This morning I finished ‘The Story’: Luke’s ‘epic journey with Jesus, the Son of God, and his first followers’. A great new presentation of the gospel of Luke and the Acts of the apostles. Engaging, inspiring, thought-provoking, puzzling. Some of my thoughts: I hadn’t previously noticed the strong connection in Luke’s gospel between Jesus and his cousin John. The links and contrast appear right from the opening chapter, then keep cropping up all the way through. John: repentance, austerity, preparation; Jesus: celebration, healing, a new way of living, God’s kingdom starting.
Alongside that, the opposition from the Pharisees and religious leaders. Growing antagonism and confrontation, building to a climax in Jesus’ trial and crucifixion. It seems as though Jesus was really courting this, setting his face to Jerusalem, deliberately challenging the powers of the time.
And then the resurrection – quiet and gentle in Luke’s account. The road to Emmaus – Jesus making sense of it all; the fulfilment of the bigger story.
I was struck by the way Luke ends and Acts starts on a note of anticipation – this isn’t an end. Jesus blessing his disciples. There is something very real and powerful in that: the gift of the Holy Spirit; a new start to this kingdom, now spreading out from Jerusalem.
And Acts becomes an account of the early spread of the way. I’ve already been working through Tom Wright’s commentary on Acts (NT for everyone) and finding a lot that is inspiring in it. However, reading it in ‘The Story’ I found myself put off by how quickly it becomes dominated by Paul and his adventures. After chapter 9, you could almost call it ‘the Acts of Paul and his companions’. It is strange how Luke’s account of Paul’s adventures seems to mirror his gospel account of Jesus: Jesus travelling round Galilee preaching, teaching, healing; Paul travelling round Asia preaching, teaching, healing; Jesus being repeatedly confronted and challenged by the antagonistic religious leaders; Paul being repeatedly confronted by that same religious elite. That antagonism for both ending in a trial before a Roman Governor. But unlike the ending of Luke’s account of Jesus, the end of Acts is not with a crucifixion and resurrection, but a rather weak and quiet petering out under house arrest in Rome. What is all that about?
Only we know it wasn’t a petering out, but rather seemed to set the stage for the eventual adoption of Christianity as the imperial religion and centuries of Christendom, all dominated by this powerful character of Paul. And while Jesus’ ministry seemed to revolve around life: lifestyle; healing; acceptance; celebration, Paul’s seemed to be dominated by doctrine and debates around belief.
Is it just me, or have we been rather too enamoured with Paul, and not inspired and challenged enough with Jesus?
Lots to mull on here, Peter – thank you. There are a number of ways in which one can see Acts as the beginning of accommodation with the imperial system, with Luke at pains to show Christians are not seditious, expecting or even encouraging the imminent overthrow of Roman rule. Perhaps Luke decided reporting a trial pitting Paul against Rome would not serve that view ?
All the same, I would want to defend Paul as he is portrayed in his letters. Recent writing about him has discussed whether his often-used Greek phrase ‘pistis Christou’ means ‘the faithfulness of Christ’ or ‘faith in Christ’. There are substantial arguments for the former in many of the citations – which I think helpfully shifts the emphasis away from him having an obsession with (right) belief or doctrine, and towards a view that he is encouraging imitation of the faithfulness of Christ towards God as a standard of behaviour, or disposition, to aim at.
Separately, there has come a recognition that Paul remains pretty Jewish, and part of that is an insistence on a distinctive ethics (and the ethical bits do form a substantial part of his letters, after all) that looks a lot like the Jewish moral code that so powerfully attracted ‘Godfearers’ to the faith of Israel.