Frances Flatman reflects on Luke's way of telling the story of the suffering and death of Jesus :-
Luke’s Gospel was written for his powerful patron Theophilus to convert former pagans to Christianity, most likely in Antioch in the late 70’s and after the failure of the Jewish Revolt. Many Romans soldiers and traders had lost their lives. This colours his writing of today’s Gospel Passion.
All three synoptic Passions begin with the Last Supper, the institution of our Eucharist. Jesus gives the bread and wine to his disciples, and with it an explanation of what he is doing, what it means. Jesus had quite deliberately imposed a new and radical understanding of this Jewish ceremony. He emphasises that he will not partake of the elements again until the Kingdom of God had come, so that his disciples knew precisely how that came about by his death and resurrection. Any, every, Eucharist is to be an anamnesis of him-self and who he is. Few actions could have had more significance than this radical takeover of the Passover meal. What previously was the reliving of Jewish history, and its redemption from slavery, is now reshaped and refocused in Jesus. He is the final act in their and every human beings redemption story. For converts from paganism, for whom dining with ones patron could be quite an ordeal, even appalling moments of class distinction, something of a very different order was envisaged. Henceforth this would be ‘the way’ to meet God.
Jesus announces his betrayal, but the disciples, unable to face the implications, debate who among them should be seen as the greatest. Now this incident normally appears earlier in the Gospels as part of the passion predictions and as a prelude to teaching about service and humility, so its reappearance here is even more significant. To us, such an incident appears crassly stupid and selfish given the timing of everything. Yet to Greco-Romans (and Palestine was heavily Hellenised by this time) status was part and parcel of everyday life. Theophilus, Luke’s patron, would probably have had this discussion countless times. It is a question which has bedevilled Christian groups from this time on, and yet its original setting here illustrates precisely how inappropriate it was and remains, as we make our raggy attempts to follow Jesus. The fact that Jesus’ instructs those in power in the Church to act like the youngest, those of least status, continues to rankle. Jesus promised them all ‘thrones’ in the kingdom, but they needed to think about the implications. For Theophilus, and those ‘Benefactors’, those men of authority and power whose ‘gifts’ to their clients and their cities were deliberate acts demonstrating their power; and required the recipients to keep to their place and respond with subservience and respect; this remark of Jesus’ would have come like a slap in the face. Luke, as we have continually observed, never falters in his enterprise which was intended to bring Theophilus and his ilk down to size. As God, Jesus calls all the shots and the throwing away of power which is the incarnate life of Jesus, is not some mere aberration but God’s way of saving the world.
Jesus then goes on to forecast Peter’s denial of his Lord and his restitution. Luke’s was an honour society in which men of stature behaved as they should, and woe betides those who were shamed. Theophilus and his wealthy Christian colleagues, just like Peter and the Church, were to learn the hard lesson of divine forgiveness, but also that of the unthinkable, of the failure of those in power. This would be a very challenging Gospel for them, as the account of Peter’s denials would make clear. It’s a very modern problem too for those abused by the Church.
The story of Jesus’ time in Gethsemane, where our ‘hero’ succumbs to fear and weakness, would also have been difficult for converts to accept. Their pagan gods did not fail at such moments; neither did the man schooled in the pagan virtues such as courage. Similarly, the whole idea of the disciples just nodding off at this critical time would have been shocking. Clients did not behave like this to their patrons, who demanded unflagging attendance and attention! Vespasian nearly lost his life by falling asleep at one of Nero’s interminable banquets. Luke does insert a small let-out clause by indicating the ‘sheer grief’ of the disciples. Jesus also defends himself verbally on arrest as indeed he should have done.
The significantly very brief account of Jesus’ trial before the deliberately unnamed high priest and the council, all defunct by Luke’s time of writing in the late 70’s, is mostly noticeable for the violence and insult inflicted upon Jesus, suggestive of illegal action on the part of the Jews. Christianity parted company with Judaism during the failed Jewish Revolt. He is largely silent, simply pushing their accusations back on his interlocutors. Once taken before the Roman Procurator Pilate, we see that the reasons for his arrest have moved to a political agenda designed by the Jews to attract Roman attention: instigating revolt, refusal of taxes, and claiming to be a king in opposition to Roman rule. Luke alone inserts the detail of an appearance before Herod, the one we recall who had killed John the Baptist and had sparked an international incident by divorcing his wife and marrying Herodias, his brother’s wife. Since, by the time of the writing of the Gospel both Herod and Pilate were disgraced figures and long gone, we begin to get the hint that their bad behaviour, and total failure in juridical competence, no longer implicated the Roman state. Luke’s account at this point lacks the intense detail found in John. Indeed, despite Pilate’s willingness to release Jesus. He succumbs to the violence of the crowd, showing him as a weak and ineffectual governor, a point made very clear by Luke’s insistence that Barabbas was guilty of both murder and riot.
Jesus was condemned to death, but at this point we find a great yawning omission so important in Matthew and Mark’s accounts. There is in Luke no hint whatsoever of Roman soldiers scourging and beating Jesus up in a mock incident of kingship in which they ‘pay him honours’. Jesus for Luke is the man completely in control and who remains majestic and even commanding. I believe the reason for the deliberate omission of this scene is to protect the Roman soldiers from any exaggerated violence over the death of Jesus. They simply fulfil the orders of a corrupt judge. As there were so many Roman soldiers around in the area that Luke wrote his Gospel, and his mission was to convert some of them, the last thing he wanted was to vilify them and the actions of their colleagues at this point. Beirut had been founded by Augustus and Agrippa as a veteran colony down the road from Antioch, and their sons and grandsons would have been in the current forces. Instead, he puts in the Herod and Women of Jerusalem incidents, which heighten the distinction between Jews and Romans, and places the guilt for the death of Jesus firmly on the shoulders of the Jewish leadership.
So Luke includes the incident of Jesus meeting the women of Jerusalem, paid professional mourners sent out to fulfil ritual requirements, and to whom he issues a very sharp rebuke. He will not tolerate their ‘games’ which give an aura of respectability, even closure, to the travesty of his condemnation. The Jewish temple priests, and the religious purists, were responsible for his death, and it was their pressure which, stirring up the crowd, had brow-beaten a weak Roman administrator into securing his death. Jesus, with clear sighted understanding of the times, was able to see that such corruption on both sides would eventually lead to an explosion of violence in Israel and bring about the implosion of the state, which we call the Jewish Revolt 66-70 CE, and the destruction of the entire area with the loss of so many lives and the enslaving of over a million Jews.
Luke’s account of the actual crucifixion is extremely brief, but noted for Jesus’ prayer to the Father for forgiveness for those who killed him, since as he put it, they acted in ignorance. Both the Jewish leadership and the soldiers join in mocking the dying Jesus, and we have the incident of the two criminals crucified with him, one who railed at him, the other who admitted his guilt and asked Jesus to ‘remember’ him when he came into his kingdom. As in other Gospels both rail at Jesus, I wonder if we are meant to think of this figure in Luke’s Gospel as a Gentile, heightening the distinction between Jew and Gentile once more. We must presume that this criminal had previously either seen or heard of Jesus’ ministry and was sympathetic. He is promised a place with Jesus in paradise, emphasising that it is not necessarily the squeaky-clean that get t0 heaven, but those who recognise God when they meet him.
We should not ignore the tiny time shift in Luke’s death scene, nor its implications. In Mark and Matthew there is an eclipse, and Jesus dies and the veil of the temple is torn from top to bottom, and Matthew has this and various seismic events. But here, in Luke’s Gospel it is the other way round for the veil of the temple is torn before Jesus dies. Mark and Matthew seem to indicate that Jesus’ death is the moment of disclosure. Now the ordinary people are not screened from God in the temple, and he is vindicated; but here with Luke’s reversal of events it is Jesus himself who is responsible for the ripping of the curtain. As God the Son, he takes control, and as such he gives himself into the hands of the Father. Significantly, at this point, it is a Roman Centurion who proclaims him innocent, whilst Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Sanhedrin who had not colluded in his death buries the body.
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