Bible for Catholic Nerds – The Center of Time

 

 The Center of Time

After the infancy narratives, the evangelist Luke, in chapter 3 of his work, begins to narrate the public ministry of Jesus. And from this moment on, the same narrative order follows that of Mark and Matthew. These three evangelists are in fact called Synoptics because they can be read almost in parallel. If they were published in parallel columns we could easily follow the story of the three with a single glance. Of course, not everything is identical; there are details that are added, others moved, others retouched; This is part of the editorial work that each evangelist carries out.

Luke, in particular, has produced much material that tradition has contributed and reorganized it according to his theological criteria, which is why he introduced two very long chapters of material, exclusively his, sources he found in his research; what he learned from the Judeo-Christian community in Jerusalem; and published those texts, with its inevitable reworking, what eyewitnesses from Jesus’ childhood had put in writing as an important moment of announcement, of remembrance, of the foundation of the Christian faith. In chapter 3 Luke begins as a Hellenistic historian by framing the event of the public manifestation of Jesus with a historical picture.

The ancients did not have an absolute numbering of the years; they couldn’t give a number to the years as we do, but always referred to the great leaders and so Luke specifies that the word of God reached John, son of Zacharias in the desert at a very precise moment: “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar.” This is the most accurate reference we have in all the evangelical texts. Luke according to his historical reconstruction dates the beginning of the ministry of John the Baptist and, therefore, immediately after, that of Jesus himself, in the fifteenth year of the emperor Tiberius. According to our calculation of the calendar we can speak of the year 28 or 29 after Christ.

He continues his presentation of the historical situation by saying:

“When Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John.”

It is a typically Semitic expression; in Greek, it is not a beautiful expression, but it gives the idea of an important event. The word of God is concretized, it enters the life of that man John, son of Zacharias, who lived in the desert. Son of a priest he should have stayed in the temple; should have studied in the priestly school of the temple and at the age of thirty begin priestly service. Instead, that child, as Luke already said in the infancy narratives, grew up in the desert regions and manifested himself to Israel in his thirties.

Instead of going to serve in a Levitical way in the temple, John presents himself with the attitude of Elijah, dressed as Elijah, in the same place where Elijah was taken to heaven, as the second book of Kings says in chapter 2. On the bank of the Jordan, on the boundary bank of Jordan. John the Baptist stands to the other side of the land of Israel and receives pilgrims heading directly to Jerusalem or when they return from Jerusalem and have to cross the Jordan, precisely at the point where the ford exists. And to those people John announces the imminent coming of the messiah.

Like Mark and Matthew, Luke also presents the quotation from Isaiah 40 to explain the meaning of what happened to John the Baptist: “A voice cries out in the desert: Prepare the way to the Lord, make his paths straight.” The ancient prophet from exile had announced the coming of the Lord who would prepare the way for the return through the wilderness, from Babylon to Jerusalem; the way back to the homeland passes through there. John the Baptist adapts this expression; considers himself the voice that screams in the desert and shouts to prepare the way of the Lord.

Mark and Matthew stop here at the Isaiah quote; Luke instead continues and mentions two other verses: “Every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill shall be made low. The winding roads shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” Luke follows the tradition that used these verses from Isaiah, but lengthens the quote because he is interested to get to the verse where God’s salvation is mentioned. To prepare the way to the Lord it is necessary to carry out a work of flattening the earth, descending from the heights, filling the valleys.

These are metaphorical images to indicate the change in our attitudes in order to receive the Lord, but the fundamental evangelical announcement is that ‘all flesh’—literally says the Hebrew text of Isaiah and the Greek quote from Luke—, ‘all flesh’, every living being, will see God’s salvation. In Greek a rare word is used; it is not the usual term ‘sotería’ that means salvation, Instead, the neutral form ‘τὸ σωτήριον’ = ‘to sotérion’ is used. In English the translation follows the original Greek: ‘all flesh.’ It is an important variant in the original Greek. We could say that every living being will experience the saving work done by God. This word particularly pleases Luke to the point that it determines a kind of great inclusion. It is a technical term with which the literati indicate a literary phenomenon that embraces a text. A somewhat strange word at the beginning and end of a work gives a kind of thematic framework.

This expression is repeated at the end of the book of Acts. We know that Luke wrote two works: The Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles. Here we begin to hear the story of Jesus with an announcement: “All flesh shall see the salvation of God.” When we come to the end of the Acts of the Apostles we find Saint Paul in Rome, many years later, saying to the Jews of the capital: “Let it be known to you that this salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles; they will listen” (Acts 28:28).

All of Luke’s work is framed by reference to salvation. Here it is announced and at the end of Acts it is shown as having happened. The center of everything is Jesus. The theology of Saint Luke, in fact, starts from the idea that Jesus is the center of time.

It is the title of a famous work by the German scholar Hans Conselmann, the first work to adopt the method of ‘redactional history’ and was applied precisely to the gospel according to Luke. Christ is the center of time, but to imagine him as the center you have to think of a before, and this is easy, it is the Old Testament, but also in an after. And Luke has the idea that after Christ is the history of the Church. And he writes the Acts of the Apostles as the continuation of the path of the Word of God.

For Luke, Christ is the center towards which all the history of the Old Testament is directed, and from where all the history of the Church begins. There was a story that preceded Jesus, and there will be a story that will continue the work of Jesus. He is the center and the center as a savior. This rare Greek word ‘σωτήριον’ = sotérion, also appears in the infancy narratives when Simeon in the temple takes the baby Jesus in his arms, he thanks God that his eyes have seen the saving work done by God. That particular child is salvation.

Jesus presents himself as the Savior, the one who works the salvation of God. It is a very important theme in the work of Luke. I will try to clarify a little the idea of salvation because it is not simply to settle of a problem or the possibility of avoiding a difficulty. In chapter 17 Luke, and only he, narrates an episode in which ten lepers are healed by Jesus, but only one returns to thank him; he was a Samaritan and Jesus notes with amazement and a little bitterness: “Ten were cleansed, were they not? Where are the other nine? Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?” (And then he says to the healed Samaritan) “Stand up and go; your faith has saved you” (Lk 17:17-19). We could say that ten were healed, but only one saved.

Jesus does not save from leprosy per se, he heals from leprosy to demonstrate his ability to save the human person. Only one of those ten healed was saved because he understood the work done by Jesus and he came back to thank, to glorify God, to recognize that Jesus is the powerful intervention of God who saves. Healing is a profound reality that concerns the person in his primary, individual nucleus. And salvation is deliverance from sin, of evil, of isolation, of closure with respect to God.

Let’s not forget that Luke is a disciple of Paul and he listened for many years to the preaching of the apostle Paul; and he learned from him the theme of justification, of the salvation that the Lord works if on the part of the person he finds faith, acceptance, availability. The salvation that Jesus brings is liberation from sin.

There is another interesting episode, exclusive to the third evangelist, in chapter 13, where it is shown the healing of a stooped woman. Imagine this person who has a deforming disease, bent in two, with the face necessarily turned towards the ground. This poor woman is in a corner of the synagogue, she doesn’t ask for anything, she doesn’t intervene; it is Jesus who sees her, calls her and says: “Woman, you are set free of your infirmity.” He laid his hands on her, and she at once stood up straight and glorified God.”

Let’s try to imagine all humanity behind that poor woman. That hunched woman is humanity bent by sin; inclined to the ground. Created to look at the sky we are tied because of sin; our nature is wounded by the evil that inclines us, orients us towards the earth. The head of the synagogue does not have the courage to oppose Jesus and that is why he shoots an arrow at the people saying that they must come on a weekday to be healed, not on a Saturday. That poor woman had not come to be cured, it was an initiative of Jesus, who has the courage to respond harshly to the leader of the synagogue:

“Hypocrites! Does not each one of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his ass from the manger and lead it out for watering? This daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound for eighteen years now, ought she not to have been set free on the sabbath day from this bondage?”

This is how the Sabbath works for Jesus. It is not a servile work, which is prohibited on the Sabbath, but it is the fulfillment of creation, and it is the liberation of the creature; she is a daughter of Abraham that Satan had tied. This is the work of salvation that Jesus performs. Everyone can see this salvation, that is, everyone can find it, experience it.

John the Baptist, on the banks of the Jordan, has only begun the work; has announced the imminent coming of the Savior. Luke joins the usual narration, which is what the other evangelists also tell. Luke adds the moral examples that the Baptist offers to different categories of people: to the crowds, to the tax collectors, to the soldiers. He asks everyone to do their duty well.

In the midst of the crowd that flocked to receive John’s baptism, Jesus also appears, but Luke flies over the baptism episode; if we read it carefully we will notice that the evangelist does not narrate the fact of Jesus’ immersion in the Jordan, but rather what happened after: “After all the people had been baptized and Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, heaven was opened.”

Luke says that the opening of heaven, that is, the revelation of God the Father about the Son Jesus, takes place after the people were baptized and after Jesus was also immersed. The event almost disappears, the text does not describe the arrival of Jesus, the gesture of John that immerses him, or the fact that Jesus comes out of the water. It simply assumes that it has already happened. He is interested in emphasizing Jesus’ gesture of solidarity with sinners: Jesus descends into the waters, becoming like others, descending into death, accepting a solidarity in sin and death, with all humanity prisoner of Satan, bound by sin. “The holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.’”

The word of the Father is directed towards the Son: “You are my Son.” At that moment, the evangelist says: Jesus is mature, fully aware of his divine nature and his messianic mission. Heaven opens, the Father confirms and the Son accepts it. It is the messianic endowment. From this moment, the work of the Savior begins.