The Unique Contributions of Luke's Gospel

Today is the feast day of St. Luke and thus a fitting day to recognize some of the remarkable contributions of Luke’s Gospel to our understanding of Jesus and his message.

First, as is well known, the Gospel of Luke has a clear emphasis on the good news being for the poor, the sick, and those on the margins of society: the gospel is “good news” for all people, not just those who outwardly appear to be favored by God. (See Luke 4:16-21)

Second, Luke alone includes some of the best known parables of Jesus. Without Luke we would not know of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) or the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32). The parable of the Good Samaritan is itself a powerful illustration of mercy and compassion for those in need, and a reminder that all people are our neighbors. It thus ties in directly with the first point above about Luke’s emphasis on the good news being for all people.

Third, Luke preserves some very early songs from the first century. These are particularly to be found in the birth narrative. In the first two chapters of the Gospel of Luke, four different characters respond to news of God’s salvation with joyful song that sounds very much like the psalmody of the Jewish Scriptures and the words of the prophets. Like characters in biblical narratives and other Jewish texts, they respond to good news with a psalm of praise. These four psalms are commonly referred to by their Latin names. Mary’s song is the Magnificat (1:46–55), Zechariah’s is the Benedictus (1:68–79), the angels’ song of praise is the Gloria in excelsis (2:14), and Simeon’s is the Nunc Dimittis (2:29–32). By quoting these four songs or parts of songs, Luke has preserved for us a rich treasure and gives us a glimpse into some of the earliest ways in which the advent of Jesus was celebrated through song and poetry in the early church.

For our vision of Jesus and the events and significance of his life, we owe much to Luke and his careful historical and literary work. We also can be thankful today that he had an ear for songs and hymns, and that he chose to include them in his Gospel for the benefit of all of his readers.

For more on Luke, see this reflection from the FaithND website.

For more specifically on the hymns in Luke's Gospel, see chapter six of my latest book.

Book Release Today!

Very excited to announce that today is the official release date of my book. New Testament Christological Hymns: Exploring Texts, Contexts, and Significance is a study of hymns and poetic passages in the New Testament that describe Jesus in exalted language and give us a window into the origins of Christian worship. I received the author copies two weeks ago and am really happy with the final product. IVP Academic did a very impressive job with this book from start to finish. This book represents the findings of my investigations into early Christian hymns over the last fifteen years. Please check it out if you have an interest in the development of early Christian worship and early Christian engagement with Jewish and Greco-Roman culture.

It is available at the IVP Academic site (on sale today) and also on Amazon at my author page.

The Value of a Liberal Arts Education

Two national organizations dedicated to the meaningful delivery of university education issued a joint statement this week about the value of the liberal arts. The statement by these two organizations, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), is in response to a widespread trend which shows a devaluing of the liberal arts in American society today. The now common caricature and criticism of the liberal arts, particularly the idea of majoring in a liberal arts discipline in the humanities such as philosophy, history, theology, art, or English, is that they are not directly tied to training for a specific career outcome. And as students are steered toward other more clearly career-oriented majors that they can be sure will lead to a specific job, liberal arts enrollments have declined. This has often led to difficult decisions by university administrators to eliminate some liberal arts majors. It has also led to decisions by state legislatures who fund higher education about how to prioritize their limited funding. The result is a cycle that in the end reflects a societal devaluation of liberal arts education.

But, as the AAC&U and AAUP statement points out, it has long been known by employers that liberal arts are great preparation for many careers since, rather than focusing on one narrow set of technical skills (which may become irrelevant) the liberal arts prepare graduates with skills they will use in any career. These skills include the ability to learn quickly and learn on the job, a capacity for lifelong learning. They also include the ability to think deeply and critically, to understand complex problems, to draw on knowledge from a range of disciplines to solve problems, and to be creative in approaching challenges. In addition the liberal arts foster the ability to understand differing perspectives and, more importantly, people who have differing perspectives. The liberal arts promote empathy along with an understanding of culture and how it impacts individuals and groups.

All of those skills are more important in today’s society than they ever have been. Thus, the promotion of the liberal arts can readily be seen as needed for the sake of the public good. This shifts the focus from only the single issue of an individual having the option to choose liberal education to a broader issue: how to promote and foster what is needed for our society to thrive and to overcome its current challenges. Career education and technical training, as inherently valuable as those are, are not sufficient in themselves. A liberal arts education has a strong claim to being equally important for our world today, if not more so.

This week, in addition to being glad to see this joint statement about the liberal arts, I also came across a now classic essay entitled “Only Connect” by William Cronon. This essay, from twenty years ago, described the ten things that liberal arts enables people to do. The last was the phrase “only connect” which suggests the ability to take the many parts of a liberal education and make connections—between ideas, between events, as well as between people. I was surprised to see at the end of Cronon’s essay that he linked the liberal arts to one primary goal: love. A liberal arts education is not something one undertakes only for oneself, although the value to an individual can be great (see the salary surveys of liberal arts majors by mid-and late-career compared to other majors). Instead, the thinking, skills, and values of a liberal arts education provide one the perspective and motivation for service. Cronon wrote: “Liberal education nurtures human freedom in the service of human community, which is to say that in the end it celebrates love.” For Cronon, this is agape love, “the most powerful and generous form of human connection.” One need not look too far to find this notion rooted in the biblical ideals of love of God, the creator of the human community, and love of neighbor.

For those of us committed to lifelong learning, our own as well as that of our students, it is important to remember the value of what we do, both its roots and its outcomes, for individuals and for society. And in the current climate, to be aware of what may ultimately be at stake if liberal arts education continues to be devalued.

New Book on Early Christian Worship

I am pleased to announce that my third book, New Testament Christological Hymns: Exploring Texts, Contexts, and Significance, is being released this summer on Aug 7 by IVP Academic. Click here for the link to the publisher’s page. Focusing on the passages in the New Testament that describe Jesus in a hymnic style, this book touches on early Christian worship, the Greco-Roman and Jewish cultural contexts of the New Testament, and the development of early Christian belief. Comparing these early Christian compositions to other first century expressions of hymnic praise helps provide new perspective on the significance of these fascinating and rich passages. It also gives us a lot to think about for contemporary worshipers of Jesus. Please check out the web site and see what you think.

If you were to ask me for a little more detail about what the book is about, here is what I would say:

This is a book about worship in the New Testament in which I show that praise of Jesus uses some of the same language that was used in praise of the Roman emperor, in part, to emphasize that Jesus was greater than the emperor. This language, which just sounds religious to us (savior, Lord, son of God), actually had very significant political implications. To worship Jesus in this way was to affirm a view of reality that was counter-cultural and anti-imperial. But this worship of Jesus did not arise from nowhere; it draws on a long tradition of Jewish resistance poetry that can be traced back through to some of the oldest poetry of the Hebrew Bible. It also draws on prophetic promises of divine renewal that were still alive in first century Judaism. So in the book I argue that we should seek to understand worship passages in the New Testament in light of their interaction with these larger cultural factors. When we do so we gain new insight into some of the richest passages in the New Testament and also into what the earliest worship of Jesus was about. And, if we take them seriously, there is a challenge for modern Christians in terms of how we engage with our culture and with the prevailing political powers today.

The book is currently available for pre-order at a discount on the IVP Academic site as well as on Amazon, and will ship on Aug 7, 2018.

Not Your Usual Commencement Address

Father Gregory Boyle, founder of Homeboy Industries, Inc., a non-profit that provides work opportunities to former gang members in Los Angeles, delivered an incredibly challenging address at Carlow University's 2018 commencement ceremony last weekend. He also delivered the homily at the baccalaureate mass earlier that morning and spoke on the parable of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). I can’t do justice to the simple yet profound thoughts that he shared, but I thought I’d highlight a few things he spoke about.

From his years of working with individuals at the margins he had some very rich insights into the parable of the good Samaritan and into the nature of mercy. One particular insight which I had not heard before was one idea that he kept repeating as a theme of his homily: We don’t go to the margins to rescue people; if we do, then it becomes about us. And it is not about us. Instead, we go to the margins because that is where transformation occurs. Father Boyle kept returning to Jeremiah 33:10-11 where Jeremiah says, “In this place of which you say it is a waste, there will be heard again the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voices of those who sing.” In the place of waste and desolation God envisions a transformed community. And we can each be changed by a genuine human encounter with our fellow human beings who are at the margins. He illustrated this with some examples from his ministry. And finally, he suggested that the good Samaritan in the parable was changed through his encounter with the victim on the road. Yes, he took action that did result in the wounded victim being changed for the better; but that action arose from an encounter in which the Samaritan was changed as he encountered the wounded victim and was moved with compassion. The good Samaritan did not set out on his journey hoping to reach someone or change someone. But as he encountered a fellow human being in need, his own plans and priorities changed. This idea connects really closely with what I shared in my last blog post about the concept of theology as interruption.

In some of his writings, Father Boyle has put it this way: “We do not rescue anyone at the margins. But go figure, if we stand at the margins, we are all rescued. No mistake about it.” In his commencement address he raised a couple of other related points. Specifically, the kinship of all people; the “exquisite mutuality” and inter-connectedness of all people. In addition, he pointed out that when those of us in privileged positions choose to go the margins and be present at the margins, it actually erases the margins. He pointed out that “God’s own dream for us, that we be one, just happens to be our own deepest longing for ourselves.” He added that, related to Jeremiah’s vision of social transformation, “the widow orphan and stranger will be your trustworthy guides since they know what it is to be cutoff.” Rather than go simply to rescue those at the margins, we can learn from those at the margins.

His final challenge to the graduates was to “Go forth to create a community of kinship such that God might recognize it” and to make those voices, the voices of the marginalized, heard. Though he made his point with powerful examples of gang members he had worked with, his message was simple: Treat all people like human beings. Honor the dignity of each person we encounter.

That is something we all can do. And in our current contentious and potentially dehumanizing cultural context, this is something we must do.

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For more on Father Gregory Boyle, see his biography here.

Carlow University posted the commencement ceremony and you can watch Father Boyle’s address by clicking here and selecting “on demand” and then “commencement.” His talk begins at about the 1-hour mark immediately after his receiving anhonorary doctorate and continues to the 1-hour and 13 minute mark.

Finally, Father Gregory gave a similar talk at Notre Dame’s commencement in 2017 where he received the Laetare Award. You can read the transcript or see the video here.

Mercy in a Culture of Indifference

“Living Mercy in an Age of Indifference” was the subject of a talk this week by Dr. Johann Vento who is a Professor of Religious Studies and Theology at Georgian Court University. This very timely presentation was given at Carlow’s “Common Hour”—a space and time set aside on the first Tuesday of each month for faculty and staff to come together to have dialogue and discussion about a topic of importance to the community. Here are a few points that I noted that really resonated with me.

Dr. Vento began with a review of mercy in the Psalms, showing that mercy is a theme that infuses the prayers and praises of the people of God. She pointed to one of my favorites, Ps 103: “The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love” (Psalm 103:8). Dr. Vento pointed out that the biblical theme of mercy, and mercy in the Psalms in particular, was a thread that runs through the writings of Pope Francis. His 2015 “The Face of Mercy” announced 2016 as the year of mercy, building on this scriptural foundation. When you note that the Psalms are the most cited book in the NT, it is not surprising that mercy themes infuse the New Testament as well.

As Dr. Vento moved on to an open discussion with the group about mercy in our world today, a few themes in our own culture were noted. One is the high level of distress in our culture, and particularly among students; there is a palpable hunger and thirst for mercy. Second, our contemporary culture actually teaches us not to be merciful, with its individualistic and judgmental tendencies. In other words, “we” tend to think we are doing well because of our effort and hard work; “they” are in need because of their own faults and failures. Third, she pointed to a “closed-off and privatized form of Christianity” which is poorly equipped to be present to suffering. The effect of these dynamics, intended or not, is that we have a tendency to isolate and insulate ourselves from the suffering of others. The extreme customization of our own personalized “news feeds” in social media potentially only serves to exacerbate this insulation from the suffering of others who are not like us.

Dr. Vento then turned to several theologians who have helped her consider mercy, not just from an individual religious perspective, but in terms of mercy as “a passion to end injustice.” In particular, she drew from the work of Walter Kasper, Johannes Metz, and John Sobrino, theologians who have reflected deeply on the gospel teachings about mercy and their connection to contemporary issues in society.

A few concepts in this part of her presentation were particularly striking. One that resonated with me was Johannes Metz’s notion of “theology as interruption.” In the cultural context described above, theology can serve to jar us and awaken us from a pre-occupation with ourselves and our own comfort and our own successes or small sufferings. A biblical theology of mercy grounded in the mercy of God as seen in the Psalms and the NT requires us to be attentive to the suffering of others, and to be “moved with compassion” as the Samaritan was in the parable of Jesus that is commonly known as “the Good Samaritan” (Luke 10). Notably, Metz did much of his writing and thinking in the wake of the Holocaust as he sought to understand how the Christian church in Nazi Germany not only had no ability to generate a robust, counter-cultural Christian response to the Nazi atrocities, but was actually largely silent about it. As history shows, many Christians were complicit simply by not taking action or speaking up about what was happening to the marginalized in their society when they could have and should have. In response, Metz proposes a theology that emphasizes solidarity with those who suffer, based on the actual reality of the inter-connectedness of all people, including the most vulnerable. To me this is an insightful and compelling application of the teaching of Jesus in Luke 10:25-37.

Finally, Dr. Vento ended up discussing the work of John Sobrino, a Jesuit from Nicaragua who has been on my reading list for some time (but whom I have not yet gotten to!). According to Sobrino, to be truly human is to respond to suffering and to be moved by it. Moved to act. This involves “making someone else’s pain our very own” (Principle of Mercy, p. 11). Again, an embodiment of the compassion and care toward one’s neighbor as seen in the teaching of Jesus.

For me the entire conversation was an embodiment of “theology as interruption.” I have my own priorities, stressors, and daily sufferings, not to mention my to-do list each day. The theology of mercy calls me to be ready and open to look up from my screen, to see human need and be open to be moved. And in that moment of being moved, to act.

“But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds” (Luke 10:33-34)

The Cross in the Earliest Christian Hymns (part 3)

There are three New Testament passages that are thought to be early hymns in honor of Jesus: Philippians 2:6-11, Colossians 1:15-20, and John 1:1-18. In their imagery, depth, and vision of Jesus they are unmatched. In the Philippian hymn and Colossian hymn the cross is prominent, occurring at the center of the hymn in Philippians and at the climactic end of the second stanza in Colossians. Given the importance of the cross for the early Christians, this is not surprising. What is surprising is that when we read John 1:1-18 the cross is not mentioned at all. Why and what does this tell us about the significance of the cross for the believers in John’s community?

First of all, there are probably good reasons that the cross is not mentioned in the John 1:1-18. It was not that the cross was not important to John. These verses function as a prologue to the whole of John’s Gospel. As such, they set out the major themes that will follow and serve to invite the reader to read the rest of the Gospel with the perspective that the prologue outlines. It is not necessary that a prologue should summarize the details of the following narrative. Further, the cross figures prominently in John’s Gospel as a whole. The cross is not specifically mentioned in the prologue since the reader would encounter it soon enough.

Second, in John’s Gospel it is important to note that the cross is not a shameful defeat for Jesus but represents instead the moment of the glorification of Jesus. Immediately after Judas left to betray him, leading to his crucifixion, Jesus said:

"Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him.” (Jn 13:31)

Here he was echoing the language of Isaiah: “You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified” (Is 49:3). The whole sequence of events leading up to the cross, beginning with the betrayal by Judas, was the way in which God’s glory was revealed. I sometimes have the tendency to think that God’s glory is revealed in the resurrection of Jesus—and it certainly is. But for John, the entire passion of Jesus was the revelation of God’s glory—not only the resurrection.

Third, though the cross is not mentioned in the prologue, the larger theme of the rejection of Jesus by the world certainly is. The prologue sets up a clear contrast between those who did not receive him and those who did. One stanza reads:

He was in the world,
and the world was made through him,
yet the world did not know him.
He came to his own,
and his own people did not receive him.
But to all who did receive him,
who believed in his name,
he gave the right to become children of God. (Jn 1:10-12)

So John talks not specifically about the cross here, but about the idea that there are those who rejected Jesus. This larger theme of the rejection of Jesus includes the rejection of Jesus by the Jewish leaders and by Pilate, the Roman ruler who had him crucified. Another stanza talks about the darkness trying to extinguish the light of Jesus:

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (Jn 1:5)

This is poetic and metaphorical, but the scope of this image is broad enough to include the notion that the cross, the attempt at snuffing out of the life of Jesus by the forces of darkness, was unable to quench the divine light. A third stanza may also refer to the crucifixion since, as we have seen, for John the cross is the “glorification” of Jesus:

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory (Jn 1:14)

The “Word” in John’s poetic prologue, is Jesus. What was this glory that John and his companions saw? For John, the glory of Jesus is not just the miracles, or the teaching, or the resurrection. The glory of Jesus mentioned here includes the cross.

So the prologue invites the reader of John’s Gospel to read the story that follows and to look for the glory of Jesus in each aspect of his life, and especially in the cross. In addition, when one reads about the rejection of Jesus, including the rejection of Jesus by Pilate, the Roman ruler, the reader knows that this is part of the divine pattern. The reader can find his or herself in the story as well, whether as one who rejects Jesus, or one who receives him and sees in the cross a revelation of the glory of God.

As hymns, these three poetic passages in John, Philippians, and Colossians give us a glimpse into some of the ways that the death of Jesus was remembered among the earliest Christians. His death on the cross was a source of divine reversals in Philippians, a source of reconciliation in Colossians, and a revelation of the glory of God in John. And there is much more that these passages have to teach us. In these hymnic passages we gain a glimpse of the mystery of the cross, a mystery that will always exceed our capacity to grasp its ultimate meaning, but a mystery for which we can humbly give thanks to God.