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Ancient parallels demonstrate that the prologue (1:1–4) follows literary conventions. It orients audiences to the literature they will hear, which the author calls a “narrative.” With only hints of the contents as “things that happened,” emphasis falls on methods and purposes. The author’s involvement is analytical, communal, and dependent on antecedents. The things that happened “among us” (communal), already appeared in “many” other narratives that comprise chains of traditions. If “many” is literal, previous narratives included oral traditions. The purpose, addressed to Theophilus with a noble title, kratiste, is to ensure order and increase certainty for people who already have received instruction.

Almost universally, interpreters assume Mark and another written source that Luke shares with Matthew (Q) among antecedent narratives. Whether “the things that have happened” includes events in Acts is debated. If so (this is quite likely), Acts 1:1–2 provides a secondary prologue. Parallels with Josephus and other Hellenistic authors imply that the author is writing history, but only as modified by previous sources and Israel’s Scriptures (Alexander).

Luke 1:5–4:13: Setting and Preparation for Jesus’ Ministry

Traditions that Luke was a physician who accompanied Paul persist. The only reference the author makes to himself is a masculine participle (“having investigated”). Assuming that the author is Paul’s companion, therefore, is beyond evidence in the text.

Some interpreters claim that if the genre is history, this enhances Luke’s “authority.” Readers encounter a narrative, and the prologue notwithstanding, the narrative itself unfolds the kind of literature that audiences perceive. Can authority be determined by the prologue, or does it rest in the power of persuasion in the reading itself?

Luke 1:5–3:20: Divine Promises, Infancy Narratives, Global and Local Settings

Immediately after the prologue, Luke establishes a setting before Herod’s death (4 BCE). But more than establish chronology, the narrator starts with a local personal story that is set in global systems of social order, religion, and politics. Zechariah and Elizabeth belong to a priestly order of low status that contrasts with high-priestly elites. Piety makes them exemplary, but in an ethos where children manifest God’s blessings, childlessness blemishes them. Sterility before menopause and advanced age are characteristic of biblical stories of extraordinary births. Their privacy cannot escape the foreground of imperial systems (see also 2:1–2; 3:1–2). Systems involving an imperial client king (1:5) and high-priestly collaborators (implied by Zechariah’s status under a priestly hierarchy, 1:5, 8) affect their lives.

The setting jumps inside the Jerusalem sanctuary (1:8). Outside, a multitude prays; inside, incense goes up like prayers. Gabriel has to do with both. Inside, he promises God’s remedy for the couple’s childlessness. For the outside, his promise is for Israel. Zechariah’s question “how will I know” encompasses both sides, and his inability to speak until the child’s birth is a sign that validates God’s promises for Israel as well as for him and Elizabeth.

Dramatically the narrative becomes gendered. It shifts from masculine characters to women. Elizabeth celebrates her pregnancy as God’s inversion of disgrace, and the term of her pregnancy links her to Mary in Galilee. Gabriel speaks to Mary, and aside from overarching imperial systems, her impending marriage is the context. Promises to her are also both private and communal—a child for her; restoration of David’s commonwealth for Israel. In keeping with 2 Samuel 7, the restoration is everlasting—with a twist. In 2 Samuel, David’s “seed” is a collective noun for David’s dynasty. Gabriel makes it literally singular. Gabriel promises Jesus’ everlasting enthronement (1:32–33).

Like Zechariah, Mary asks “how” (1:34). Gabriel’s response makes her conception a matter of divine initiative and correlates it with Elizabeth’s pregnancy by means of an astounding claim: “Any prediction [thing] will not be impossible with God” (1:37). Mary avows remarkable consonance with Gabriel’s announcement: “[I am] the Lord’s servant; may it be with me according to your prediction” (1:38).

When Mary journeys to Elizabeth, they join forces. In contrast to mute Zechariah, women deliver the first speeches of consequence. By concealing herself, Elizabeth occupies the social margin but transforms it into creative space by playing a prophet’s role. She blesses Mary and Mary’s child, and affirms her own place in God’s eyes in something greater than themselves.

Mary adds the antiphonal voice of another prophet from the margins. She identifies with the low social class and affirms God’s power to bless. This takes the shape of God’s “class conversion.” Against powerful thrones (implicating imperial systems), God manifests mercy to generations of those who have inadequate access to the earth’s resources. Her references to Abrahamic promises also supplement Gabriel’s allusions to David’s commonwealth (1:46–55).

Then a male prophesies creatively from the margins (the Judean backcountry, 1:68–79). Zechariah reiterates Gabriel’s allusions to Davidic promises, synthesizes them with Abrahamic promises, and views God’s fidelity to the promises as liberation from oppression. John and Jesus are ways God keeps ancient promises. When Zechariah calls this “forgiveness of sins,” he means corporate consequences beyond individual transgressions: in context, complicity in Israel’s subjugation. John’s role as preparing the way of the Lord, recalling prophecies of Israel’s restoration from captivity, likewise embraces liberation from oppression.

Luke 2:1 fills in the foreground of imperial systems. Emperor Augustus and Governor Quirinius in Syria complement the picture of King Herod and an implicit priestly hierarchy in chapter 1. Another imperial agent in Bethlehem, an unmentioned local clerk, awaits Joseph’s enrollment. Geographical horizons reflect the interplay between local and global—Herod’s Judea (1:5), all the world (2:1) (Wolter, 121). Distinctions in political status between Judea and Galilee also affect the setting, as does the village atmosphere reflected in a manger and shepherds. Augustus’s might, contrasted with peasants caught homeless at childbirth, is full of pathos. Irony snags imperial powers, who force a journey that matches divine purposes for Jesus to be born in David’s city. Like Mary, shepherds measure low culturally and are unanticipated recipients of the message that a Savior-Messiah is born to them. The inauspicious becomes auspicious, and out of character for their marginal status, shepherds become witnesses to others.

Joseph and Mary comply with cultic expectations of circumcision and purification. Offering two turtledoves underlines their peasant status (Lev. 12:8). But the inauspicious is also confirmed in the temple by sagacity, commitment, and hope. This also is gendered. First, venerable Simeon anticipates peace through God’s restoration of Israel. He labels Jesus a light of revelation for the nations and for the glory of Israel, but also predicts the falling and rising of many in Israel (Luke 2:34). This reiterates Mary’s prophecy about the downfall of the powerful and exaltation of the lowly (1:52) and anticipates conflict between elites and the oppressed. Second, venerable Anna witnesses to God’s promises to deliver Jerusalem from oppression.

Most interpreters present 3:1–20 as a new literary unit. A reference to Tiberius’s fifteenth year (c. 29 CE) lures many commentators to focus on chronology. But 3:1–2 elaborates and extends the local and global political and economic setting of chapters 1–2 and depicts how Jewish people experienced imperial systems from the emperor to local collaborators. Furthermore, like Elizabeth, Mary, Zechariah, Simeon, and Anna, the Baptizer plays a prophet’s role within this imperial setting. His baptism for forgiveness has implications for individuals (3:10–14) but is also tied to Isaiah’s message of national restoration (Isa. 40:3; Luke 3:3–6). Individual behavior has communal consequences for Israel in imperial contexts in both Isaiah and Luke. When John deals with instances of behavior in 3:14, they have to do with covenant values of equitable access to resources, economics, and the power of the strong over the weak. By contrast, 3:18–20 portrays another imperial client ruler, Herod Antipas, suppressing covenant values by imprisoning John.

Abraham, who figures in Mary’s and Zechariah’s prophecies, reappears in John’s. First, he challenges Abrahamic descent unless it bears fruit in covenant ethics (3:8). Simultaneously, he espouses God’s ability to raise up children of Abraham. Most interpreters take the metaphor of raising up children from stones as devaluing Abrahamic descent. But does it not also, like 1:37, affirm God’s power (see 19:40)? In Luke, does God (metaphorically) raise up children of Abraham from stones?

Most interpreters underplay the context of imperial systems and social struggles among the elite and the oppressed and focus instead on chronology (1:5; 2:1; 3:1–2). From the beginning of the second Christian millennium, Elizabeth’s prophecy concerning Mary and her child became a liturgical prayer, with emphasis on Mary’s roles as the mother of the Lord and mediatrix. This reduced the complementarity of the prophecies of Elizabeth, Mary, and Zechariah. The virginal conception also dominated interpretation and eclipsed scriptural traditions of divine initiative in birth wonders; indeed, it overshadowed parallels between Elizabeth’s conception and Mary’s, and diverted emphasis from God’s initiative to Mary’s character.

Moreover, emphasis on John as a forerunner and Jesus as Savior tended to write off antecedents in Israel’s history and neglected continuity with Israel in portrayals of John and Jesus in the traditions of Elijah, David, and Abraham.

Luke 3:21–4:13: Unfolding Jesus’ Identity and Endowment with the Spirit

Debates persist over the virginal conception. The narrative lacks specificity about how conception occurred. When Gabriel predicts that Mary will bear a son, her engagement implies conception in her impending marriage (see Fitzmyer 1973, 566–67). However, Mary presumes not her marriage but her virginal condition (Brown 1979, 298–309). In addition, some deduce that Luke conceals Mary’s pregnancy outside marriage. This too can be intensely theological if one assumes pregnancy due to rape or abuse. This intensifies God’s inversion of shame among the marginalized (Schaberg). Either option underscores God’s initiative in the births of Jesus and John. Such divine initiative, however, remains mysterious. Karl Barth once remarked that the virginal conception is “inconceivable.”

Luke’s use of sources leads interpreters to emphasize individual episodes, but increasingly, narrative continuity is also accented. Speeches of Gabriel, Elizabeth, Mary, and Zechariah fit together in one story. The context of imperial systems is also overarching.

Mid-twentieth-century interpretations made a sharp break between Jesus’ proclamation of God’s commonwealth and Israel’s heritage (Conzelmann), sharpened even into “anti-Judaism” (J. Sanders). This will come under consideration again, but continuity with God’s promises to Israel is undeniable.

Similarly, some interpreters judge Luke deficient in neglecting significant roles for women (Reid). Elizabeth and Mary are prominent exceptions. Interpreters often read the silence imposed on Zechariah as punishment for failing to believe Gabriel and contrast this with Mary’s assertion of conformity to divine purposes. Actually, both ask “how?” Further, when it is clear that Gabriel’s promises are for Israel as well as for Zechariah and Elizabeth, rather than punishing Zechariah, Gabriel declares that the inability to speak is a sign that confirms predictions both to him and to Israel.

How does the serene and contemplative Mary as the servant of the Lord (1:38) in popular piety and art fit her role as a prophet in 1:46–55? As with servants of the Lord in Israel’s traditions such as Moses and the prophets, in her role as God’s servant she also confronts oppressive powers and correlates God’s mercy and promises to the plight of poverty, hunger, and oppressive powers. Today the Virgin of Guadalupe has been used as just such a prophet among the disadvantaged in Mexico, especially among indigenous populations. An image of her accompanied César Chávez and the striking United Farm Workers in the 1960s, and some feminists have adopted her as an advocate of liberation.

Jesus’ baptism unfolds his identity. A heavenly voice declares: “You are my beloved son” (3:22, reiterating 1:32), and he is endowed with the Spirit.

More than monotonous lists, genealogies establish relationships and continuity. Jesus is related to Israelites in whom God was at work: Zerubbabel in Israel’s restoration after exile (Ezra 3:2, 8); David in God’s promises of rulers on Israel’s throne (2 Sam. 7:13; Luke 1:32–33); Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Adam—continuity with stories of both Israel and humanity.

The devil (4:1–13) advances Jesus’ identity by questioning, “If you are God’s son” (4:3, 9). The devil proposes that Jesus dramatize sonship, but Jesus’ first words as an adult demonstrate what he is not—he is not what the devil proposes. Forty days in the desert echo Israel’s wilderness wandering. Further, allusions to Scripture evoke their larger contexts. Turning stones into bread recalls wilderness feedings of Israel, personified as God’s Son. Will God likewise feed Jesus, God’s Son? For Jesus, “one does not live by bread alone” (Deut. 8:3) means that Israel’s hunger rather than the feeding taught them to live under God’s care. The devil’s promise to give Jesus the world’s kingdoms for worshiping him (violating monotheism) is a deceitful shortcut to David’s throne (Luke 1:32). Jumping from the temple is a challenge to trust the words of Scripture: “God will keep you” (Ps. 91:11–12). Citing Deut. 6:16, Jesus asserts that testing whether God is “among us or not” is a failure of trust (Brawley 1995, 15–26).

Some interpreters argue that by reporting Jesus’ baptism after John’s imprisonment, Luke conceals that Jesus was baptized by John (Conzelmann, 21). This is excessive. In Luke 3, Jesus’ baptism stands in continuity with John’s baptism of the crowds (3:7). He is baptized along with them (3:21). Many take the devil’s claim to exercise power over all kingdoms to mean that Luke thinks all governments are demonic. But the deceptive devil is unreliable! In keeping with Gabriel’s interpretation that Jesus is David’s seed (singular, 1:32–33), the genealogy avoids David’s descendants who ruled, and links Jesus more directly to David (2 Sam. 7:8–16) (Wolter, 175).

Luke 4:14–21:38: Proclamation and Extension of God’s Commonwealth

Jesus’ genealogy is masculine, but the hint about Joseph’s paternity (“as was supposed,” 3:23) may be the only reference outside the birth narratives to the virginal conception or alternatively, to a problem pregnancy (rape, abuse) (Schaberg). Descent from Adam gives Jesus a role in God’s relationship with all humanity. Jesus and the devil challenge each other by interpreting Scripture. When used deceptively, Scripture is false (Brawley 1995, 20–26).

Luke 4:14–41: Hopes and Manifestations of Jesus’ Mission

Interpreters often call Jesus’ proclamation in Nazareth his inaugural sermon, but the preceding summary (4:14–15) shows that it is an instance of his ministry already underway. The incident has four foci. Jesus reads Isaiah, announces a word-event that occurs when the congregants hear the reading, implicates himself in this word-event, and provokes a response.

Luke’s audience would hardly have understood God’s sending Jesus as one anointed with the Spirit in terms of a developed Christology. With thematic emphasis on the Spirit (annunciation, baptism, temptation), they would have heard that where God’s Spirit is, God’s favor is manifest, like the Jubilee Year (Green 1997, 212–13). The poor who receive good news are the bottom 90 percent, dominated by elites in a two-tiered system. Their social status is that of Rome’s vanquished victims. Concretely, debts are annulled, debtors are released from prison, blindness is overcome, brokenness is mended. Jesus assumes the power of God’s Spirit in his ministry. This is what God’s commonwealth is (4:43).

Blindness plays on Jesus’ hearers who fix their eyes on him (Green 1997, 211). They see Isaiah’s gracious words (originally spoken also in an imperial context), but reject Jesus as sent by God (see “sent” in 4:18, 43). Luke gives no motivation for the people of Nazareth to reject Jesus. However, rejection verifies the proverb demonstrated by Elijah and Elisha: “No prophet is accepted in his own countryside.” Their rejection confirms Jesus’ prophetic mandate (Brawley 1987, 6–27). Conversely, Jesus’ ministry in Capernaum manifests the favor God’s Spirit generates (4:31–41).

Since the development of Chalcedonian Christology, Jesus’ claim to be anointed has directed attention to his messianic identity, often associated with doctrines of human and divine natures. Emphasis is on his God-sent ministry rather than his ontological essence. Possibly Luke intends only a prophetic anointing (Fitzmyer 1981, 1:529–30). But “anointed” in Acts 4:27 (citing Psalm 2) speaks against restriction to a prophetic anointing.

Luke 4:42–5:11: Initial Extensions of Jesus’ Mission

It is significant that Jesus’ ministry has a major focus on release from prison. In Luke’s world, prisons were primarily short-term facilities. Debtors, however, were subject to long-term incarceration (“until you have paid the very last penny” [Luke 12:59]). Today “restorative justice” places emphasis on building relationships between victims and offenders and offers the latter opportunities to make restoration—obviously impossible if offenders are incarcerated.

Recent discussion tends toward Jesus’ anticipation of his ministry in terms of poverty and exploitation in addition to personal or figurative meanings (Wolter, 192–93). Many interpreters take the Nazarenes’ rejection of Jesus as anticipating Jewish rejection of Jesus, even revealing Luke’s anti-Judaism in favor of gentiles (J. Sanders). This ignores Jesus’ prior successful ministry in Galilean synagogues, his subsequent ministry and acceptance in Capernaum, and his programmatic statement of his sending to the synagogues of Judea (4:14–15, 31–41, 42–44) (Brawley 1987, 7–11). In Luke, particular Israelites respond positively and negatively to Jesus and his followers. A corporate rejection by Jewish people distorts the data. Given the setting in imperial systems, the citation from Isaiah, and Jesus’ claims of fulfillment, the Nazareth incident initiates the realization of the covenant promises claimed by Mary in 1:50–55.

Luke 4:44 summarizes Jesus’ proclamation in synagogues. Then 5:1–11 shifts the setting precipitously to public space, where his auditors are a crowd closely identified with the 90 percent of the subdominant population—earlier called “the poor.” Merely the appearance of crowds is a sign of differentiation from reigning imperial systems (Scott, 63). Again, Jesus’ proclamation is summarized and gives way to a brief narrative about recruiting coworkers. Following Jesus’ suggestion, Simon and his partners net an abundant catch of fish. Sequence alone leads hearers to presume causation by Jesus and to be astonished, like Simon and his companions. Simon then recognizes a manifestation of the numinous that threatens him, a “sinner.” Thematically, this has to do with manifesting God’s Spirit in God’s commonwealth, a manifestation that dramatizes what God’s commonwealth is. Jesus makes it analogous to collaborating in mission—catching people. They leave all and follow.

The catch of fish is often called a nature “miracle.” Beyond prescience, little is extraordinary. Abundant catches are remarkable but natural, and Jesus makes this one a parable of mission. Developments of church hierarchy have appealed to Simon’s priority and apostolic office. Here, however, there is no “calling” or “sending.” The fishermen follow on their own initiative.

Luke 5:12–6:11: Faith and Restorations in Contexts of Oppression

This incident culminates in a dramatic change. “Leaving everything” entails striking changes personally (e.g., Peter), economically (the fish are not marketed), socially (relationships are fundamentally altered), and decisively (commitment to mission to the poor/crowds) (4:18; 5:1). These disciples have a special status in Luke and are hardly models for every reader, but the call for change, commitment, and ministry are unavoidable.

Luke 5:12–6:11 presents concrete cases of good news to the poor (4:18) in other Judean cities (4:43). Three incidents focus on Jesus (5:12–14; 5:17–26; 6:6–11), three on his followers (5:29–32; 5:33–39; 6:1–4).

The healing of a leper is a remarkable deed of compassion pared to essentials (5:12–14). Luke’s hearers understand the sparse description of leprosy as a skin disorder (not Hansen’s disease) that required heartrending exclusion from normal society (Lev. 13:46; Josephus Ant. 3.264: “as good as dead” [author’s trans.]). Prostration and supplication reflect the gravity of the ailment. Purification is primary; healing, the means to it. The leper links restoration with Jesus’ desire: “If you want to … you can make me clean” (5:12 PHILLIPS). Exceeding mere healing, Jesus proclaims good news: “Certainly I want to.” Touching affirms his desire. Thus an instance of God’s Spirit that blesses occurs. Luke’s hearers cannot understand Jesus’ charge not to tell to mean suppressing the deed, since the story itself makes it known. Rather, procedures in the law, rather than rumors, confirm the man’s restoration to his community.

The second episode is closely related because it is stimulated by the cleansing of the leper (5:15). The priest’s confirmation of the purification should have served as a witness to some Pharisees and teachers of law who show up in 5:17–26. Whereas the leper’s purification is a bare-bones account, complex narrative tensions surface in the healing of a paralytic. The paralytic and the men who bring him beat the competition for space by a dramatic act of breaking through barriers to gain access to Jesus. They are virtually pallbearers who let the paralytic down through the roof. When the narrator says that Jesus saw their faith(fulness) (5:20), faith(fulness) is not confessed, but dramatized. (Confession does not thereby become irrelevant; see on 12:8–9 below.) Faith(fulness) looks like this. Jesus’ reaction to their faith(fulness) is a non sequitur—an assurance of pardon that perhaps reflects beliefs that sin produces maladies. Some scribes and Pharisees create a narrative need by questioning: Who can forgive sins but God alone? Luke’s audience understands that Jesus assures God’s forgiveness (divine passive, 5:20) on the basis of action that overcomes obstacles to life. But Jesus provokes theological considerations by arrogating power (5:24) to grant assurance of pardon on earth (on the basis of the dramatic act) and offers healing as evidence that forgiveness is not in word only but in deed as well. Luke’s audience hears Jesus refer to himself as “son of man” for the first time and understands that he claims a special commission from God. When the paralytic arises and carries his bed, he and everyone, including scribes and Pharisees, glorify God and acknowledge this as a “sign” with a double meaning—a sign of the power of the Spirit in God’s commonwealth, and of Jesus’ power to assure God’s forgiveness.

Two additional episodes also produce conflict and prepare for what follows—for Jesus’ proclamation of God’s commonwealth, recruiting followers, and developing themes of mission (5:27–32; 5:33–39). Like the catch of fish (5:4–11), calling Levi is a recruitment story. The first person Jesus “calls” is not Simon, but this tax collector. Like Simon and his partners, he leaves all and follows. This does not merely provide a setting for the subsequent conflict over table fellowship. Rather, Levi’s banquet is an instance of following. For Levi, following Jesus means including in God’s commonwealth people who are of questionable repute, like himself, because they participate in systems of economic abuse (see 3:13) and/or transgress social norms. Thus the banquet is an act of following that becomes a conflict story. Pointedly, not the narrator, but critics label the guests “sinners” and question Jesus’ inclusive table fellowship. Jesus defends his relationships by a parabolic image associating his “companionship” (“eating bread together”) with healing those who are not in good health. Astute hearers of Luke would recognize thematic development on Jesus’ mission to proclaim God’s commonwealth not only to those who are economically poor but also to people like lepers whose social status is problematic. Jesus then expresses his mission thematically: to call sinners to repentance. This explanation also proclaims God’s commonwealth to his critics.

Anonymous interlocutors then question the failure of Jesus’ followers to practice special prayer while fasting (“praying and fasting” go together as one act, 5:33–39). The first time Jesus’ followers are called “disciples” in Luke is on the lips of interlocutors who compare them with disciples of John and the Pharisees. Thereafter, the name sticks. Jesus responds with two figurations. His answer in the second person plural places his interlocutors at a wedding feast where fasting is absurd; under different conditions, fasting is appropriate (see 22:18). Garments and wineskins old and new depict preservation and innovation simultaneously.

The fifth incident (6:1–5) is a controversy story. A small amount of harvesting and eating grain on Sabbath raises protests against the behavior of Jesus’ disciples. “Some” Pharisees object that harvesting on Sabbath is unlawful. Jesus tacitly affirms their premise, but also makes it contextually dependent by appealing to David’s precedent, in which need supersedes regulations. Luke’s audience would find Jesus’ reference to the “son of man” (6:5) ambiguous. Do needs of any human supersede restrictions? Or do Jesus’ prerogatives outshine David’s?

The sixth episode (6:6–11) is another conflict story that clarifies this question somewhat by refocusing on Jesus. Luke 6:6 makes this incident an instance of Jesus’ mission in other synagogues of Judea (4:44). But his prior activity also invites a test. His examiners are some scribes and Pharisees with ulterior motives to find fault. The only question on the examination is: Will Jesus heal on Sabbath? Jesus’ response first restates Sabbath law positively: instead of prohibiting what is unlawful, he proposes that doing good is lawful. His only “work” is words: “Stretch out your hand” (6:10). When the man does, Jesus’ critics discuss: What are we going to do with Jesus? This question deliberates possibilities, which makes the translation of anoia as “fury” (NRSV) unlikely. Rather they lack “understanding” (6:11).

The cleansing of a leper, the raising of a paralytic, and the restoration of a withered hand are all healing stories, but controversy over forgiveness and Sabbath behavior in the last two also mix with conflict stories about table fellowship and harvesting grain on the Sabbath. Conventionally, the healings are called “miracles.” But antiquity does not distinguish between “natural” and “supernatural,” as common definitions of miracle imply. The term in 5:26 means “something remarkable.” Tradition understands the leper’s cleansing as an act of Jesus’ authoritative will. But the leper’s supplication and Jesus’ response are at the level of desire: “If you want to” (5:12–13). When conflict arises with scribes and Pharisees, almost all interpreters presume that Jesus’ critics are unyielding. But 5:26 includes them among “all” who glorify God and acknowledge a remarkable deed. The other conflict stories end with Jesus’ explanations of his and his followers’ behavior. The restoration of a man’s hand, however, ends with his critics’ reaction: What are we going to do with Jesus? English translations of 6:11 that make his critics “furious” are simply inadequate. Rather, they “misunderstand.” This is one among other cases where the interpretive tradition has set Jesus in opposition to his interlocutors in a way that is unjustified.

Interpretations of garments and wineskins have overwhelmingly emphasized innovation to the point of incompatibility between old and new. Both cases depend indispensably on preservation of the old. Indeed, the image of the wineskins ends with the value of old wine (5:39) (Green 1997, 250; against Wolter, 232–33).

Studies of Jesus’ remarkable deeds have highlighted features that are prominent in Luke. Virtually all involve descriptions of oppressive restrictions, which either Jesus or persons in need violate in order to produce transformation (Theissen, 134–37; Wire, 109–10). In the healing of the paralytic, sin (not merely personal but also corporate and systemic), the pardon of which Jesus assures, plays a role in oppression. Demonic possession may be psychosocial expressions of domination and protests against social oppression (Theissen, 255–56). Some interpreters portray Jewish society generally as oppressive, against which Jesus produces a new order.

Two features resist such negative portrayals of Israelite communities. One is the larger context of oppressive imperial systems. Although some Jewish people collaborated problematically in these systems, such imperial systems do not represent Israelite covenant communities in general. Second, there is no supplanting of Israelite covenant communities here. Invariably, the transformations reintegrate people into Israelite communities. Violations of barriers are clear in the leper’s healing, where Jesus’ touch violates a social quarantine in order to reintegrate the man into his community. Similarly, the healing of the paralytic violates controlled channels of access to divine power. This produces conflict, but the story ends in reintegrating the paralytic and Jesus’ critics into common affirmations of God. Controversies over the practices of Jesus’ followers highlight behavior appropriate to contexts, and continuity with the old balances innovation. Conflict over Jesus’ table fellowship and questions about fasting receive Jesus’ explanations of his and his followers’ behavior. If Luke finds these responses persuasive for his hearers, should contemporary interpreters not also suppose that some of Jesus’ critics were also persuaded? With post-Holocaust sensitivities, it is important to note that only “some” Pharisees scrutinize Jesus and his followers (see 6:2). Interpreters should refrain from taking them as characteristic of all Pharisees. Luke’s Gospel is a narrative of persuasion (see 1:4). But unloading on Jesus’ interlocutors as irreparable antagonists forestalls possibilities for either the antagonists or readers who are, like them, to be persuaded. Early Jewish tradition, a bit later than Luke, reflects a similar controversy resulting in a ruling that allows crushing small quantities of straw with the hands on Sabbath, without utensils (b. Shab. 128a). As Jesus’ emphasis on doing good on Sabbath shows, he highlights “doing” over negative restrictions but does not abrogate the Sabbath.

These incidents of healing are also cases of overcoming oppressive conditions related to maladies. Simply identifying maladies today as something “wrong,” restricting the sick to confinement or quarantine, or putting people with diseases such as HIV-AIDS under judgment are scarcely any different.

Luke 6:12–49: Life in God’s Commonwealth

Prayer provides a setting for Jesus’ selection of twelve disciples and his subsequent Sermon on the Plain. Praying suggests that Jesus is not independently self-sufficient. Rather, on the basis of his relationship with God, he chooses the Twelve and proclaims God’s commonwealth (the program of 4:43). Here the Twelve play no role other than following, but the title “apostles” anticipates that they will be “sent” in the future.

The detail that Jesus looks at his disciples is a key to understanding his sermon. He describes their life in God’s commonwealth, but the crowds also hear. Jesus highlights the poor from the outset of his speech (6:20), as did Mary (1:46–55), and as he did in his proclamation in Nazareth (4:18–19).

The programmatic 4:43 indicates that the Beatitudes describe life under God’s commonwealth. Strikingly, blessings are announced in direct speech to Jesus’ hearers (“you”). Luke’s audience would likely have heard sympathetically as if Jesus were addressing them. Each blessing is expressed without a verb in the first half (common in Greek), but verb tenses vary in the explanatory half. God’s care for the poor is clearly in the present (6:20). Thus it is a performative proclamation of God’s blessing for the poor now (reiterating 4:18). Blessings for the hungry and those who weep are future (6:21), but Luke’s audience certainly recalls Levi’s banquet (5:29) as a present reality and anticipates feasting within Jesus’ ministry, not merely beyond. Luke 6:22–23 breaks the terse form of the first three Beatitudes by adding a longer culmination of blessings for disciples as Jesus’ marginalized followers when they face opposition, individually and collectively. As in the vindication of Israel’s martyrs (6:23 calls to mind Israel’s prophets and the Maccabean tradition), blessedness may indeed anticipate a future beyond this life, but the reward in heaven (a metaphor for vindication by God, Wolter, 251) is expressed without a verb and likely includes a relationship of confidence in and succor from God realized in Jesus’ proclamation itself. Luke 6:23 also breaks the form by including an imperative: “Rejoice and skip for joy” (6:23, “rejoice and skip” together describe one act).

These blessings are balanced by an antiphony of woes. Again the address is directly to Jesus’ hearers (“you”). The explanation of the woe to the rich is accounting language: “You have your receipt for what is due” (6:24). The explanations of the woe to those who eat well and laugh, like the second and third Beatitudes, are future (6:25), presumably near future. The longer, final woe balances the fourth Beatitude. Jesus exposes those who are highly regarded in the present as falsely deceived on the basis of “lessons of history” (6:26).

Jesus then shifts from performative declarations to imperatives. Thus God’s commonwealth also includes directives for implementing blessings. Luke 6:27–38 is centered on relationships encapsulated in: “Do to others as you would have them do to you” (6:31). Because this is not “do to others as they do to you,” it contravenes even mutuality and inverts retaliation into love, including accommodating to others. Second, it means mercy that surpasses what others deserve. Hearers of both Jesus and Luke would understand this in terms of concrete relationships in village or community life. Enacting this behavior does not depend on individual resolve but is inspired, motivated, and made possible by a relationship with a merciful God, like that between parent and child (6:35–36). Relationships with others involve relationships with God; relationships with God involve relationships with others. To be God’s children means that behavior is begotten by God. The “great reward” in 6:35, as in 6:23, is a metaphor for vindication by God.

Luke 6:39–49 deals again with how behavior under God’s commonwealth is inspired, motivated, and made possible by a relationship with the teacher (the God of mercy? or Jesus? 6:40), which also “opens one’s eyes.” The metaphors here turn hindered vision into following a teacher and orient hearers to tend to themselves rather than others. This relationship bears fruit like a tree (6:43–45). Luke’s hearers then view Jesus as a mediator of God’s commonwealth who proclaims how life is when God rules.

Studied independently, the Beatitudes are generally understood as exhortations, although Luke’s version contains only one imperative (“Rejoice and skip for joy,” 6:23). The entire speech has also been interpreted as an “interim ethic” for a period before the imminent parousia (among others, Albert Schweitzer), or as an impossible ethic to demonstrate human inadequacy that evokes dependence upon God’s mercy (among others, Luther), or as an intensification of Torah. When the Beatitudes are seen as an integral part of the speech in their Lukan context, they characterize life in God’s commonwealth.

Some interpret the Beatitudes as addressed to the inner group of disciples to whom the blessings of God’s commonwealth are proclaimed, whereas the imperatives regarding mutual relationships are spoken to the entire crowd. But the gathering of the crowd with the purpose of hearing Jesus (6:18) and the address of woes directly to the rich speak for an address to the entire group. Cases such as turning the other cheek are “focal instances” (Tannehill 1975) that provoke wide-ranging consideration far beyond one literal incident. They encourage not passive submission but active behaviors for God’s children to take initiative from oppressors (Wink, 127).

Jesus’ sermon has fueled discussions about the relationship of the indicative (performative declarations of God’s blessing) and the imperative (commands). But the proclamation is nothing other than life under God’s commonwealth in which relationships with God are integral to relationships with others—two dimensions that are hardly separate. Giving to those who ask (6:30, 34) exceeds mutuality; the initiative and control of goods lies not with the giver but with those in need. The imperative to be merciful in 6:36 is often understood as ethical imitation of God. On the other hand, the context has to do with a parent-child relationship. The relationship is not imitation as such but the behavior that a merciful parent begets in a child, as in the gender-specific proverb “like father, like son.”

Inasmuch as peasants at the subsistence level constituted 90 percent of the population in Luke’s world, the vast majority of the hearers of both Jesus and Luke were the poor. By contrast, for many of us in the so-called first world today who disproportionately consume the resources of the earth, it is disturbingly difficult to hear the Beatitudes with the ears of the poor (Bovon, 1:223), and we find ourselves bluntly challenged.

Luke 7:1–50: Deeds That Substantiate Jesus’ Identity

Luke 7 characterizes Jesus by what he does. Two remarkable deeds precede the Baptizer’s question: “Are you the one who is coming or do we expect another?” (7:19–20). Jesus’ response is then followed by a short discourse that elaborates his answer, and by the woman in Simon’s house. Though the healing of a centurion’s slave and the raising of a widow’s son appear to drop precipitously into the narrative, they are integral to Jesus’ response to the Baptizer. First, Jesus returns to Capernaum, where he previously had a remarkable ministry and achieved prominence (4:31–42). The centurion clearly plays a role in imperial systems—succinctly, he commands subordinates—but here he makes himself subservient to God’s commonwealth. His slave exercises no agency but remains hidden behind the centurion and his friends, Jewish elders, and Jesus. The centurion controls everything from offstage, including Jesus’ actions. Nevertheless, testimony about Jesus motivates him (7:3). So he sends elders, who present a positive picture of Israelite citizens (Green 1997, 286–87, views their appeal to reciprocity for the centurion’s generosity negatively). They also portray the centurion positively. Through other friends, the centurion tells Jesus what to do and says more than Jesus (7:6–8). He acts with “power” in order to access Jesus’ power. Jesus names this act “faith(fulness),” exceeding such acts among Israelites. Faith(fulness) is not confessed but dramatized. If hearers recall the men who took a paralytic to Jesus (5:19) and liken the elders to them (7:4–5), the comparison with Israel (7:9) does not indict Israel but produces amazement even for Jesus (there is no “disjunction between this Gentile and Israel” as Green [1997, 288] suggests). Previously, witnesses of Jesus’ remarkable deeds were amazed; now Jesus is.

Jesus travels to Nain for another remarkable deed and this time takes the initiative (7:11–17). The incident is a traumatic funeral of a widow’s only son. According to customs of patrilineal marriage, the woman’s plight eclipses concern for the son. Without a husband or son, she is bereft of subsistence. In keeping with the good news of God’s commonwealth, compassion motivates Jesus to touch the coffin. Surprisingly, he speaks to the dead youth with an imperative, commanding him to be raised (7:14–15). A crowd interprets Jesus’ command as a prophecy, spoken for God whose favor comes to Israel (7:16), that is, God’s commonwealth. This characterizes Jesus as a prophet before competing evaluations label him a “drunkard and glutton” (7:34) and Simon’s skepticism about his prophetic identity (7:39). God’s favor corresponds to Jesus’ mission in 4:18, reinforces his prophetic character, and further associates his ministry with Elijah by parallels with 1 Kgs. 17:17–24. God’s favor for Israel (7:16) speaks against taking the centurion’s faith(fulness) in the previous episode as indicting Israel.

These deeds set the stage for the Baptizer’s question, conveyed by messengers (angeloi, 7:24). The question whether Jesus is “the one who comes” picks up John’s announcement in 3:16 of a more powerful one who comes but likely also alludes to general traditions of a figure who comes in God’s name (see 19:38; Ps. 117:26 LXX). Jesus’ response summarizes his deeds and reiterates his mission from Luke 4:18. Like John, Luke’s hearers deduce Jesus’ identity, as the one who comes, from what he does. Before Jesus answers, however, the narrator summarizes Jesus’ deeds (7:21). In 4:18, Jesus anticipates giving sight to the blind, but the first reference to such an incident occurs in this summary. Thus, when Jesus recaps his deeds in 7:22, he can include restoration of sight as well as the raising of the dead from 7:11–16. The restoration of the centurion’s slave, the raising of the dead youth in Nain, and the narrator’s summary prepare for Jesus’ answer to John.

Jesus’ reference to blessedness for those who take no offense (7:23) likely picks up Ps. 117:26 LXX again. The negative statement regarding taking no offense expresses its positive counterpart: blessed are those whose actions dramatize their faith(fulness).

Jesus then elaborates his response to John. John’s ministry was extraordinary, unlike some trivial reeds blowing in the wind, and was democratic, unlike elite royalty. Conspicuously, John included tax collectors (3:12; 7:29). Jesus reiterates John’s task to prepare for one who comes (3:4, 16; 7:27). Demolishing social hierarchies (Wolter, 283), Jesus evaluates John as greater than all others. Second, he makes two comparisons. One is between the least and John in God’s commonwealth (7:28). The other is between the way some Pharisees and lawyers and some tax collectors responded to God. The criterion for the comparison in both cases is God’s justice (7:29–30), which John portrayed in socioeconomic terms (3:11–14). These tax collectors celebrated God’s justice in forgiving them by accepting John’s baptism.

Jesus gives a striking characterization to those who respond negatively to both John and Jesus. When he speaks about “this generation” in 7:31, he does not mean everyone of his epoch. “This generation” is literally “what is born from this.” “Rejecting God’s purpose” in 7:30 is personified as if it is their “daddy,” in contrast to those who are the children of Sophia, who also is the personification of “Wisdom” (7:35). Although the reference to Pharisees and lawyers in 7:30 is general, they cannot be identified directly with those in 5:17, because here they are characterized by their response also to John. Jesus then consummates his characterization of specific Pharisees and lawyers who are present (addressing them directly in the second person, 7:34) with a proverb: “Sophia/Wisdom is vindicated on the basis of her children” (7:35). Sophia’s children respond positively to John and Jesus as the antithesis of rejection by these Pharisees and lawyers. But the use of Sophia leaves room for weighty amplification (see the following section). Sophia’s children include tax collectors who celebrated God’s justice (7:29), but this also picks up the tradition of Wisdom as an attribute of God (Wis. 9:9–11).

The meal in Simon’s house (Luke 7:36–50) also brackets John’s question about Jesus’ identity. Moreover, it is a case of Jesus’ association with tax collectors and sinners. Although Jesus confronts Simon, Luke’s audience would not overlook his initial hospitality. Jesus eats not only with tax collectors and sinners but also with Pharisees. But Simon’s hospitality is interrupted by a woman with a reputation as a sinner. She performs an acted parable with her hair, tears, and ointment (7:38; e.g., like Jeremiah wearing a yoke [Jeremiah 27–28]). But the acted parable is subject to two interpretations. Simon interprets it as a violation of norms that calls into question Jesus’ prophetic identity (Luke 7:39). Jesus interprets it as asserting the woman’s restoration.

Simon’s interchange with Jesus is marked by civility. He addresses Jesus as “teacher” (“rabbi”). Jesus tells a parable about a debtor who owes ten times as much as another. Proportionally, the greater debtor is more estranged from the creditor than the lesser. Simon participates in agreeing that forgiving both debts transforms the greater estrangement into greater affection. Jesus then contrasts the woman’s actions with Simon’s. In this comparison, Simon is not rebuked for not bathing Jesus’ feet or kissing him or anointing him (7:44–46). Rather, this makes Simon analogous to the small debtor. Then Jesus overwhelmingly emphasizes the woman’s forgiveness and indicates that her actions show great love for having been forgiven. In response to Simon’s interior monologue (7:39), Jesus does know what kind of woman touched him. As the centurion dramatizes faith(fulness) at the beginning of the chapter, so does the woman at the end. She does not confess faith(fulness) but demonstrates it. The scene ends in restoration and peace for the woman. How does it end for Simon?

Jesus’ comparison of the centurion’s faith(fulness) with Israel’s is virtually always understood as a judgment on Israel in favor of gentiles. The centurion is a specific character already related to Israel and does not represent gentiles generally.

A strong interpretive tradition takes Jesus’ remarkable deeds as manifesting his divinity. In the healing of the centurion’s servant and the raising of the widow’s son, Jesus does astonishingly little, however. The centurion especially contributes significant action. Both events point especially to Jesus as a prophet (see also 7:39) who speaks and acts for God. Luke’s Christology is deduced from Jesus’ functions (Cullmann). Similarly, faith(fulness) in this chapter is not confessional. It is deduced from actions.

The NRSV and many commentators take 7:29–30 to be the narrator’s voice. It is equally possible that Jesus continues to speak. The word “this” is not in the Greek: Instead of: “All the people who heard this,” read: “All the people who heard including the tax collectors affirmed God’s justice … but the Pharisees and lawyers who refused John’s baptism rejected God’s purposes for themselves.” Does Jesus or the narrator affirm John’s baptism? Whereas many interpreters take these words as representing Luke’s view of Pharisees and lawyers in general, if Jesus is speaking, then it is clear that the Pharisees and lawyers here are individual characters who rejected God’s purposes. This resists painting all Pharisees and lawyers in Luke with the same brush.

“This generation” in 7:31 is generally understood as a repetition of “those born of women” in 7:28 (note: the idiom emphasizes “birth”). Such a reading interprets this generation (7:31) apart from the context. Further, the basic meaning of genea (7:31) is not a “generation” (time period) but “lineage,” “descent.” Contextually, “this generation” has a referent—the Pharisees and lawyers who rejected God’s purpose (7:30). At the end of the comparison, Jesus speaks of Sophia’s children (7:35). The parallel at the beginning of the simile likewise has to do with parent and child: “To what will I compare people whose ‘daddy’ is ‘rejecting God’s purpose’?” (John the Baptist similarly characterizes those who reject God’s purposes as “children of vipers,” 3:7.)

The sudden appearance of Sophia in Jesus’ pronouncement in 7:35 draws on a bank of traditions especially from Wisdom literature. In recent decades, the notion of drawing on the background of Wisdom traditions has achieved prominence especially through feminist interpretations. In Wis. 9:9–11 and elsewhere, Sophia has the status of a divine attribute. In Prov. 1:20–33 and 8:1–21, Sophia is a personified voice who calls for followers at the intersection of wisdom and evil.

Prominent interpreters hold that John is outside God’s commonwealth (Conzelmann, 18–27; Wolter, 283). Some also consider “blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me” as a rebuke of John. Two matters make both unlikely. John’s question and Jesus’ response are in interplay with Ps. 117:26 LXX. “The one who comes” in the psalm is in interplay with John’s question (Luke 7:19), and “Blessed is the one who comes” from the psalm is in interplay with 7:23. Second, the phrase “in God’s commonwealth” (7:28) preferably modifies the verb rather than the “least”: “In God’s commonwealth the least is greater than John.” The “least” who is “greater” demolishes hierarchies in God’s commonwealth (see 22:26–27).

Simon the Pharisee is generally taken as negatively characterizing all Pharisees and as ironically participating with those who call Jesus a friend of tax collectors and sinners (7:34). Granted, his hospitality pales in comparison with the woman’s, but he nevertheless hosts Jesus and Jesus responds actively. Simon’s question to himself about Jesus’ prophetic identity is answered in the passage. Was Simon convinced that Jesus was a prophet as Luke’s hearers would be? Tradition notwithstanding, there is no basis in the text for identifying the woman who anoints Jesus, whom the narrator calls “a sinner,” as a prostitute or as Mary Magdalene (see 8:2).

Many commentators note that the centurion and the widow pair a male and female, characteristic of Luke elsewhere. Nevertheless, the widow’s meager characterization pales in comparison with the centurion’s extended characterization.

John’s question about “the one who comes” has been taken as equivalent to a messianic title (Mowinkel; Hahn, 380). Evidence for a stock title is lacking, but this does not detract from the allusion in 7:19, 23, to Ps. 117:26 LXX (quoted in Luke 19:39).

There is renewed interest today in pre-Lukan traditions. Multiple independent attestation of Jesus’ table fellowship with tax collectors and sinners (e.g., Mark and Q) and agreement of friend and foe on such table fellowship (Jesus agrees with opponents, 7:34) make inclusive commensality strongly characteristic of the historical Jesus.

Traditional interpreters have construed Sophia as parallel to Jesus. But Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza has interpreted Sophia (Q 7:35) as reflecting an early Christian Wisdom theology in which both John and Jesus are among her children. Jesus in particular is “Divine Sophia’s eminent prophet”—engendered and derivative from her (Schüssler Fiorenza, 139–44). For her, even Luke equates Jesus’ messianic work with divine Sophia’s (151). This heightens attention to feminine dimensions of God’s character. Such dimensions pour beautifully and profoundly from Bobby McFerrin’s “Twenty-Third Psalm” in the feminine. But lack of direct evidence in the text calls for reservation as to what is meant in Luke.

That slaveholders exploited slaves, including sexual exploitation, was a cultural commonplace. If interpreters note the centurion’s slave’s lack of voice and strain nevertheless to discern it, they might hear overtones of same-sex eroticism (Gowler, 116–18; similarly on Matthew’s version; Jennings and Liew). This fits Jesus’ inclusive relationships. If, however, such a voice is present, would the Israelite elders, who are positively characterized, also portray the centurion positively (Wolter, 269–70)?

Interpreters often call the woman in 7:37 a prostitute. Feminists and others object that this is gratuitous and prejudicial. Whatever her reputation, Jesus’ affirmation of her forgiveness and his blessing of peace mean her restoration to proper communal relationships.

Jesus’ interchange with Simon ends without resolution. Two views compete in studies of Pharisees in Luke. One sees them consistently characterized as pejorative even to the extent of reflecting anti-Judaism in Luke and views Simon as completely failing to offer Jesus hospitality—not even comparable to the lesser creditor. Another perspective sees Pharisees as characterized variously (not mere stereotypes), who, like Socrates’ sophist interlocutors, are not straw men but competent interlocutors. Given Simon’s role as host, the clarification of his doubt about Jesus’ prophetic identity, and Jesus’ parable, might he (and other guests, 7:49) also be persuaded? Indeed, Robert Tannehill asks, “Should We Love Simon the Pharisee?” (1994). Are interpreters today open to new possibilities for such Pharisees?

Luke 8:1–56: Seed and Soil, Discipleship and Kinship

Luke 8:1 recalls 4:43 and makes this section a continuation of proclaiming the good news of God’s commonwealth in other towns. New emphases fall on women associates, four of whom are named (see 23:55; 24:10) and who contravene customs by supporting men (8:1–3). Anticipating the parable of the seed and the soil, they correspond to seed growing in good soil.

Unproductive and abundantly productive soils in 8:4–8 echo relationships between plants/fruit and good/evil in 6:43–45. Nevertheless, the disciples request clarification. Jesus responds initially with the riddle of speaking in parables (8:10). God grants (divine passive) insiders knowledge of mysteries of God’s commonwealth that are hidden from outsiders. Inconsistently, Jesus shifts from varieties of soil to relationships between seed and soil, corresponding to people shaped by divine or evil powers.

But this allegory is bracketed by metaphors that demand probing reflection. Mysteries of God’s commonwealth (8:10) introduce the explanation (8:11–15), and it concludes with a lamp, correlated with hiddenness that will be disclosed and secrets that come to light (8:16–17). The result is a figuration between insider/outsider and mystery/light. Insiders who know mysteries of God’s commonwealth are to disclose them to outsiders. Outsiders then become insiders. Insiders who do not disclose the mysteries become outsiders (8:18). Consequently, the mysteries are not esoteric!

Jesus’ mother and siblings, who are outside (8:20), provide an instance of what constitutes insiders. Biological kinship warrants no priority over the crowd. Jesus’ kinship derives not from human ancestry but from God: whoever derives life from God is God’s child and therefore Jesus’ kin (“elective kinship,” Bovon, 1:315).

Though commonly understood as controlling nature, calming a storm at sea is also related to hearing and doing God’s will (8:22–25). The key is two rebukes. Jesus rebukes the storm but also his disciples when he asks, “Where is your faith(fulness)?” The rebuke of the storm produces calm; the rebuke of the disciples produces fear and amazement. Faintness of faith(fulness) positions them perilously close to outsiders. Are they Jesus’ kin?

Then a bizarre outsider becomes an insider (8:26–39). For the first and only time, Luke’s Jesus leaves Israelite territory. He encounters a demoniac on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee, likely a gentile, unclean—an extreme outsider who dwells not among the living but in tombs, as good as dead. As in other restorations, violations of norms (this time regarding gentiles and tomb impurity) are formidable. Also the demons name themselves “Legion,” which the narrator associates with “many demons.” But it is also Latin for many Roman soldiers. Moreover, how this demoniac plays out his insanity involves psychosocial manifestations of oppression (Theissen, 255–56). Indeed, Jewish people named the Romans who subjugated them “swine.” They equated Roman legions with herding pigs, and a Qumran text belittles a legion for worshiping the emblem of swine on their standards and weapons (Annen, 184). The demons enter swine that bring about their own demise by jumping in the lake (symbolically?). The man then becomes an insider at Jesus’ feet, who makes mysteries of God’s commonwealth known to others. He hears God’s word, does it, and is Jesus’ kin.

Two intercalated healings juxtapose a prominent, named synagogue leader, who comes to Jesus face-to-face, with a nameless woman hidden in a crowd, who approaches from behind (8:41–56). He voices a desperate request for his “only” daughter (reminiscent of the widow’s only son, 7:12); she expresses her desperate desire only as an internal monologue to herself. Twelve years of life-draining hemorrhages also juxtapose her to the voiceless twelve-year-old whose life is draining away. Indeed, Jesus calls the woman “daughter.” Astonishingly, her healing occurs solely by her action. Jesus, as an enabler, senses it but does nothing. She violates norms about blood taboos and touching. Her internal voice also becomes public, and she tells her story. Jesus calls this “faith(fulness)”—not confessed, but dramatized. The moment her life is restored, the twelve-year-old loses hers. But Jesus implores Jairus not to give in to death. Mourners who do give in to death contrast with Jesus’ insistence on life. Again, Jesus does little. Taking the daughter’s hand and calling her “child,” he entreats her to arise. He is an enabler; she acts and arises.

At 8:2–3, social and economic dimensions certainly have to do with women among Jesus’ disciples. Responsibility with respect to the “word” is often understood as a verbal message. But 8:15, 21, specifies doing. God’s commonwealth is not confined to proclaiming good news. It is realizing good news, as in the Baptizer’s call for fruits in socioeconomic terms (3:2–14). God’s word for Jesus (5:1) also means restoration of marginalized people to community (4:18; ch. 5). The restoration of the demoniac, understood early and often as an allegory of salvation, includes his proclamation of what God did for him, including his reintegration into family and community.

Luke 9: Disciples and Mission, Triumphs and Disappointments

Mary Ann Tolbert’s interpretation of the parable of the seed and soil in Mark looks for characters in the rest of the Gospel who play out roles described in the parable (1989). The result is a particularly positive characterization of women. This holds also for Luke. The near context in 8:2–3 calls special attention to women disciples who bear fruit. Do their actions correspond to the grateful woman in Simon’s house (7:35–50)?

But publicly women also have limited exposure and voice. The voiceless woman with the flow of blood transforms herself and achieves a public voice. When Jesus calls her “daughter,” some take it as subordinating her. Alternatively, does this “daughter” anticipate 13:16, where another woman is called Abraham’s daughter, which indicates reintegration into Israel’s covenant community? Does it fit Jesus’ understanding of “elective kinship” in 8:21?

Interpreters debate the relationship of the woman with the flow of blood to purity laws. One outcome is resistance to portraying Israelite culture negatively, so that the woman’s healing becomes supersessionism, in which Jesus transcends oppressive Israelite society. But in both Israelite and Hellenistic cultures, a flow of blood was taboo, and as in other restorations in Luke, violation of norms is integral to the healing. But the woman’s restoration to her Israelite community precludes supersessionism.

In 9:1–6, Jesus enables and sends the twelve to overcome oppressive powers and disease as manifestations of God’s commonwealth. The context is clearly communal; they make no provisions for themselves, but live in mutuality with villagers. Jesus also anticipates opposition (recalling 2:34), and endorses a ritual that witnesses against opposition—shaking off the very vestiges of the town, a sign of how serious neglecting God’s commonwealth is.

Luke 9:7–9 juxtaposes imperial systems with God’s commonwealth by bracketing Herod’s perplexity before and after by success in the apostles’ mission. Rome’s client ruler finds the success sensational enough to take notice (maintaining local order is his charge). Recalling the Baptizer’s execution also makes the apostles take Herod seriously. Herod’s imperial perspectives evaluate Jesus quite inadequately.

But the twelve are out of step. The feeding of the five thousand (9:12–17) is generally taken as an independent episode, but contextual connections are strong. In 9:3–4, the Twelve live in mutuality with villagers. Luke 9:12 inverts the situation. Villagers need sustenance from the Twelve. Indeed, the incident focuses on Jesus’ command to them: “You give them something to eat” (9:13). Jesus enabled the Twelve to liberate and cure (9:1–2); now they claim inability. Jesus’ enabling actions are unassuming—blessing and breaking meager provisions, the beginnings of any Israelite meal. This enables the Twelve to complete the task—they give “them” something to eat (9:17).

Characterizations of Jesus and the disciples are interdependent. Rumors provide Jesus a prophetic identity; Peter adds messianic identity (recalling 1:32–33). Jesus, however, immediately associates rejection and suffering with messianism and adds his first passion prediction. Clearly here, as elsewhere in Luke, Israelite leaders, necessarily collaborators with Rome, are involved in his suffering, but not the people as such. Identifying Jesus as God’s Messiah adds to Peter’s prominence, but discipleship is also qualified by following Jesus under the image of a cross. Crucifixion means Roman punishment designed to shame and terrorize resistors of imperial systems severely. Following Jesus does not avoid imperial systems. It means perseverance unto death. In Luke, who meets this qualification?

The transfiguration drives the interdependent characterization of Jesus and the disciples higher (9:28–36). The setting and scene—the mountain, the changed appearance, clothes as bright as “white lightning,” Moses and Elijah glorified, Jesus’ departure (exodos) to be accomplished in Jerusalem, the cloud, and the voice all evoke the numinous, which both reveals and conceals. The voice naming Jesus God’s Son and commanding the disciples to heed him advances the identity of both. But the disciples are deficient, in a stupor and terrified. Peter speaks nonsense. At the end, all are dumbfounded.

Meanwhile, disciples at the foot of the mountain fare poorly. Jesus enabled them to cast out demons and cure (9:1–2). Now they are unable to heal another only son. Could Luke’s audience discern who is included in Jesus’ address to a “faithless and misbelieving generation” (9:41)? The specific charge in the second person plural to people who are present may include the father, certainly includes the disciples, but not Jesus’ contemporaries generally. Again, Jesus is the enabler who heals, and restoration to family and community is explicit (9:42). Luke 9:43 again characterizes Jesus by his functions in relation to God.

Another ominous prediction again characterizes the disciples as fearful and lacking understanding (9:44). The following incident bears this out. They dispute their own prominence (9:46–48). Jesus corrects them by welcoming a child and by encouraging mutuality with people of low status. But then they do not accept another who is enabled in Jesus’ name but whom John evaluates as an outsider. Again Jesus corrects: “Whoever is not against you is for you” (9:50).

Luke 9:51 shifts to a new period designated as the time for Jesus to be taken up, and Jerusalem emerges as Jesus’ destination/destiny. Still, relationships with strangers, qualifications for following Jesus, and enabling disciples for mission follow long-established narrative trajectories (Bendemann 2001). Jerusalem fills in the itinerary that started in 4:43–44. In 9:52–55, James and John express another misunderstanding of relationships with Samaritans. Jesus rebukes them. In 9:57–62, Jesus challenges three potential followers. To the first, he portrays himself as homeless (the unpropertied class). Sharp sayings about the dead burying the dead and someone who looks back while plowing (self-contradictory) anticipate negative responses. Yet Luke leaves room to suppose that they might accept the challenges.

The feeding of the five thousand is conventionally understood as a nature wonder. But emphasis falls on enabling the disciples to feed others. The crowd is unaware of and infers nothing about Jesus’ power. Many interpreters have taken Peter’s naming Jesus Messiah (8:20) as fulfilling Israelite expectations. But Israelite expectations varied greatly, and a suffering Messiah was unexpected. Persistent anti-Jewish interpretations of the transfiguration as showing that Jesus superseded Moses and Elijah are unwarranted. Because Jesus’ glory is in the eyes of the beholders (Peter, James, and John), some interpreters shift the transformation to the disciples. But they remain woefully deficient. In spite of views that the transfiguration anticipates later two-nature Christology, it remains awesomely inexplicable.

A strong consensus takes 9:51 as introducing a central section/travel narrative. Alternatively, 9:51 specifies a destiny but continues Jesus’ itinerary and mission from 4:43–44 (Bendemann).

Luke 10: Manifesting God’s Commonwealth in Contexts of Oppression

The feeding of the five thousand as the disciples’ feeding others shifts the focus from a nature wonder to a gift (Theissen, 45, 251). Luke underplays the multiplication of food, and focuses on mission in God’s commonwealth: “You give them something to eat” (9:13). The twelve baskets of remnants signify that Jesus enables the Twelve to fulfill their mission (Fitzmyer 1981, 1:769). This fits thematically with Mary’s joy over God’s mercy in filling the hungry (1:53), Jesus’ mission of good news to the poor (4:18), and blessedness for the poor who are fed (6:21) (see also feasting and eating, e.g., 5:27–39; 6:1–5). The plight of hunger today, exacerbated by using food as a tool for wealth and power over others, certainly indicts those who today claim to be disciples of the Jesus who enables mission: “You give them something to eat.”

In Jesus’ inversion of a dispute about greatness into welcoming a child with whom Jesus himself identifies, children achieve a paramount place in what it means to follow Jesus.

Jesus makes two separate remarks on discipleship (9:23–27, 57–62) that emphasize God’s commonwealth first, last, and always. Between the transfiguration and the second remark, the problem of the need for Jesus to enable the disciples is again at issue in their inability to heal (9:37–43). Nevertheless, at the end of this healing, the greatness of God’s commonwealth is apparent.

Luke 10:1–12 extends Jesus’ enabling. He commissions seventy-two others (seventy in the NRSV). Like the Twelve, the livelihood of the seventy-two depends on mutuality, and they heal and proclaim God’s commonwealth. Three things are new: they go in pairs, they prepare for Jesus’ visits, and God’s commonwealth is at hand through them. The harvest anticipates success but comes with dangers—they are like lambs among wolves (10:2–3). But rejecting them incurs judgment because it is rejecting God (10:16).

As in the sermon in Luke 6, Jesus addresses woes against the unrepentant directly in the second person, mixing singular and plural (10:13–16). The plural may indicate the cities, and the singular may indict individuals among whom deeds of power are performed. Luke 10:16 legitimates the seventy-two: to listen to those whom Jesus’ commissions is to listen to him. In 9:10, the narrator summarizes the apostles’ success; in 10:17, they report in direct speech. This evokes Jesus’ explanation of their power against hostility. His report of Satan’s fall is parallel with the “enemy’s” subjugation (10:18–19). Perhaps Luke’s hearers construe this as mythological, but it is also contemporaneous with Jesus and the mission of the seventy-two. The enemy’s power is tangible. From 1:71, 74, enemies are subjugators and involve imperial systems. In addition, Jesus’ assurance that the names of the seventy-two are written in heaven (10:20) means that their part in God’s commonwealth is not future but a present alternative to imperial systems.

Jesus uses kinship language (parent/child, five times) to confirm the present reality of God’s commonwealth. The revelation of Jesus and God is also not future but present. The disciples’ blessedness is similarly what they have seen and heard (10:21–24).

In contrast, a Torah teacher inquires about his future: “What do I do so that I will inherit eternal life?” (10:25). “Inherit” alerts Luke’s hearers to God’s promises of inheritance to Abraham’s descendants (e.g., Gen 12:3; 17:3–8), which Israelite traditions pushed into a future “world to come.” “Testing” implies a dialogue to discover answers (Wolter, 392). The lawyer, not Jesus, defines love of God and neighbor as the heart of Torah. In Jesus’ response to the lawyer’s challenge to delimit “neighbor,” Luke’s audience presumably hears the parable for the first time. In it, the sequence of a Levite following a priest anticipates a third Israelite who would pass by. But a Samaritan interloper throws open the question about who is neighbor to whom and subverts expectations. If hearers identify with the Samaritan, the parable is an astonishing example of transgressing barriers to help someone. If they identify with the wounded man, as the lawyer likely would, they are the ones needing help from someone deemed deficient. Again, the lawyer gives the answer. Luke’s hearers obviously heard the story as persuasive. Did they ponder how the lawyer heard it? Further, this is a concrete story of life in God’s commonwealth already.

Sheer sequence invites comparison of Martha and Mary (10:38–42) with the lawyer. Like the women in 8:2–3, Martha offers hospitality as envisioned in 9:4–6; 10:5–9. But she is anxious and troubled. Mary as a female learner is as astonishing as the Samaritan in the previous parable. Jesus affirms Mary’s choice as “the good part.” Linguistically, in comparing two choices, “the good part” may be heard as “the better part” (NRSV). The focus, however, is not on comparing the two women but on the “one thing” that is needful. This is what Mary chose.

Satan’s fall is often understood as a mythological primordial event. Joel B. Green (1997, 419) pushes it toward the future. But Satan’s fall is manifest in the success of the seventy-two, though struggles against evil continue. Interpreters conventionally categorize the parable of the compassionate Samaritan as an example. But if hearers identify with the wounded man, they play the role of needing help rather than providing it. Interpreters have long viewed Martha and Mary in terms of preference for submission to Jesus over hospitality. Emphasis has shifted to a contrast between distraction and listening to Jesus.

The announcement that God’s commonwealth is at hand has generated discussions of whether it is already or not yet present. A present qualified by the future takes care of both (Wolter, 380–81).

Luke 11:1–13:9: Praying and Acting, Fairness and Injustice

Because God’s commonwealth is an alternative to Rome’s, the dangers for the seventy-two are sociopolitical, like Jesus’ crucifixion. Evil, however, exceeds its manifestations in imperialism. The lawyer’s test question implies an honor-shame challenge that implies gain for one participant and loss for the other (Malina and Neyrey). But challenges also invite dialogue from which both may gain. The lawyer’s attempt to “justify himself” may mean “ensuring what is right” (Robbins, 252). In any case, his interchange with Jesus explodes with astonishing new visions of reality, of inclusion and mutuality beyond ethnic, social, political, and religious differences. Parallels today both local and global are inescapable. Schüssler Fiorenza (62–73) takes Martha’s diakonia (“serving [tables]” or “ministry”) as preserving memories of her office of ministry among the earliest followers of Jesus, which later antifeminism (either Luke’s or his precursors’) repressed. But the contrast is between listening and distraction, not between listening and diakonia (Green 1997, 436).

Teaching disciples to pray continues Jesus’ enabling and aims at God’s commonwealth in fullness—on earth as in heaven. Directly addressing God as “father” as a child to a parent is unusual (but see Sir. 23:1, 4), but fundamental to God’s commonwealth. God’s commonwealth entails table and community, food (a synecdoche for all of life) and forgiveness (the heart of community). In relation to God, sins are forgiven. In relation to others, debts are released (11:1–4) (Green 1997, 443). Then parables reinforce this parent-child bond—God is contrasted with a friend at midnight who gives, resistance notwithstanding, and with parents with human fallacies who give children good gifts. God’s preeminent gift is the Holy Spirit (11:5–13).

Against this parent-child bond, Luke’s audience encounters a competing identity for Jesus—an ally of the ruler of demons (11:15). Three arguments counter this: the proverbial civil-war “house divided against itself” (11:18–19), manifestations of God’s commonwealth deriving from Jesus’ bond with God (11:20), and binding the strong man (11:21–22). Another perspective identifies Jesus by his maternal relationship. Jesus gives preference to kinship with those who obey God (11:27–28; 8:21).

Judgment then invades a short sermon (11:29–36). The “generation” that Jesus characterizes as evil means not just his contemporaries but also their “lineage” from evil as if they are its children. His first point is about signs. As 11:15–16, 20, shows, signs are ambiguous. Interpretations vary. Beyond exorcisms that show his bond with God, Jesus appeals to Jonah and the queen of the South only to claim that God’s commonwealth exceeds both. Nineveh’s repentance occurred not from Jonah’s positive proclamation but his warning of judgment.

Again Jesus eats not only with outcasts but also with Pharisees (11:37). This Pharisee is surprised that Jesus neglects washing, but makes no reprimand. Jesus contrasts body zones—clean outside does not mean clean inside (11:39–41). Suddenly he levels woes at Pharisees. He avoids criticizing their practices but emphasizes matters that they neglect: justice (mercy toward others, 11:41) and love of God (11:42). Assuming status above others incurs another woe (11:43). He characterizes them as covertly unclean, like unmarked graves—metaphorically similar to “clean outside does not mean clean inside” (11:44). He adds three woes against lawyers: loading people with burdens (how is unstipulated, 11:46); participants (vicariously and concretely) in violent treatment of messengers from God’s Sophia/Wisdom (11:47–51); obfuscating knowledge in contrast to God’s Sophia (11:52). After this, the summary of hostility against Jesus hardly surprises.

Jesus continues preparing disciples in Luke 12, warning them about the Pharisees’ “yeast,” which Luke glosses as hypocrisy (12:1). Hypocrisy is not merely outward behavior that conflicts with inner realities, but also accepting deceptive views of reality as genuine (see 11:42). Luke 12:2–3 reiterates the saying about hiddenness that will be disclosed from 8:17. There, it refers to positive revelation of mysteries of God’s commonwealth; here, it is a negative judgment against hypocrisy. Astoundingly, this judgment is not against Pharisees but against disciples. A double message prepares them for persecution—first, fearing death and condemnation, and second, trusting God’s care: “Do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows” (12:4–7). Confessing Jesus assures his reciprocal affirmation before God; denials beget his denials (12:8–10). The context of interrelated imperial systems is again evident with reference to adjudication before synagogues, rulers, and authorities (12:11–12).

God’s care is also the context for orientation toward material goods (12:13–20). First, Jesus refuses to settle a dispute about inheritance. Inheritances from father to son are developments from Abrahamic covenant promises that supposedly resulted in providing equitable access to resources of the land. The dispute means that either the plaintiff wants more or his brother refuses equitable access. Either way, Jesus presumes greed, which he reduces to absurdity with a “you-cannot-take-it-with-you” parable.

Then, analogies from nature illustrate divine provisions for subsistence. Moreover, Jesus distinguishes God’s commonwealth from the nations (12:30). Behind this lies Israel’s covenant traditions of distribution of land and its resources that are qualitatively distinct from other nations. Here Luke’s audience would understand imperial systems that exploited subsistence farmers—90 percent of the population—and funneled resources to the top 10 percent, and especially the top 2 percent (12:22–34). “Alms” as the complement to selling possessions means not mere “donations” but “merciful action” (12:33). This is but half of Jesus’ message, which also has exhortations to diligence and warnings of judgment (12:35–59). Even these are punctuated with promises of blessing for fidelity. But figurations shift from nature to master-slave relationships, presuming that masters have prerogatives to bless and punish (12:37–38; 12:42–48). Slavery was a pervasive feature of Roman imperial systems that exploited the have-nots. In contrast to the conventional notion of oppression of slaves by the master, in 12:37 the master serves the slaves. In 12:45, like imperial collaborators, a slave enslaves other slaves. This too is a common feature of imperial oppression in which certain slaves become overseers of others. Both the slave and the master who punishes this slave play roles in oppressive imperial systems (see below on 17:7–10).

Jesus ends by portraying conflicts that God’s commonwealth faces (12:49–59). Jesus comes with fire (12:49). The Baptizer associated fire with Jesus’ baptism with the Spirit (3:16). But instead of baptizing, Jesus faces baptism (12:50). The range of associations with fire for Luke’s audience would stretch from “enthusiasm” to “empowerment” to “purification” to “destruction.” Here it is closely associated with division—surprisingly focused on households (12:52–53).

This portrait ends before a magistrate, a local imperial collaborator (12:57–59). Luke’s audience would not assume that the accused is in the wrong. Magistrates favored elite Roman citizens over peasants (Garnsey, 128–41; Lintott, 97–123). So Jesus advises prudent accommodation to avoid debtor’s prison. Such prudence also transfers to making judgments about God’s commonwealth.

Luke 13:1–5 continues themes of judgment and repentance. Jesus’ interlocutors report two rumors about unusual suffering and speculate about punishment for guilt. Pilate’s massacre of Galileans instantiates imperial violence. The other is an accident at the tower of Siloam. At first glance, Jesus appears to dissociate sin from suffering. Actually, he intensifies it by leveling the playing field to include everyone and warning his hearers of punishment unless they repent.

But the following parable emphasizes “pastoral care” for opportunities to repent (13:6–9). A gardener cultivates and nourishes a tree so that it will bear fruit. The vineyard and fig tree are stock imagery for Israel and shalom. How will listeners transfer the meaning from the planter, the gardener, and the fruit to the situation of Jesus and God’s commonwealth?

Jesus claims no additional sign other than Jonah and the queen of the South because manifestations at hand are evident (11:29–32, see 12:54–56). Interpreters vary on whether that which is “here” is Jesus himself or God’s commonwealth. Jesus’ manifestations of God’s commonwealth resolve these alternatives. “Alms” in modern terms inadequately translates eleēmosynē (12:33). It means “merciful action” far exceeding “donations.” Eschatology is often understood as a map of the future. Eschatology in 12:35–48 functions for living appropriately in the present. The incident of Pilate’s slaughtering Galileans at their temple sacrifices is not attested elsewhere, but it fits other acts of his violence that are.

Little in this section is explicit about imperial systems until the end of Luke 12. But responses of subjugated Israelites to Hellenistic and Roman domination heightened certain identity markers (circumcision, Sabbath, purity) above other aspects of Israel’s heritage. Social control agents attempted to enforce these (11:46) (Bhabha, 3–5, 37, 41, 58, 162–64; Niebuhr, 21–23). Jesus’ woes reflect debates among factions about such identity markers (11:37–54) and lament disregard shown to central aspects of Israel’s heritage—justice and the love of God (11:42).

The so-called prosperity gospel takes 12:31 to mean that striving for God’s commonwealth engenders wealth. Living in God’s commonwealth (“It is your parent’s good pleasure to give you the commonwealth,” 12:32) in contrast to the world’s nations (12:30–31) clearly contradicts this. It is elites in the world’s nations that amassed wealth by exploiting the masses. Further, 12:22–31 has to do with subsistence living, not accumulating wealth.

Luke 12:35–59 is predominantly taken as anticipating the parousia. But emphasis still falls on mission in the present. The debtor before the magistrate (12:57–59) is generally understood as a parable of God’s judgment. Alternatively, it means prudent accommodation to imperial systems.

Some interpreters view the reference to “one more year” in the parable of the fig tree (13:8) as a last opportunity for Israel’s repentance that, from Luke’s retrospective point of view, would no longer be available. This view was strongly supported until the last quarter of the twentieth century, when emphasis on the gardener’s care achieved more prominence, but it is still advocated (Egelkraut, 206; Fitzmyer 1985, 2:1005–6).

Luke 13:10–35: Restoration and Inclusion in God’s Commonwealth

The context of the healing in 13:10–17 is teaching. Luke’s audience perceives both. As liberation from Satan, the woman’s healing manifests God’s commonwealth (11:20–22). The synagogue plays a dual role. Under imperial systems, institutions have sociopsychic impact in maladies (Theissen, 255–56). But it also is a place for teaching and healing. The synagogue leader objects not to healing but to violating the Sabbath. Jesus challenges not the synagogue leader but the assembly: “hypocrites” (13:15). Hypocrisy is not playing an artificial role, but the failure to discern God’s work on Sabbath (Green 1997, 524). Further, the woman emerges from marginality when Jesus names her uniquely “Abraham’s daughter”—astonishingly, such a title for a woman is otherwise unknown. Jesus endorses the healing with village analogies about animal husbandry. Reference to Abraham also evokes God’s promises to bless (1:54–55) that this healing fulfills. Luke 13:17 implies that Jesus persuades critics to join in rejoicing at all his remarkable deeds.

Jesus underscores this woman’s liberation as manifesting God’s commonwealth with two brief parables (13:18–20). First, a mustard seed produces a nesting place for birds. This may echo Ps. 84:4: “The sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest where she may lay her young.” Moreover, this recalls God’s care that exceeds concern for birds (Luke 12:24). Next, a woman leavens enough flour to feed 150 people (Nolland, 2:730). This also is not mere increase but the woman’s accomplishment.

Luke 13:22 reiterates Jesus’ programmatic mission to other cities (4:43–44) and his destination/destiny (9:51). Teaching is emphasized, but it depends on an interlocutor who presumes that Jesus will agree: “Only a few will be saved, won’t they?” (13:23). Jesus concurs, but to the interlocutor’s peril, Jesus includes him among those left out: “I say to you [plural]” (13:24). Then they see ancestors and prophets in God’s commonwealth from the outside looking in (13:28). By contrast, numerous people from everywhere are eating inside. Those who imagine that others are excluded in favor of a few are themselves excluded.

Simultaneity links the next incident closely. After the prologue, the first word Luke’s audience hears, in 1:5, is “Herod.” The same name in 3:1 identifies his son, Antipas, who beheads the Baptizer (3:19–20). Some Pharisees (13:31), who are not antagonistic (Green 1997, 537–38), warn Jesus to avoid him. Herod is not merely curious (9:9) but presumes a ruler’s right to dispose of Jesus. Jesus’ epithet “fox” is adverse—no concession to shrewdness. His message for Herod (13:32–33) reiterates his itinerant mission and contests Herod’s right of disposal over him.

Jesus travels to Jerusalem not to escape Herod’s jurisdiction but to contest Jerusalem’s jurisdiction. Jewish people are heirs of Abrahamic promises whom Jesus longs to gather like a hen her chicks. The deeds in 13:32 identify this gathering as God’s commonwealth. The “forsaken house” refers to existing systems that are antithetical to God’s commonwealth.

The mustard seed and the yeast are often called growth parables, but this highlights only growth, whereas the figuration involves the whole. The lack of reference to the seed’s size or the amount of leaven means that the comparison is not between small and large. Many interpreters take nesting birds in a mustard plant as sheer exaggeration. Still, the plant’s specific species is beyond recovery. Some varieties grow as high as ten feet (BDAG). These parables highlight accomplishments of a man and a woman.

Luke 14: Changing Social Relationships

A change in setting notwithstanding, the woman’s healing stands in continuity with the unfruitful fig tree (13:6–9) as a case of pastoral care for Abraham’s descendants (Green 1989, 515). The mother of the seven sons in 4 Macc. 15:28 is identified as “the Abrahamite” (like “Israelite”), but not as Abraham’s daughter as in Luke 13:16 (Brawley 1999, 120n36). Schüssler Fiorenza (1992, 209–10) objects that anti-Judaism is inscribed in Jesus’ dialogue with the synagogue leader. In the setting, however, everyone is Jewish. Moreover, Jesus’ concern is instantiating Israel’s covenantal values. The narrow way and the closed door in 13:22–35 are often appealed to as limiting salvation to a devout remnant only. In the text, however, the door is closed for those who limit salvation, whereas the banquet in God’s commonwealth is wide open. This raises a question for the popular Left Behind series: Who gets left behind?

The primary setting for Luke 14 is a meal. Again a Pharisee hosts Jesus. Close scrutiny at meals regarding social status and ethics was the norm in antiquity. So watching Jesus (14:1) hardly means hostility. Indeed, Jesus likewise scrutinizes his companions (14:7). Meals were also occasions for thought-provoking discussions. It is appropriate, then, that Jesus raises the discussion topic of healing on Sabbath (14:3). He argues by curing a man with dropsy and defends this by giving his interlocutors the perspective of a parent or farmer who would rescue a child or ox from a well on Sabbath (similarly 13:15). The other guests mount no objection.

Luke’s “parable” in 14:7 is actually an exhortation against seeking honor over others, based on a proverb that inverts honor and shame (14:11). Further, Jesus challenges his host not to invite elite guests with expectations of reciprocity, but the poor and afflicted, who cannot reciprocate. Astute hearers might note that the host partially complied by inviting Jesus and the man with dropsy, presumably without expecting reciprocity.

As expected, another guest introduces a discussion topic regarding dining in God’s commonwealth (14:15). Jesus responds with a parable about someone whose invitation to a banquet is refused by people who are tied to possessions and family (14:18–20). The host replaces them with the poor and afflicted (as Jesus advises, 14:12–14) and demands that his house be filled with street people to the exclusion of the original invitees (14:16–24). Thus this host is “converted.” He changes his social relationships by including people of low status (Braun, 98–131). His original invitation built a “fence” that excluded the lowly; now he builds a “bridge” to include them (Braun, 120, 126).

The topic of inclusion/exclusion of disciples then takes an arduous turn (14:25–35). Severe criteria for discipleship exclude virtually everyone. Luke’s audience understands the reference to “hate” to mean the necessity to decide between God and family. Still, deciding against family members and life itself (14:26) exceeds Jesus’ earlier definition of kinship among those who do God’s will (8:19–21), but fits his warnings of family divisions (12:51–53). Abandoning all possessions (14:33) appears to conflict with the support Jesus and his disciples receive from women (8:2–3). Two parables also contradict these severe demands. The first is an analogy of possessing sufficient economic resources to complete a tower (14:28–30). The second calls for capitulation to a more numerous army with the supposition that if resources were sufficient there would be no capitulation (14:31–33). These analogies demonstrate that actions involve consequences, but poorly serve the specific conclusion of abandoning possessions. Salt that has lost saltiness is absurdly self-contradictory. If relations with family, possessions, and life itself empty salt of its saltiness, and if such salt is not worth a mound of feces, then it would seem that inclusion in discipleship is exceedingly unlikely. There are two hermeneutical clues to the scope of the exhortation: Hating family and life is glossed by reference to crucifixion (14:27), which literally was a consequence for resisting imperial systems. Further, the final comment hints that it is a figuration: “Let anyone with ears to hear listen” (14:35). The juxtaposition of crucifixion with the rejection of family is extreme but still conceivable. Because God’s commonwealth requires an unrelenting decisiveness for Israel’s heritage as an alternative to imperial systems, discipleship is arduous.

Long traditions have supplied allegorical identities to the sequence of those invited to the banquet: for example, (1) Israel’s leaders, (2) the Israelite populace, and (3) gentiles. The slaves who bring in the poor and afflicted are commonly understood as allegories of missions, first to Israel and then to gentiles. Alternatively, the parable is not allegorical, but deals with relationships with the poor and afflicted.

Read against a Septuagint background, hating family and life means making a decisive choice between God’s commonwealth on one hand and family and life on the other (Wolter, 516–17). Many interpreters struggle in vain to explain how salt loses its saltiness. The saying is simply self-contradictory.

Luke 15: Advocating Inclusion in God’s Commonwealth against Resistance

Dropsy (14:2) causes the body to retain fluid and paradoxically induces thirst. Some interpreters think the reference to dropsy is meant to parody Pharisees, some of whom are “lovers of money” (16:14) (Braun, 26–42). This is excessive. Dropsy plays no role other than a malady to be cured. Furthermore, in other healings, maladies do not parody characters. Later rabbinic sources allow healing illnesses that are life-threatening on Sabbath (e.g., m. Yoma 8.6). Jesus’ criterion of doing good on Sabbath is in continuity with such an attitude and extends it.

Willi Braun shows that the host in the parable is converted to change social relationships. “Hating one’s life” (14:26) merits consideration that elsewhere in Luke the spirit of life drives restoration of health, justice, and peace.

In Luke 15, some Pharisees and scribes murmur against Jesus’ association with socially marginalized people. Jesus defends himself with three parables. The first puts his detractors in the shoes of a shepherd who rejoices over finding a lost sheep, makes divine rejoicing over one person who repents analogous, and thereby legitimates Jesus. The second makes a woman’s search for a lost coin analogous to Jesus’ mission and concludes, again, with divine joy over one person who repents. The first half of the third parable partially corresponds to the first two without an analogy to Jesus’ mission. A father rejoices extravagantly over finding his son. All three parables subvert expectations. The shepherd irrationally forsakes ninety-nine sheep in dedication to one. In a patriarchal culture, the second makes female characters analogous to Jesus’ mission and God’s joy. The third evokes pathos when the desperate son expects to return, but only as his father’s laborer. His father’s extravagant joy and his restoration to sonship beyond anything he asked or thought are astonishing. This story turns not on the son’s return, which fits a son who has learned his lesson, but on the father’s welcome. Perhaps this echoes Ps. 103:13: God’s love is like a father’s.

But the third parable also has a second half. An older brother is contrariwise shocked over the celebration of his brother’s return. His refusal to celebrate is reminiscent of those who rejected the banquet invitation (14:18–20; Wolter, 538). The father assures him of his love but gives priority to celebrating the other son’s return. Not only has a lost person, like a sheep or coin, been found, but also a family member. This parable ends without closure. Did the older brother enter and celebrate? Can he remain his father’s son without welcoming his brother? Were those who murmured in 15:1–2 persuaded?

Since Adolf Jülicher (1888), most interpreters have considered the settings for the parables in the Gospels to be secondary. Thus they separate parables from their contexts in order to interpret them from Jesus’ perspective. Joachim Jeremias (132) took the setting in 15:1–2 as essentially accurate and argued that these parables were not the gospel, but a defense of it. Other interpreters have reasoned that if these parables did not proclaim the gospel, where else could it be found?

In the third parable, the son’s share of the inheritance is his patrimonial heritage, deriving from God’s promise of land to Abraham’s descendants. Israel distributed land among tribes and families. Squandering this heritage in a foreign land abandons Israelite identity beyond feeding pigs. The break is not merely with the nuclear family but with the family of Abraham.

Luke 16: Children of Mammon and Children of God

Interpreters often note that the older brother characterizes the younger negatively as squandering his possessions with prostitutes and designate his characterization as unreliable (Powell, 274). Typically, this transfers to also regarding as unreliable Luke’s portrayal of Pharisees and scribes who unreliably accuse others. But narratives commonly fill in additional information progressively, and this characterization fills in the picture of “reckless living” in 15:13. This “completing analepsis” (later information that fills in an earlier gap) scarcely transfers to Pharisees and scribes.

The ratio of what is lost to the original unity is stepped up with each parable: one sheep of one hundred, one coin of ten, one son of two (Green 1997, 573, 576). Mark Allan Powell (265–87) designates the famine in 15:14 as a crucial detail that is generally disregarded in the prosperous Western world but would have been obvious in Luke’s world, where famine was a menacing threat, and often a reality, and the squandering son fails to safeguard against such a world. Nevertheless, in that uncertain world, he is welcomed and safe in his father’s house. In the imperial context, Rome’s tribute system moved enormous amounts of grain from the East to the capital, often leaving local populations unable to accumulate surpluses against famines, which were thereby exacerbated. Such a world is contrasted with the father’s house, a vivid analogy of the contrast between Rome’s empire and God’s commonwealth.

Luke 16 shifts Jesus’ address from critics to disciples. A parable describes an economic delivery system featuring a rich man who acts unlike the father of the prodigal son. His broker squanders his property. So he dismisses him. The broker already manipulated accounts in his own favor and does the same for his patron’s creditors so they will favor him. Even the rich patron praises his prudence. Jesus interrupts this story at 16:8 with the comparison typical of Luke’s parables: Offspring of “this age”—that is, who derive their behavior from “this age”—are more prudent than offspring of light—who derive their behavior from “light.” All the characters in the parable—the rich man, his broker, the debtors—are offspring of this age in contrast to offspring of light. For Luke, mammon in 16:9 is also an “offspring” of this age; that is, mammon is born from injustice. Jesus’ exhortation to make friends by means of mammon that is born from injustice hinges on the oxymoron “eternal tents” (16:9). Tents as temporary shelters make this scathing irony (Porter; Brawley 1998, 820): Make friends by means of wealth that is born from injustice so that when it fails they will receive you in “eternal temporary shelters” (contra Nolland, 2:806). (Note: the rich man in 16:19–31 winds up without supporting friends.)

Jesus continues comparing faithfulness with injustice. In 16:11–12, he explicitly critiques faithlessness with respect to “unjust wealth” belonging to another. This excludes taking the broker’s prudence in 16:8 as an example to emulate. Two worlds—mammon and God’s commonwealth—are mutually exclusive (16:13).

Some Pharisees overhear and ridicule Jesus. Like the rich man in 16:1–8, their prudence regarding not only wealth but also honor (justifying themselves) makes them offspring of “this age.” Jesus’ response contrasts self-justification with God’s perspective and insists that abominable conventions of honor-shame are incompatible with God’s commonwealth (16:14–15).

Although Luke’s audience could have taken Jesus’ reference to the law and John as being discontinuous with the good news (contrasting “until then” with “now,” 16:16), more likely, the law and John are starting points from which good news is now proclaimed. Therefore, Jesus affirms the abiding validity of law (16:17). Indeed, his interpretation of adultery in 16:18 intensifies law. Perhaps Luke’s audience puzzled over entering God’s commonwealth by force. “Force” could reflect the power of patron-client systems to compel reciprocity, to gain support by favoritism, to gain honor for oneself, and to accommodate to prudent rationales in contrast to the law, the prophets, and God’s commonwealth.

This corresponds to the next parable, about a propertied member of the elite who scores splendidly in serving mammon, but poorly in terms of justice according to the law and prophets (16:19–31). He is the foil for a poor man who receives God’s promises to Abraham’s children. Lazarus is clearly Abraham’s descendant; the rich man is not (see 3:8). The rich man pleads for his brothers in vain, because Abraham also affirms the abiding efficacy of the law and the prophets.

Interpreters debate whether the “lord” in 16:8a is the rich man or Jesus. Clearly shifting from third person narration in the parable to first person exhortation, 16:9 begins with the word kai, which continues from 16:8b: “Because the children of this age are more shrewd than the children of light, I also say to you.” Coherence also supports the patron as the lord of 16:8a. There is no verb in 16:16: “The law and the prophets until John” (NRSV supplies “in effect”). Many interpreters have argued that John belongs to a decisively separate time before Jesus. The trend today is toward continuity, supported by the abiding validity of the law (16:17–18). The good news of God’s commonwealth is the law and the prophets (Nolland, 2:802).

Luke 17:1–18:8: Scandals and Faith(fulness) Less Than a Mustard Seed

More than dealing with possessions, the parable in 16:1–8 deals with economics in patronage and honor-shame systems. Especially it deals with deriving behavior from injustice. The broker is characterized not by the adjective “unjust” but by the genitive (tēs adikias, 16:8), which, as the “offspring of this age” and “offspring of light” (16:8) indicate, is a genitive of origin (Brawley 1998, 819). Another genitive of origin modifies mammon in 16:9. Prudent rationales fit patronage and honor-shame systems but are incompatible with God’s commonwealth (similarly Green 1997, 597). Most interpreters value prudence positively here. The parable and Jesus’ critique of honor-shame (justifying oneself) among Pharisees devalues prudence as a way of rationalizing injustice (16:15). The rich man and Lazarus is hardly about future judgment. Their deaths are past, and their relationships with Abraham are in the present.

Jesus warns his disciples that it is impossible to avoid stumbling (skandala). Momentarily, Luke’s audience might take this as their own stumbling, but 17:1 quickly shifts to causing another to stumble. A millstone around the neck is a radical punishment metaphor for causing one “little” one to stumble (17:2). This recalls the little children of 10:21, who know their parent and know they are God’s children; that is, the “little flock” in 12:32, to whom God gives the commonwealth as fulfillment of promises to Abraham, and Lazarus from the preceding parable. Anyone familiar with Scripture might remember skandala that caused Israel to fall away from God. Suddenly Jesus turns to forgiveness. Failing to forgive is an instance of skandala (17:3–4).

Does 17:5 skip to another issue, or is faith(fulness) the condition for avoiding skandala? Repeatedly, Luke dramatizes faith(fulness) as action. The apostles’ request implies a profusion of faith(fulness) beyond what they already have; Jesus reduces what they presume they have to less than a mustard seed (17:5–6).

Is the slave who does what is commanded a positive or negative example (17:7–10)? Hearers first occupy the role of a slave owner whose slave comes in from the field. They have a choice: invite the slave to the table or command him to serve the table. If the slave serves, would they, as slave owners, express gratitude? (parallel to 12:37). But precipitously, hearers are made to play roles not of slave owners but of unthanked slaves.

In sorting this out, hearers confront a story about ten lepers who encounter Jesus. Jesus does nothing except to say, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” On the way, they become clean (17:11–14). One returns to give thanks, and the narrator calls him a Samaritan (17:15–19). Jesus calls this faith(fulness); that is, the Samaritan dramatizes faith(fulness). The other nine treat Jesus as an unthanked slave, and now hearers perceive that Jesus’ mustard-seed basic minimum is gratitude to God for God’s works. Some Pharisees’ question of when God’s commonwealth comes (17:20–21) stands in continuity with this basic minimum. Jesus’ answer is where as well as when. That is, he locates the commonwealth in the cleansed leper’s gratitude as manifesting God’s commonwealth in their midst.

Jesus then alerts his disciples to adversity in God’s commonwealth. One stumbling block (skandalon) that leads astray is false messiahs (17:23–24). Jesus predicts a future final manifestation of God’s commonwealth in himself, but only after suffering and rejection (17:24–37). This final manifestation is an unforeseen crisis demanding decisions in which some are saved (Noah, Lot) and others destroyed (Sodom, Lot’s wife) (17:26–35). This prompts a question from Jesus’ disciples: “Where?” Jesus answers in a riddle: where eagles gather around a corpse (17:37). Is it possible to unravel what eagles mean? (See below under “The Text in Contemporary Discussion.”)

Luke 18:1–8 still addresses Jesus’ disciples. Before narrating the parable, Luke interprets it: “It is necessary to pray always and not to despair.” Maintaining hope (18:1) responds to the adversity predicted in 17:22–37. The judge, who does not fear God or respect people (18:3) and thus whose behavior is born from “injustice” (genitive of origin, 18:6), refuses to grant justice to a widow. He belongs to imperial systems that contrast with concerns for widows in Israel’s Scriptures. Still, the woman’s audacity would surprise hearers. The judge finally accedes to the widow’s vexing persistence and grants her justice. Luke 18:8 reiterates the theme of faith(fulness) in 17:5–6, 19.

Stumbling in 17:1 initially raises concern for personal failure. Such an element is present in 17:3–4, but in 17:1–2 the issue is causing others to stumble. Stumbling in the Septuagint means falling away from God.

The parable about a slave who does what is commanded, ending with “we are worthless slaves, we have done only what we ought to have done,” is widely taken as Jesus’ evaluation of his apostles who ask for increased faith, and the slave owner is likened to God, whose gratitude they should not expect. But if the parable is taken with the healing of ten lepers, and with 12:37 in the larger context, the unthanked slave corresponds also to Jesus, who is unthanked by nine out of ten lepers who are healed. Green (1997, 614) asserts that thanking a slave would put a master in debt to the slave. But the Samaritan leper who returns with thanksgiving does not obligate Jesus (17:16).

Interpreters have long debated whether entos hymōn in 17:21 means “in one’s heart” or “among you.” Questioning when God’s commonwealth comes diverts some Pharisees from the cleansing of the lepers and searches in the wrong place for the wrong time. The NRSV implies a new setting by beginning 17:20 with “once.” An alternate translation, “when he was asked,” gives the Pharisees’ question continuity with the context. There is no change in setting.

From the early church through the Middle Ages, the eagles in 17:37 were understood to be either angels or believers who are devoted to the body of Christ (O’Day).

Under the notion that parables have one central meaning, the parable of the widow and the unjust judge has been taken as either valuing the widow’s persistence or contrasting God’s readiness with the judge’s reticence. Neither excludes the other.

Feminists and others (e.g., Cotter) champion the widow who asserts her rights against unjust, imperial, patriarchal systems, and they emphasize the way she dramatizes faith(fulness). Imperial studies note the verisimilar depiction of Roman courts, which favored elite Roman citizens over others (Garnsey, 128–41). “The parable is a burlesque of the whole justice system” (Cotter, 342). Praying with confidence that God grants justice is part and parcel of confronting injustice persistently, and vice versa.

Popular eschatology, such as the Left Behind series, often takes 17:22–37 to be descriptions of what some call the “rapture.” First, the notion of rapture is not taken from any one biblical text but from a selective combination of texts picked here and there and removed from their contexts. Second, the language here is apocalyptic—vivid, imagistic figurations that create a sense of crisis for the present. The purpose is not to be a road map of the future (e.g., pilotless airplanes; see 17:34) but to encourage appropriate responsibility now.

Luke 17:37 repeats a Greek proverb (Ehrhardt) but substitutes “eagles” for the proverbial “vultures.” Definitively, the text means “eagles” and not “vultures,” as in recent English translations. Roman soldiers marched behind standards bearing eagles. Rome, like many nations today, depicted itself as an eagle. Jupiter’s mascot was an eagle. Roman emperors likewise associated themselves with eagles, and the Septuagint repeatedly depicts empires that God uses to punish Israel as eagles. But God also brings to naught all such empires to reestablish shalom. Jerusalem’s gathering, which Jesus desires in 13:34, is God’s commonwealth (see on 13:32–34 above). The gathering of imperial eagles is Rome’s kingdom. Christ’s final manifestation reestablishes God’s commonwealth against imperial systems, which are reduced to feeding on a corpse (Carter 2003).

Luke 18:9–34: Inclusion in and Exclusion from God’s Commonwealth

The parable in 18:9–14 revisits inclusion and exclusion. The addressees (some who trusted that they were right and despised others) are new. A Pharisee and a tax collector pray at the temple. Neither the Pharisee’s gratitude for what differentiates him from others nor the tax collector’s plea for God’s mercy typify prayers of their group (Wolter, 593). Rather, group identity reflects social standing. Reminiscent of 13:23, in which it is presumed few will be saved and many will wind up outside, the first worshiper is not justified, the second is. Jesus, then, inverts honor and shame with a proverb (18:14).

The disciples, dangerously close to having a millstone hung around their necks (17:2), rebuke people who bring infants to Jesus. But following his own remarks in 17:3, Jesus rebukes them and declares that God’s commonwealth belongs to little children (18:15–16, similarly 10:21). Three interpretations of receiving God’s commonwealth “as a little child” are possible: receiving the commonwealth the way a child would; receiving it the way one accepts a child; receiving it by accepting a child (18:17). Interpreters profit from pondering each possibility without neglecting the others.

A rich ruler, obviously part of imperial systems, then asks the same question as the lawyer in 10:25: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” (18:18). The question unavoidably interacts with receiving God’s commonwealth as a child. Jesus’ answer, similar to his response in 10:26, is: “What is written in the law?” (18:20). Jesus tells him to sell “whatever you have” and redistribute it among the poor, recalling 16:13: “You cannot serve God and mammon.” The ruler’s disillusionment evokes Jesus’ parable: It is harder for the rich to enter God’s commonwealth than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle (18:24–25). Some listeners deduce that no one can enter. Jesus then reiterates 1:37 with variations: “Human impossibilities are God’s mighty deeds” (18:27).

Peter presents Jesus’ followers as the rich ruler’s counterpart. Jesus promises a double repayment for leaving home and family for God’s commonwealth (18:29–30). In the world to come, it is eternal life. Repayment in the present is unspecified but already includes Jesus and present manifestations of God’s commonwealth.

At 18:31, Jesus again reveals adversity to the Twelve. He forecasts being handed over to gentiles (Jewish people are not mentioned). A summary of his suffering and death follows. The Twelve do not understand.

Many interpreters take the parable of two men praying in the temple as addressed to Pharisees. But the Pharisee who prays determines the addressees no more than the tax collector. In Luke 23, Jesus is mocked and Pilate threatens to flog him, echoing terms used in 18:32, though spitting is not mentioned. John Nolland’s note (2:895) that handing Jesus over to gentiles breaks Jewish national solidarity fails to consider how indigenous ruling elites collaborate in imperial systems.

Luke 18:35–19:27: The Commonwealth Jesus Brings and Ruling Systems

Social identity theory holds that members of groups exaggerate both in-group solidarity and distinctions from out-groups. Further, the social sciences identify honor as the pivotal value in antiquity. In this light, the Pharisee draws honor both from his in-group and by differentiation from tax collectors. The tax collector is inevitably a collaborator in imperial systems, but his prayer disavows norms of his group and implies changing group identity. As one whom God justifies (divine passive), he belongs to God’s commonwealth.

Jesus’ promise to the ruler of “treasure in heaven” (18:22) is parallel to God’s commonwealth (18:24, 29), and it is a figurative circumlocution for God (Wolter, 600). Redistributing wealth as such does not accumulate treasure in heaven (18:22). Rather, the entire statement is a figuration for serving God rather than mammon.

Three episodes move toward Jesus’ destination/destiny in Jerusalem: he heals a blind man as he approaches Jericho, encounters Zacchaeus in Jericho, and relates a parable as he nears Jerusalem. As Jesus approaches Jericho, a blind man calls him David’s son and pleads for mercy, as did the tax collector in 18:13 (18:35–43). He is literally marginalized, off the road, begging. His insistent pleas break through efforts to silence him. Jesus issues only one word commanding him to do something: “See [again]!” The blind man’s pleas in spite of protests dramatizes faith(fulness). He does see again and glorifies God, as did the Samaritan in 17:18. Unlike the ruler (18:22–23), he follows Jesus. Perhaps he also “sees” what the Twelve cannot understand (18:34) (Wolter, 607). The crowd, including those who protested the blind man’s pleas, also sees anew and praises God (18:43).

In Jericho, Jesus encounters rich Zacchaeus, also marginalized as a chief tax collector/sinner (19:7). His office assures that he is a collaborator in imperial systems. He also wishes to “see” but faces two obstacles: a crowd and his short stature (19:3). He does one thing: he climbs a tree. As Zacchaeus’s guest, Jesus enters another relationship with tax collectors/sinners that draws social protests (19:7). Zacchaeus reveals no motivation for changing relationships with mammon by redistributing half of his possessions among the poor and making fourfold reparation for defrauding (19:8–9). Jesus equates this change with salvation and the renewal of Zacchaeus’s Abrahamic heritage (19:9–10). Like Abraham’s daughter in 13:16, Zacchaeus is Abraham’s son.

Jesus relates a story to a crowd traveling to Jerusalem that expects God’s commonwealth to appear with Jesus’ arrival there (19:11). In the story, a ruler in imperial systems gives ten slaves one mina (traditionally rendered “pound”) each, with which they are to do business. Meanwhile, he goes to receive a kingdom (19:12–14), which some compatriots oppose. When he returns, he audits his slaves. Profits garner praise (19:16–23), but he disenfranchises a slave who safeguarded his mina (19:26). Moreover, he slaughters the delegation that opposed him. The story is hardly about the minas and the slaves. It is a parable of a throne pretender who seeks and tries to maintain power. For Luke’s audience, this likely was a gruesome analogy to Rome’s empire—exploiting peasants, punishing unproductivity, and slaughtering opponents. Jesus distances himself from such a kingdom.

From early Christian centuries, the blind man’s naming Jesus David’s son was understood as a christological confession fulfilling Scripture. It more directly recalls 1:32–33, 54–56, 69–73. Many interpreters emphasize Jesus’ healing by the power of his word, but here the word is an imperative for the blind man to act: “look up/again.” Some take Zacchaeus’s expression of giving in the present tense as informing Jesus of what he already practices customarily (Fitzmyer 1985, 2:1225). But this runs aground on the future fourfold restitution of those he defrauded (19:8; also Wolter, 613–14). Interpreters have long noted parallels to Josephus’s account of Herod Archelaus, who promised rewards to those who would support him in his attempts to consolidate power as a king (Josephus, Ant. 17.8.4–9.2). But then commentators virtually always take the parable as an allegory in which slaves correspond to people facing Jesus’ parousia and judgment, including the eschatological destruction of his opponents, particularly Jerusalem and its rulers.

Luke 19:28–20:44: Ruling Systems in Jerusalem and the Things That Make for Peace

Restoring the blind man’s sight in 18:35–43 involves defying attempts to keep the marginalized on the margin. Faith(fulness) here is not confessional but consists in persistent violations of impediments. Unlike others for whom Jesus performed remarkable deeds, the blind beggar is not merely reintegrated into community (Theissen, 52–53) but also follows Jesus. Recovery of Israel’s covenant traditions is thematic for Luke, and in light of 1:32–33, 54–56, 69–73, “David’s son” manifests God’s fidelity to Abrahamic promises to bless. In Zacchaeus’s case, Jesus overcomes social impediments in order to manifest that even an enlightened tax collector is Abraham’s son. In light of how hard it is for a rich man to be saved (18:27), Zacchaeus is an instance of an impossibility in human hands that becomes God’s mighty deed (Brawley 1998, 822). Zacchaeus’s reversal follows Mary’s inversion of rich and poor in 1:52–55, but it directly benefits the poor with something approaching mutuality. Overwhelmingly, interpreters of the parable on the minas and the slaves focus on praise of industrious discipleship. This produces a misfit of a harsh, greedy ruler disciplining unproductive disciples and opponents (cf. Herzog, 162–68). But parallels to Josephus’s account of Archelaus make it rather a parable of a throne pretender that is analogous to imperial systems. Jesus presents these systems as the antithesis to God’s commonwealth.