons, performs miracles such as calming the raging sea, and heals diseases. But he seems to want to downplay all this by silencing the demons before they can speak and urging those whom he heals to silence; an issue that scholars have labeled and of course debated as “the messianic secret.” Everything moves toward and is about Jesus’ impending death. For Mark, he is the suffering servant; and the times are fearful. This makes sense, if as most people thing, Mark was written at the time of the Jewish wars, just prior to the destruction of the second temple. His is a gospel for a time of crisis.
Despite the probability that Matthew and Luke were working off a copy of Mark, their gospels have a very different feel. They tell many of the same stories, mostly in the same order, but they change words here and there, insert a teaching or other story; and suddenly the most important thing about Jesus isn’t that he suffers. He dies still, but the death means something else.
Matthew adds large sections of teaching. The quintessential moment may be the sermon on the mount where Jesus reinterprets the law of Moses. He uses the formula, “You have heard that it was said… but I say to you….” A law against adultery becomes a command against lust. The law against murder becomes an injunction against hatred. Love of neighbor gets reframed as love of enemy.
For Matthew, Jesus becomes the new Moses who commands a more radical obedience. But he doesn’t leave us alone to accomplish this on our own. Somehow, his death becomes the invitation or the means by which we can enter this new covenant, a covenant defined by a whole new layer of teaching. Thus the life of Jesus becomes a paradigm for a new ethic.
Luke also emphasizes a new ethic, but not as a reinterpretation of the law of Moses. Luke adds material of his own that focuses on grace: the prodigal son, the good Samaritan and other parables. Frederick Danker says that Luke portrays Jesus as the “Great Benefactor.” He’s always doing something for someone on the underside of life. This is why I read the section from Luke where John’s disciples ask Jesus whether he is the messiah or should they expect another. He answers essentially, “Look at the things I am doing.”
In this context you may prefer to think of Jesus as a great activist or liberator. Luke is certainly noted for being more inclusive of women, offering them roles far surpassing what the culture would normally have allowed.
For Luke, the death of Jesus represents the depth of his love. You cannot miss the importance of love in this gospel and that may be one reason for its popularity today. It’s probably my favorite.
I should mention that Luke is actually a two part work, the second being the book of Acts which (to keep with the image of Jesus as Benefactor) describes the inheritance that comes to the church as a result of Jesus’ death and resurrection. It may be this connection that increases the prominence of the resurrection in Luke’s version.
But none of the gospels does resurrection like John. Aside from more resurrection appearance stories, resurrection imagery occurs throughout. Even when talking about the cross, he uses the language of being “raised up.” “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,” John has Jesus saying in chapter 3, “so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” A statement, bringing together cross and resurrection in one image.”
Throughout the Gospel of John, Jesus is the Risen Christ. In this way, the cross becomes Jesus’ way of removing the power of death. Again and again Jesus has conversations with individuals about the nature of eternal life. In every instance, he seems to be saying that eternal life is available now. To the woman at the well he offers living water. To Nicodemus, he preaches about new birth.
John is noted for Jesus’ “I am” sayings all of which emphasize Jesus as the vehicle to a new way of living. “I am the resurrection and the life…. I am the bread of life… I am the way, the truth and the life…. I am the good shepherd.”
The key feeling here is “glory.” Jesus is the very glory of God. John’s birth story reflects this. “The word become flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory… full of grace and truth.” The implied offer to his disciples is the opportunity to, in a similar way, reflect God’s glory. He takes Matthew’s, “You are the light of the world” to whole new level.
Here, you can see a little summary of the differences, I’ve been describing:
Mark… Jesus is the suffering servant… context of fear
Matthew Jesus is the New Moses… emphasizes obedience
Luke Jesus is the Great Benefactor emphasizes love/grace
John Jesus is the Risen Christ emphasizes glory
It would be interesting to know what Jesus was really like, whether any of these portrayals comes close to the facts. But there is something that feels truthful about all of them; truthful in the sense that they reflect the great complexity of life, its varying circumstances and moods. Each picture offers something redemptive for our journey of faith. There are times when we need encouragement to hold fast in dreadful circumstances, times when we need to rethink our understanding of what faith calls us to do, times when we need some one to lift us from oppression, and times when the thing to do is shine with glory of God. The depth and variety of the gospels can speak to all our times and all our moods.
May God grant us perseverance, strength, grace and truth as we follow Jesus Christ our Lord today. Amen.