Opening: read Isaiah 54:5-6; 62:4-5; Ephesians 5:22-33; Revelation 19:7-9, 21:1-5, 9; 22:12-13, 17
5:33-35
fasting and praying vs. eating and drinking
Jesus often answers with a question as he does here.
Wedding Guests with the Bridegroom – No Fasting Aloud!
Jesus’ metaphorical reply: his disciples are ‘wedding guests’ of ‘the bridegroom’ – again we have discipleship to Jesus characterised by festival joy and celebration. Sinners are enjoying the feast of the Father’s love rather than being austerely religious. This metaphor adds that the specific nature of this feast is that it is one in celebration of a wedding. It is totally inappropriate to fast and afflict oneself at a wedding.
In the O.T. God is often Israel’s husband. ‘But nowhere in Judaism do we have the image of the Messiah as bridegroom’ (Bock, 110). (He will use this image once more in Luke 12.)
‘Fasting in Judaism…was a sign of waiting, of bewailing the present time when God’s kingdom still had not arrived. It was a way of looking back to the disasters that had befallen Israel, and humbling oneself in repentance to pray for God’s mercy. But what if God’s mercy was now alive and active, healing, celebrating, creating a new world and inviting you to enjoy it? Once again, the party theme: this is like a wedding-feast (a regular Jewish image for God’s coming new age), and the last thing you do at a wedding is abstain from food or drink. It’s a celebration of life itself’ (Wright, 64).
The ‘deliberate nonconsumption of food signifies a dissatisfaction with the present, in the OT typically in response to great loss or as an expression of hope… Fasting that is eschatologically motivated would be anachronistic, out of time, Jesus declares. The thing for which hope is expressed in fasting is already present… Sinners are being called to repentance: This is a time for feasting, not fasting!’ (Green, 248-49).
There Will Be Time for Fasting
But Jesus does give a veiled hint that there will come a time ‘when the bridegroom is taken away’ – the crucifixion and burial of Jesus. Then, also, there are times even in this Holy Spirit/church era that are appropriate for fasting as we wait and long for Jesus’ second coming.
5:36-39
First mention of a ‘parable’ (these first few are quite pithy little sayings)
Two Pictures of the New Tearing the Old
The ‘new thing’ God is doing in Christ cannot be contained by the old ways of the former covenant (much less the ‘fence around the law’ the Pharisees built).
‘What Jesus is doing is putting into effect the new world that God is bringing about – and the old ways just don’t fit. They are obsolete, not because they were bad in themselves but because God’s new age has new power, new possibilities and new hope that simply weren’t there before’ (Wright, 63).
Like outdated technology being replaced by new and better technology (e.g. computers, medicine, modes of travel, modes of power, etc.), except that what the Israelites were waiting for was a once for all change from the old to the new—the fulfilment of the kingdom of God in Christ. But what Jesus is claiming to be ushering in is that dramatic, a total change of life that affects everything, shaped around a whole new way of being.
Garments: ‘There’s no use, in other words, trying to see if you can fit some bits of Jesus’ kingdom-programme into the programmes of John’s disciples and the Pharisees. Take one element of Jesus’ work, and you miss the whole; and you can’t, in any case, fit that one element into the old ways of thinking. You have to take the new thing whole or not at all’ (Wright, 65).
Wineskins: ‘Try to fit Jesus’ new work into the thought-forms and behaviour-patterns of John’s movement, or the Pharisees’ movement, and all you’ll get is an explosion (it had already started to happen)’ (Wright, 65).
Plus, Luke uniquely adds here that those committed to drinking these old ways will not readily desire to taste the new way.
But ‘of course this passage isn’t about any and every innovation and reformation that people may dream up… Jesus is doing a new thing; this new thing still forms the basis of Christianity today. The real challenge of this passage is to see where in the world – and, of course, in the church too – people are living today as though the old age was still the norm, as though the new life of the gospel had never burst in upon us. The task then is to live out the new life, the new energy, which was at the heart of Jesus’ teaching and work’ (Wright, 65).
Welcoming God’s Progressively Unfolding Plan
When hearing this metaphor of ‘old’ and ‘new’ we must remember Luke’s painstaking context so far of Jesus being the fulfilment of God’s ancient plans revealed in the O.T. It’s not welcoming that fulfilment in Jesus that is ‘obsolete’ in the metaphor. God has a progressively unfolding plan, which, when his people are truly trusting him and listening to him and looking to him, they welcome each new phase of. What the religious leaders are doing would be something like if, when Jesus returns to fully reign, we didn’t recognise him because he didn’t come in the way we had expected or understood, and he wasn’t doing (say) evangelism, but just getting everybody to celebrate that he’d come.
There is No ‘Jesus’ Patch
If in any way we are trying to patch Jesus and his gospel onto our ‘old’ (merely earthly, human, fallen) ways, then he will burst our system and ruin both it and our attempt at pseudo-Christianity. He has come to make all things new and we must surrender to his total renewal.
6:1-5
In the next two scenes Luke provides two more examples of the new wine bursting the old wineskins.
As usual, I love the simple but effective tactile details about them walking in a field and rubbing grains in their hands and eating them.
Strict Religious Observance that Harms Instead of Helps
Worries over keeping the Sabbath may sound rather trivial to us:
‘For Jesus’ contemporaries, though, it was one of the chief badges of their identity in a hostile world, a sign to them and their neighbours that they were God’s special people’ (Wright, 68).
We too may find that we have such badges that have ceased to be under Jesus’ Lordship and have become harmful rather than good. This confronts our religiosity as much as the Pharisees.
Have You Not Read?
Jesus answers with questioning again. This time he uses his common phrase ‘Have you not read?’ He expects his Jewish hearers to be people of God’s Word, to have read and meditated on Scripture and be familiar with it.
He Gave Us Stories to Interpret and Apply Commandments
But whilst the Pharisees seem preoccupied with commandments and laws of the O.T. only, Jesus reminds them that God is teaching through every genre in the O.T. including narrative as his example about David here shows. God gave us stories of the real-life living out of his commandments to show us how they are meant to be understood, interpreted, and applied.
How are Jesus and His Disciples Like David and His Soldiers?
1 Samuel 21:1-7 (22:9-10)
What are we to take from the story of David and his men in relation to holy things like the ‘bread of the Presence’ and the Sabbath day? What purpose are God’s commandments ultimately meant to serve?
‘Who did he think he was? That is, in fact, the main question Luke wants us to ask’ (Wright, 67) – not just ‘is it lawful to do “x” on the Sabbath’, etc.
Jesus ends this encounter with a stunning claim: ‘The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.’ (Cf. ‘Son of Man’ in 5:24, referring to himself and his authority.)
Jesus is saying that David and his men ‘were an exception to the normal rule, and so is he… David claimed the right to [eat the normally exclusively priestly bread]. Why? Presumably because he was the rightful king of Israel… This speaks volumes about Jesus. He, too, as Luke has been at pains to tell us, has been anointed as Israel’s king. He, too, is waiting for the time when his kingship will come true. He, too, is on the move with his odd little group of followers. And now – picking up a biblical image which some of his hearers might have understood, though many probably didn’t – he was the sovereign “son of man”, the one whom Israel’s God would prove in due course to be the rightful king, on the day when opponents would be silenced and everything would be put to rights… What mattered is that Jesus was the coming King, who had the right to suspend even the sacred sabbath law when necessary. And he seems to have thought that it was necessary; God’s new world was breaking in, and the rules appropriate for the old one had to be rethought’ (Wright, 67-68).
However, this does also have to do with ‘the relaxation of legal observance in the face of human need’ (Green, 253-54). ‘It seems that Jesus is advocating an ethic in which people have more value than rules’ (Bock, 113).
Jesus’ answer is twofold: he shows that the O.T. commandments were always intended for human good, not just rigidly uncaring legalism, and that with the arrival of the Messiah, the law is fulfilled and God’s plan moves on, so obedience to God’s commandments takes new shape.
Who Has Authority to Rightly Interpret Scripture?
The ‘essence of Jesus’ reply is his claim that he, not these Pharisees, understands the significance of the Scriptures. Here, as elsewhere in Luke’s Gospel, the authority of the Scriptures is upheld insofar as they are interpreted by Jesus’ (Green, 254, emphasis original).
‘Son of man’ and ‘Lord’ both ‘focus the entire reply on Jesus… He is not just a teacher, a great example or a moral-religious leader like other greats of history. He claims to possess authority over laws and institutions that God has ordained. Again, the event forces a choice. Is Jesus right or wrong about himself? Does he reveal the way of God or pervert it? It is either one or the other. Making a choice is necessary, since even being neutral is choosing’ (Bock, 114-15).
6:6-11
The Setting
Now Luke goes on to illustrate powerfully how Jesus is indeed, as he claimed, Lord of the Sabbath.
Another Sabbath healing in the synagogue, like 4:31-37. But this time there are religious leaders present to judge the situation.
Again, we have a dramatic depiction of human suffering in a fallen world, the man with a ‘withered hand’ – a somewhat grotesque picture like the demon-possessed and leprous and totally paralysed. These are extreme conditions of the fall that Jesus encounters head on with grace, compassion, and healing.
The Spies
At this point Luke feels free as the narrator to describe the thoughts and intentions of the religious leaders. If it wasn’t clear already, we are alerted that they are outright looking for opportunities to find fault with Jesus. It is shocking that the only thing they could see out of a gracious, stupendous healing of terrible human suffering is breaking of the law and nothing good and holy and beautiful.
‘Their “watching” Jesus takes the character of “spying” with the intent of bringing formal charges against him. These “regulators” thus function as barriers to the healing of this man, and in fulfilling this role they also represent the synagogue and Sabbath as entities segregating this needy man from divine help’ (Green, 255).
Again, Jesus discerns where they’re coming from and confronts their attitude publicly, drawing attention to his meeting of this human need.
The Question
Yet again Jesus puts a question to his detractors. He turns the tables on interrogators and interrogates them instead, getting them to think and ponder and see and know. We think we put Jesus on trial, but we find it is we who are on trial before Jesus. (Cf. 2:34-35.)
‘What counts is that God, the creator, is honoured in what is done. Is this action, Jesus asks, going to save life or to destroy it?’ (Wright, 68)
‘In attempting to defend the truth of sabbath tradition, they plot harm on the sabbath, while Jesus seeks to meet needs. Who is violating the sabbath? There is a sting in the question’ (Bock, 116).
What is the true and right answer to his question? Jesus gets us to see the implication that God’s commandments are for good and the saving of life, NOT for harm and the destruction of life. Is this how we view God’s commandments? This is why we need to let Jesus be our key interpretation to the entirety of Scripture or we miss the point and God’s beautiful and good gift of the Bible becomes, tragically and erroneously, a source of harm and destruction.
Jesus is the Lord of all God’s commandments to us – all God’s just rules and decrees are not ends in themselves, but serve Jesus and his purposes in the world, which are plans and ways of salvation, not destruction (Luke 19:10).
The Healing
Like the paralysed man, Jesus commands the man with the withered hand to do the impossible by faith in Jesus – and he does, to the glory of God and the joy of humans.
The Fury
But not all humans. (This is, again, why miracles do not prove God’s action in the world to many people – if you’re not already open to God, they’ll just harden you.)
This time Luke records no wonder, awe, rejoicing, or praising. The religious leaders are more than perturbed or disturbed. They’re furious! And again, Luke narrates that they are pointedly and plainly now ‘out to get’ Jesus.
The Lord of the Sabbath Who Gives Us God’s Gracious Rest
‘Jesus was doing things which indicated that he regarded himself as being able to act with sovereign freedom in respect of the ancestral laws and traditions’ (Wright, 68).
But this is not merely about keeping the law: ‘more is at stake then accusations of “legalism” might suggest… For Jesus… the question remains, Who interprets Scripture (and, so, the Sabbath law) correctly? Or, to put it more starkly, Who knows and represents God’s will? Not the Sabbath law per se, but this more fundamental question comes to the fore in Jesus’ response to his rivals… Scribal specifications have missed the salvific purpose of God resident in the Sabbath, but Jesus, in declaring the onset of the eschatological Jubilee (…4:18-19), has made this day (“today”, 4:21) the day for providing for humans. Jesus is less concerned with abrogating Sabbath law, and more concerned with bringing the grace of God to concrete expression in his own ministry, not least on the Sabbath; what is more, according to Luke, as lord of the Sabbath he has the authority to do just that!’ (Green, 252-53)
The Sabbath, like every other O.T. theme, must find its fulfilment in Jesus the Messiah. He himself is our Sabbath rest. His Lordship brings the true meaning of Sabbath into our lives in his way, on his authority.
The Lord of the Outcasts is an Outcast Lord
By not following the religious norms of the day, Jesus and his disciples are now doing more than welcoming outsiders and outcasts – they themselves have become outcasts.
‘The religious leaders refuse to consider the evidence and are enraged about the facts God had laid before them. God is not supposed to help sinners or heal through a sabbath violator, yet right in front of them a sabbath violator has healed a sinner on the sabbath against their interpretation of truth and tradition. Jesus’ action has confounded them. What can they do? …He must be stopped’ (Bock, 117).
The plot thickens…
How Not to Respond to Jesus
As the reactions of wonder and praise have been examples for us of how to respond to Jesus, so here the rage and resistance (as with Herod to John the Baptist) show us how not to respond to Jesus.
COMMUNION:
Today we’re sharing lunch together, a further expression of our fellowship together in the gospel, of a joyful, celebratory nature like Jesus’ meals with sinners. Before we do, and as part of it, we’ll also share in Jesus’ more sober meal, the Last Supper (the Lord’s Supper, Communion, Eucharist). 1 Corinthians 11:26 – ‘For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.’
Works Cited:
Darrell Bock, Luke
Joel Green, The Gospel of Luke
Tom Wright, Luke for Everyone
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