Angels, dreams, stars, prophets and Jesus

The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.” Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone.’” (Luke 4:4 NIV)

This first temptation of Jesus by Satan immediately raises the question, “if not bread alone, then what else?” Matthew’s account gives the answer, where the whole of the reference to Deuteronomy 8:3 is quoted by Jesus.

Jesus answered, “It is written:‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. ’” (Matthew 4:4 NIV)

At the time of writing it is Christmas 2015 and as I have heard the familiar Christmas story again and again it has struck me that the whole thing is about God, the supernatural creator of all things, speaking to us humans. This is an amazing concept, that a being so far above us, so much bigger and more powerful, should want to speak to us. That he would even care. But reading the Christmas story again this is what I see – a God who speaks in extraordinary ways into people’s lives.

First, he speaks through angels. The angel Gabriel spoke to Zechariah, to Mary, to Joseph. An angel appeared to a group of shepherds in the hills near Bethlehem and spoke to them, then was joined by a whole host of other angels who sang a worship song to God. An angel of the Lord warned Joseph to flee to Egypt. Nowadays most people regard angels as mythical, fantasy figures. Luke seems to think otherwise, claiming that what he writes is fact, not fiction. If angels are indeed real, what form do they take, and how do we know when we meet one? These are hard questions to be sure, but one thing is certain, they speak about God, his nature, his character, his purposes, his plans. They also worship God, recognising that they are subordinate to Him.

Second, God speaks through dreams, an experience that most people can identify more easily. Matthew’s account of the Christmas story mentions this method of God speaking though Luke does not. Joseph in particular seems to be rather receptive to this expression of God’s voice – in three places in Matthew’s gospel we read of an angel appearing to Joseph in a dream: first, when he is wondering what to do about Mary’s pregnancy, second, after Jesus is born and he is instructed by the angel to flee to Egypt, and third, when he is in Egypt and the angel tells him it is time to go home. Not just Joseph, but also the Magi (who are not mentioned by Luke either) experience guidance through this method: they are warned in a dream not to return to Herod after they see Jesus.

The three wise men were an interesting group. They were astrologers and made a study of reading the signs in the heavens. Astrology is still popular today but is seen by most as being superstitious nonsense, a bit of fun, not to be taken too seriously, even if it is often included in the daily newspapers. It was apparently taken much more seriously in the ancient Orient. On the occasion of the coming to earth of the Son of God, astrology led the three “wise men” to the place of his birth. What are we to make of this? Was God speaking through astrology? These men were not Jews, not believers in the one true God. They did not appear to “hear God.” But within the context of their world view they were led to God. It would appear that God does not just speak to believers, but to anyone willing to listen, and that he speaks not just in orthodox ways, but in any way he wants, adapting his words to the context of those to whom he is speaking.

A fourth way that God speaks in the Christmas story is through prophecy. Prophecy is speaking the words of God, in some cases apparently almost involuntarily. When Elizabeth met Mary she felt the child within her own body jump and she exclaimed suddenly, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear.” According to Luke, prophecy is a supernatural phenomenon which involves being “filled with the Holy Spirit.” For example, when Zechariah started speaking again after the birth of his son John, he was “filled with the Holy Spirit, and prophesied.” A similar thing seemed to happen in the Jerusalem temple when Simeon and the prophetess Anna encountered the baby Jesus. They too were filled with the Holy Spirit and recognised this little child as the Son of God. When a person prophesies it is not him or her speaking, but God.

The Christmas story is a story of God speaking. Another disciple of Jesus, John, takes the whole idea of God speaking at Christmas a step further, though he does not relate the historical Christmas story in his biography of Jesus, but rather records an interpretation of what happened when Jesus was born into the world. John says that that the very phenomenon of Jesus’ birth and life was an expression of God speaking to us humans. He thus claims that if we want to know what God is saying to us we need to look at Jesus, the embodiment of God’s words.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it… The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1)

Jesus is a historical figure. He lived and died in Palestine two thousand years ago. The historical records indicate that he rose again, something that non-believers refuse to accept, but which for believers is the cornerstone of their faith. This faith – Christianity – has transformed our world, and now, two thousand years later, the beginning of the Christian story is celebrated all around the world, by believers and non-believers alike, albeit for different reasons. The message of Christmas is simply this – God wants to communicate with humans, and will go to great lengths to do so and use many different techniques. The ultimate and clearest expression of this was in the life of Jesus. The words of God are what give us life.

When the devil tempted Jesus he was attempting to replace the life giving words of God with something else we all need but which ultimately cannot satisfy – food. In the contemporary celebration of Christmas in the Western world the devil attempts to do just the same – to replace the life giving words of God with material possessions which ultimately are a poor substitute. Yet to a large extent it seems the devil has succeeded in his deception. Witness the difference in the throngs of people in the shopping malls at Christmas to the modest numbers attending church during the same weeks.

What do we think gives us life and meaning?

Learning from a servant girl

Luke 1:40-49 NLT
[Mary] entered the house and greeted Elizabeth. At the sound of Mary’s greeting Elizabeth’s child leaped within her, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. Elizabeth gave a loud cry and exclaimed to Mary, “God has blessed you above all women, and your child is blessed…

Mary responded, “Oh, how my soul praises the Lord. How my spirit rejoices in God my Savior! For he took notice of his lowly servant girl, and from now on all generations will call me blessed. For the Mighty One is holy, and he has done great things for me.”

Everything was not straightforward for Mary. She was young, unmarried, and pregnant. This last fact could ruin her future. Her pregnancy was a threat to her marriage, her security, her future standing in society. She was not ideally situated in life to have a baby. If only God could have waited a few months then no one would have noticed and her pregnancy could have been a cause of rejoicing. Her life was not proceeding as she had imagined it would, things were not going according to plan. How was she to respond?

Mary rejoiced. She did not know how she would cope. She did not know how things would turn out. She did not know what Joseph or her parents would say, not to mention the whole community of Nazareth, her home town. Perhaps these anxieties were part of the reason she decided to visit her relative Elizabeth. But whether these things worried her or not we don’t know. All we know is that her first words to Elizabeth were an expression of joy. Did Elizabeth already know? Had Mary written to her? Could Mary write? Or was Elizabeth’s exclamation on Mary’s arrival pure “word of knowledge,” a supernatural gift of the Spirit?

We don’t know the answer to these questions, but what we do know from what Luke recorded, is that deep within her being Mary was happy. She was more than happy. Her soul was rejoicing, and her spirit broke forth in praise for God. She knew that in the eyes of the world she was no one. She was a person of very little significance to anyone except her immediate family and friends. Just another uneducated village girl who would soon be married to a carpenter and then live out her life, if she survived childbirth, bearing children and caring for her husband and children.

But now, through an unplanned pregnancy, she would bear an extraordinary son, and deep in her heart she knew that the world would never be the same again. She didn’t know how this could end well, but she knew deep down that it would. She didn’t know how she she would navigate the days ahead as her pregnancy became known to the community, but she knew that if God could make her pregnant in this bizarre way, that he could take care of her through the days that followed. Her life would never be the same again, and she realized that she would not go to her grave an unknown village girl from Nazareth. She realized that from then on all generations would call her blessed.

Mary did not question her situation. She had met an angel and she had believed his words. She accepted that what had happened to her was from God. She certainly had many things to think about, many questions to ask. She clearly felt more comfortable talking to her relative Elizabeth than her mother. Her mother may not have even been alive, who knows. But she knew that Elizabeth’s pregnancy was also “special,” an unexpected gift from God, so it is little wonder that she sought her out. Elizabeth’s first words were a confirmation to her that the child growing within her was no ordinary child. We can only imagine what they talked about for the three months they were together.

Why had all this happened? Why had God chosen her, a lowly servant girl? He could have chosen anyone for this purpose, why choose a nobody? Mary’s answer is simple. “The Mighty One is holy.” Just that. She could not understand his actions, but she knew that God was holy, and does wonderful things. She did not know why God had done what he had done, but she was confident that things would turn out all right, because she believed that He was holy.

God is holy, and he does great things. Often not in the way we would imagine. Often not in the way we have planned for our lives, or even that we want. Our lives may be uncertain and unpredictable, but our God is not. He is holy and can be trusted. It is good if our spirits rejoice as Mary’s did, in the midst of the uncertainty of our lives.

Company of angels

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests. (Luke 2:8-14 NIV)

Luke chapter 2 starts in the ordinary historical events of the time. Mary is pregnant and she travels with Joseph to Bethlehem, as they are required to do according to the decree of the ruling authorities. They presumably did not travel alone, since there would likely have been others in Nazareth, or at least in the Galilee region, who also traced their ancestry back to Bethlehem. By this time it was common knowledge in Nazareth that Joseph’s young wife was pregnant, though their marriage had not been formalised. Most would have assumed Joseph was the father, though he knew otherwise. According to Matthew’s gospel he had accepted her pregnancy and their prospective marriage also because of an encounter with an angel, but Luke does not record that meeting. There is nothing to suggest that Joseph had told anyone else about his angelic experience, so the people they knew just assumed Mary’s pregnancy was a sign of his lack of self control, his inability to wait until the socially accepted time for sex.

Whatever people thought, Joseph and Mary were effectively man and wife, and the teenage Mary was close to delivering her first baby – not a nice time to be travelling on foot to a distant and unfamiliar town without their usual supports and comforts. A first baby is a big event for every woman, and even in our modern and well equipped world, travel in the last few weeks is usually discouraged. In the ancient world it would increase the already considerable risks and Mary, aware of the closeness of her coming confinement, may well have wondered if she would ever see Nazareth again, or if she would, like so many others of her time, perish in childbirth. But an angel had spoken to her, and she believed that at least the child would survive. Perhaps that sustained her.

They arrived, Mary presumedly exhausted. There was nowhere to stay. It was cold. The story is well known. The only place for them was a cow shed, with no beds or chairs, just a hard floor smelling of manure and cow urine, and some feed troughs. Whether there were any animals there or not we can only guess. The sheep at least were out in the fields. The cattle may well have been too. There was no food, no room service, no heating. It was simply a place to get some shelter from the wind and the rain, or snow, if it was a cold winter. They had only the clothes and the bedding they had brought with them. Whether Joseph and Mary were alone or whether others were also crowded into this unpleasant shelter is unknown. Normal life was tough in ancient times, but for Joseph and Mary it was even worse than usual. Here they welcomed their first child into the world, in the cold and dirt and darkness of a middle eastern winter. This, if we are to believe the Bible story, was the way that God chose to enter the world, the way that the supernatural chose to invade the natural.

The scene shifts away from the tired travellers and the exhausted Mary to more insignificant people, shepherds on the hills around Bethlehem. Shepherds were not prominent members of society. They may well have been young guys, not necessarily the bearded men of popular tales. How many they were is not clear – three or four perhaps? They lived in the open and were used to the cold nights. The sheep were presumably corralled into some kind of enclosure at night, otherwise it would be hard to keep watch over them all, although the “flocks” were perhaps not hundreds of sheep but tens. How the shepherds survived the long nights without down sleeping bags and goretex and all the stuff that we associate with living rough is hard to know. They were used to it. In the middle of the night at least some of them must have been asleep. But a few were awake and they too, like all the others we have read about in these early chapters of Luke, encountered an angel. They responded as many would. They were scared. What they saw before them was not something they knew how to deal with. It was something well and truly out of their experience or their understanding. And this angelic being spoke to them. Don’t be afraid, he said. Then he was joined by a choir, a great company, of singing angels. The shepherds must have been completely stunned, totally overwhelmed. Then suddenly the angels were gone, back into that other dimension of reality that is called heaven in the Bible. The temporary portal between the natural and supernatural worlds closed up again and the shepherds were once again in the dark with their sheep.

Why on earth did God decide to supernaturally announce the birth of his Son to a group of dirty, illiterate shepherds? Can we believe their testimony, because it is surely only what they later said to people that has brought this unlikely story to us, thousands of years later. Luke obviously believed in it enough to include it in his account. It is an unlikely tale, but it has been indelibly etched into the minds and imaginations of millions of believers from that time to this. But it comes in the middle of a whole string of unlikely, and for many modern thinkers unbelievable, events. Jesus’ entry into the world was in many ways ordinary, but the invasion of earth by heaven could surely not happen without anything unusual occurring.

Perhaps this is what is most exciting about the Christian faith. It is not ordinary, it is not natural. It lets us touch the eternal, it lets us participate in the supernatural, it introduces us ordinary, unremarkable people into a dimension of reality that is anything but “normal.” When we meet Jesus everything changes, and life need never be “normal” again.

Two women and God

Luke 1:41-48 NIV
Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. In a loud voice she exclaimed:“Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!”

And Mary said:
“My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed…”

Recently I saw a TV interview with the English author, Ken Follett, on the release of the third novel of his trilogy (The Century Trilogy) that tells the stories of five families living through the dramatic events of the twentieth century. He was asked what he thought was the most significant event or change the last hundred years. I imagined he would say something about communism or nazism, about the two world wars, or perhaps about technology, but without hesitation he replied that it was the feminist movement. As I have reflected on this I have to agree. For thousands of years women have occupied a somewhat lesser place in human society than men, but in the last hundred years this half of the human population of the world has emerged from the shadows of repression and taken its place as equal to the other half of the population, the male half.

Feminism is a response to the reality that for the whole of recorded history women have been treated badly by men. They have been regarded as inferior, weaker, of less value. They have been exploited, used and abused. The reasons for this have been endlessly debated, but the reality of the observation is not contested. Even when women have been treated well by men it has not always been because they have been regarded as equal, but rather a reflection of the benevolence of the other party, the male. The feminist movement has gone a long way to correcting this imbalance, but even in the most enlightened societies there appear to still be problems to be addressed. In the country in which I live, Sweden, which is arguably the most feministic country in the world, there is a political party which has feminism as the cornerstone of its identity. This party sees many of the ills of society as having their roots in the gender inequality of a male dominated world.

In Israel two thousand years ago there was no feminist movement and women were often treated as inferior. But not by God. The first chapter of Luke makes it clear that God regards women highly. The contrast between the description of Zechariah’s response to the angel Gabriel and Mary’s makes it clear that even in the early church, the first readers of this document, there was an understanding that spiritual understanding and maturity, not to mention openness to the extraordinary acts of God were not the prerogative of men. Mary, a young, uneducated women was clearly more receptive to God than Zechariah, displayed greater faith despite the fact that she was in a far more vulnerable position and had much more to lose.

The many stories of women of faith which appear in the pages of the Bible clearly show a God that clearly sees men and women as equal. Feminism, the desire for equality of the sexes, has its roots in the nature and character of God. God does not discriminate between the sexes as we do. His values are different to ours and his acts involve women as readily as men. Women are not an appendage to men, they have value in their own right. In many cases, including the story in Luke’s first chapter, women show themselves superior to men. Here in the lead up to the birth of Jesus, Zechariah the priest has retreated into the background, while Mary and Elizabeth are instrumental in God’s purposes, becoming spokespersons for the nature and character of God. Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Spirit, and the proclamation of Mary in response to Elizabeth’s words is so theologically extraordinary that we can only assume that the young newly pregnant Mary was also filled with the Holy Spirit. Since Luke penned this biography two thousand years ago these two women have proclaimed God to the world in a way that few men have equalled. It is true that the two sons they would bear became extraordinary men, but their mothers were extraordinary women.

Luke was a doctor and would have had much to do with women over the years, in view of the fact that pregnancy and childbirth caused so much illness, suffering and death in the ancient world. In contrast perhaps to the culture surrounding him he was happy to portray women as of equal value to men, in this case superior. He was reflecting God’s heart. God loves his daughters as much as his sons. He does not prefer one to the other, unlike many people in many cultures. He sees us as being of equal value and is as likely to choose a women to bear his good tidings to the world as he is to choose a man.

Coming King

Luke 1:31-33 NIV
You are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.

The first mention of the name Jesus in Luke’s gospel connects the name and the person that bore it to God, to the history of Israel and to kingship. This name, Jesus, means so many things to so many people in our world. As we approach Christmas we think of a baby. Since our lives these days are so dominated by the media, and particularly by the medium of film, we think of the many portrayals of Jesus in movies over the last 30 years: Jesus of Montreal, the Passion of the Christ, the Life of Brian, to name only a few. We seldom relate the person of Jesus, however, to our royal families, either past or present. Royalty is seen as an outdated concept by many in our contemporary world.

For first century Jews, or even for many contemporary Jews, the throne of David was associated with a past time of glory and splendour, an important time in the establishment of the Jewish identity in the world, a time when Israel was a nation to be reckoned with by the lands that surrounded it. When Mary heard Gabriel’s words she would have wondered at how a supernaturally conceived baby in her womb could possibly be linked with the great king David about whom she had been taught all her life. She was probably aware of the fact that there was an ancestral link between her husband to be, Joseph, and King David. Perhaps she understood the angel Gabriel to be referring to that link somehow. But there was no mistaking that Gabriel said that God would give the throne of David to her child. She must have thought about the contemporary Jewish “king” (Herod) who was just a puppet of the Romans, who everyone knew had the real power. Would Jesus, her son, replace him? What would the Romans make of her son?

Mary was a simple village girl, uneducated, who lived in a backwater of the Empire. Her husband to be, a fine man certainly, was just a carpenter. How could their child possibly climb to the heights of political power that the angel Gabriel seemed to be referring to? How could Jesus ever reign? What kingdom could he ever build? It must have all seemed like a fairy tale to Mary. Perhaps she didn’t even reflect over what it all meant. But she remembered those words: they were indelibly imprinted on her mind for ever. Years later she would relate this experience to others. She probably told Joseph early in their marriage, but it may have been not until much later that she told others of that day when that odd person who turned out to be an angel, a messenger of God, stepped into her life with this outrageous prophecy. One day even our writer, doctor Luke, would hear of this amazing encounter, and choose to include it in his “biography of Jesus.”

When Mary stood by watching her son executed some 33 years later she must have thought back to that day and wondered what it had all been about. A whole lifetime had passed, a lifetime filled with the extraordinary and the supernatural. In her unfathomable grief she barely understood what was happening, but she was starting to realise that the life and death of her son was indeed changing the world she knew, even as she watched him suffer and die. She was beginning to realise that against all odds, and in spite of appearances to the contrary, the prophecy of Gabriel was somehow coming true.

Years later it dawned on her that Jesus, the boy she had borne, the child become man that had occupied her heart and mind every day for so many years, had in fact ascended the promised throne, assumed his kingship, and was indeed reigning over an everlasting kingdom. Though it was not the kind of kingdom she had imagined on that first day so many years before when the Son of God had been introduced to her by the angel Gabriel.

The angel Gabriel

I have just read Luke chapter 1 and I have to say that it is a strange story by modern standards. The whole thing revolves an angel called Gabriel, and the story is familiar enough to be able to read it without really reflecting at all on how odd it all sounds. But when I start thinking that Luke is here writing what he regards as an historical account I have to admit that it raises questions. What exactly is an angel? Does Luke actually believe in such beings? Do angels interact with humans? Is this story for real, or is it just some kind of super spiritual explanation of a whole lot of rather ordinary events?

I don’t intend to try to answer all those questions here and now. Finding answers that satisfy are not always easy. But one thing is for certain: this first chapter of Luke’s gospel firmly establishes that this story, which Luke writes as “history,” is firmly embedded in the supernatural. For modern western readers the word supernatural is connected to the idea of fantasy, not with the idea of truth. We tend to believe that truth is established by what can be observed and what can be proven. Since supernatural phenomena are seldom observed, and pretty much impossible to prove (despite the efforts of many to do so), they are generally relegated to the category of “untrue.”

That is not to say that we are uninterested in the supernatural. In fact it provides material for a large part of the contemporary entertainment industry. We may not “believe” in the supernatural, but we enjoy being entertained by it: think of the current obsession with werewolf TV (True Blood), magical sagas (Harry Potter), fantasy movies (Lord of the Rings) and superhero films (Marvel). One might wonder why we are so fascinated by fantasy and the supernatural. But whatever the answer to that question, most modern rational thinkers don’t believe such stories are true. Truth is something based on scientific enquiry. It is objective. We build our lives and societies on truth, at least we think we do. The supernatural is something that grows out of the imagination. It is subjective. It is best left in the realm of entertainment. Or so we believe.

Luke was a doctor and would have based much of his day to day practice in an ancient form of scientific enquiry: observation, accumulated knowledge, reason. But he lived among peoples whose worldview included the supernatural within the concept of truth. Truth for people of the ancient world was not limited to what could be observed, measured and proven. Reality in the ancient mind consisted of the supernatural as well the natural. Supernatural thinking would certainly have impacted the thinking of heath practitioners like Luke. So as a doctor he was working from a different set of presuppositions to the modern western doctor.

So the very first challenge as I read the gospel of Luke is to decide how I am going to respond to claims of the supernatural. Perhaps that is the biggest challenge for me as a modern reader of these ancient scripts, and as a modern Christian. Because the whole of the Christian faith is rooted in the supernatural. Luke’s first chapter introduces the supernatural with the person of Gabriel, an angel sent by God. The rest of Luke’s writings are a constant barrage of such extraordinary happenings. How do I think about this as a modern reader? How does it impact my life as a citizen and as a doctor?

An orderly account

Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. Therefore since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also for me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things that you have been taught. Luke 1:1-4 (NLT)

 

Luke’s biography of Jesus is one of the four that were canonised by the early church. It has become popular in recent years (even since the nineteenth century) to revive other accounts of the life of Jesus, stories that for one reason or another were rejected as unreliable by the early church fathers. Such accounts are sometimes referred to as the “hidden” gospels. It is beyond the scope of this series of reflections to explore the reasons that those other accounts were rejected, or indeed the reasons that they have so fascinated modern scholars, though that is a fascinating debate.

 

It was no secret in the first century that many versions of the Jesus story were circulating. Luke acknowledges this in the opening sentence of his account, which was apparently written around AD 60. The discrepancies between the different accounts would have been obvious and no doubt the cause of discussion and argument even then. Why did it “seem good” to Luke to write another version? Perhaps he was concerned that some of the versions he had read were inaccurate, misleading. Luke was a doctor, and though doctors in the first century did not have the same education as doctors of today, even then there seems to have been a commitment to “evidence”. Whether Luke’s faith was based on evidence or on some other significant event in his life is not clear, but what this first paragraph of his Jesus story indicates is that a careful investigation of the best available evidence surrounding the person of Jesus was important to Luke, and that he was committed to recording a faithful and true account of all that had happened. Evidence may or may not have been the source of Luke’s faith, but it was certainly important to him in supporting and understanding his faith.

 

He appears to be writing to someone called Theophilus. Whether this was a real person or whether it was just a literary device that Luke was using I do not know. It occurs to me that the word Theophilus means “God lover”, and I wonder if Luke was writing to Christians in general rather than a particular person. The purpose of writing becomes clear in this sentence: “so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.” Perhaps this sheds light on the question I raised above, the question of why Luke decided to record another version of the Jesus story. Luke wants to support the doctrine that Theophilus has already been taught with evidence that he has gathered by his own investigation into the facts. That he thought this was necessary at all suggests that there were other doctrines being taught but that Luke believed these were not based on the available evidence. He was writing nearly thirty years after Jesus’ death. He knew that the eyewitnesses would soon be gone – many had already died – and he wanted to accurately record their testimonies while it was still possible. He knew from experience how much stories can change when they are passed from person to person. He knew that writing the reports of eyewitnesses would create an objective record, one that could be judged afresh by every person who read it and not evolve from generation to generation until it became almost unrecognisable compared to the original story. He doesn’t reference his writing as we do nowadays, with endless footnotes referring to other sources. But it is likely that few of the people he spoke to had written anything he could include in a reference list. Some of his material was no doubt taken from written sources – New Testament scholars have written volumes on those sources. But much must have been taken from just talking to people who were there.

 

Luke was a keen observer and recorder of the events that were happening around him: that becomes clear in his other book, the one we have come to know as The Acts of the Apostles, for which he had his own experience to draw from. But for this first book, his biography of Jesus, Luke himself was not an “eyewitness.” He never met Jesus in the flesh. But he had certainly met Jesus somehow, been confronted and impacted by Jesus. Something had happened to Luke that had changed the course of his life, from being a normal doctor (whatever that was in the first century), to being the travelling companion of one of the most controversial men of the day, the Jew become Christian, Paul. However, it was not Paul who had changed Luke’s life, but the one that Paul constantly talked about, Jesus the carpenter of Nazareth. Paul’s own life had been transformed by a dramatic supernatural encounter with Jesus. It seems likely that Luke had his own encounter, though he chooses not to include an account of that in the writings that have come down to us. Perhaps it was because he thought that writing about himself was of less importance than writing about Jesus, and the followers of Jesus. Or perhaps he wrote another account of his own conversion that has been lost to posterity.

 

In the margin of my NIV (New International Version) Bible there is a note that the word “fulfilled” in the first sentence can also be translated “surely believed”. This book that Luke wrote and which has come down to us so many centuries later is therefore an account of “the things that have been surely believed among us.” Luke must have recognised that doubt is a common experience of all believers. The events surrounding Jesus’ life were so bizarre that questioning their authenticity was inevitable. His words were so radical that people would surely try to reinterpret them to be more acceptable, easier. Yet it was this very bizarreness and radicalness that were so foundational to the Luke’s faith. The stuff of Jesus life was odd, amazing, incredible. But it had happened, and the course of human history changed as a result. Luke could scarcely believe himself that these amazing things had happened, words been spoken. Perhaps he was writing as much for himself as for Theophilus; perhaps for him, as for me, the very process of writing helped him to get his jumbled thoughts in order, helped him to make sense of the most amazing set of events that had ever occurred since the foundation of the world. Luke was a believer, but sometimes it must have seemed that the things he believed were in conflict with all his training and previous experience. He had to write it down, because by doing so he could create some kind of order in the thoughts and questions that whirled around continuously in his head.

 

So here we have it: Luke’s orderly account of the most amazing and incredible story ever told.