Study Format:
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• This passage takes place in the Temple in the final days before Jesus’ crucifixion. Tempers, and stakes, are high. After the meandering journey from Galilee to Jerusalem, Jesus entered the city (think Palm Sunday) in 19:28-39. In 19:45-48, Jesus drove the money changers out of the Temple, setting up the conflict between Jesus and the religious powers that would in just a few days lead to his crucifixion.
• This section in particular addresses the destruction of the Temple. The Gospel of Luke was written around 80-90 CE, placing it after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. Having witnessed the mighty Temple falling, the readers of Luke’s Gospel would have heard this passage as comforting, because it was a reminder that even though the Temple was gone, God was still with them.
• We don’t know who the audience is in this passage. In Mark’s Gospel, it is clearly identified as the disciples, but Luke leaves it ambiguous. The hearers addressed Jesus as “teacher,” a term which was never, in its ten previous uses, used by the disciples as a title for Jesus.
• Jesus instructed his followers not to be alarmed when the temple was destroyed and follow false prophets. Wars and uprisings always feel like times of terror, but they do not signal that the end is near.
• The verses about persecutions foretell the descriptions of such in the Acts of the Apostles. Persecution is one of the major motifs of Acts, they become occasions for the apostles to give testimony.
Works Sourced:
Culpepper, R. Alan. “The Gospel of Luke.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
No comments:
Post a Comment