The Good Book Club: Tuesday's great stories about Jesus
The Good Book Club
Tuesday Feb 20, 2018
Luke 5:17-39
Jesus Heals a Paralytic
17 One day, while he was teaching, Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting near by (they had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem); and the power of the Lord was with him to heal. 18 Just then some men came, carrying a paralyzed man on a bed. They were trying to bring him in and lay him before Jesus; 19 but finding no way to bring him in because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down with his bed through the tiles into the middle of the crowd in front of Jesus.
20 When he saw their faith, he said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven you.”
20 When he saw their faith, he said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven you.”
21 Then the scribes and the Pharisees began to question, “Who is this who is speaking blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone?” 22 When Jesus perceived their questionings, he answered them, “Why do you raise such questions in your hearts? 23 Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Stand up and walk’? 24 But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” — he said to the one who was paralyzed — “I say to you, stand up and take your bed and go to your home.”
25 Immediately he stood up before them, took what he had been lying on, and went to his home, glorifying God. 26 Amazement seized all of them, and they glorified God and were filled with awe, saying, “We have seen strange things today.”
Jesus Calls Levi
27 After this he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, “Follow me.”
28 And he got up, left everything, and followed him.
28 And he got up, left everything, and followed him.
29 Then Levi gave a great banquet for him in his house; and there was a large crowd of tax collectors and others sitting at the table with them. 30 The Pharisees and their scribes were complaining to his disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” 31 Jesus answered, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; 32 I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance.”
The Question about Fasting
33 Then they said to him, “John’s disciples, like the disciples of the Pharisees, frequently fast and pray, but your disciples eat and drink.” 34 Jesus said to them, “You cannot make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them, can you? 35 The days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days.”
36 He also told them a parable: “No one tears a piece from a new garment and sews it on an old garment; otherwise the new will be torn, and the piece from the new will not match the old. 37 And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the new wine will burst the skins and will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. 38 But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins.
39 And no one after drinking old wine desires new wine, but says, ‘The old is good.’”
39 And no one after drinking old wine desires new wine, but says, ‘The old is good.’”
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Thoughts for Tuesday. On that day, Luke tells us, δύναμις κυρίου, the power of the Lord was with Jesus to heal. “dunamis” or “dynamis” God’s own power enables Jesus’ miracles. The NT Greek word δύναμις is the source of our words dynamo, dynamic, dynamite. BTW there is a significant difference in the occasioning and the evangelists’ literary purpose between (a) Jesus miracles (dunamis, works of power) in MkMtLk the synoptic gospels, versus (b) the same events that are signs (σημεῖον sémeion -- a sign) of who Jesus is, i.e., the prophet promised by Moses, Son of God, God the Son, in the Gospel according to John. Ask your Sunday School teacher!
Actually, Jesus does not say to the paralytic, “friend, your sins are forgiven you,” Luke’s NT Greek has Jesus say, “Ἄνθρωπε” a gender-neutral term for human male or female, which (politically incorrect though it be in 2018 - -in fact, an agenda item of the NRSV translation committee was “political correction”) means, “Man! your sins are forgiven!” I won’t let this “political correction” bother me if you won’t let it bother you! The NRSV also does it with “adelphoi,” which means “brothers” (as e.g. in Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love) and which the NRSV invariably renders “brothers and sisters.” Just sayin’ - -
Why “your sins are forgiven”? Because in those days, an affliction such as this man’s paralysis was thought to be punishment for sins, either for his own sins or for the sins of his parents or ancestors generations back. We don’t see things that way, but that was the idea in that culture in Jesus' time.
Challenged, Jesus says “ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου” - - the Son of Man - - has authority on earth to forgive sins. We often see Jesus using the term “son of man.” (In some places it's rendered "mortal man" or "human being"). Regardless what one may always have assumed and/or believed, it is not totally clear that by “son of man” he is casting himself as that exalted being, the Son of Man in Daniel 7. The figure of speech “son of man” has at least thee possibilities. Jesus could mean that “any man, any person, anyone” can forgive sins. Or he could be speaking modestly, obliquely, of himself, apparently a common way of politely saying “I” or “me” in those days. Or he could indeed be talking about Daniel’s cosmic, apocalyptic figure and referring to himself. What do you think he means here? Your view is as valid as mine.
Jesus calls Levi the tax collector to be a disciple. In Mark and Luke the man’s name is Levi; in Matthew the man’s name is Matthew. There is scholarly speculation about why Matthew is different, what do you suppose that might be? And why do you suppose an otherwise totally anonymous book of the Bible might have been named "Matthew"?
At 5:31-32 I sometimes wonder if Jesus was being sarcastic with his detractors the Pharisees and scribes who think they are so perfect. What do you think? In a Sunday School class more than thirty years ago, I raised that question only to have a class member express shock that I would even think, much less be so sacrilegious as to suggest, that Jesus would use sarcasm. She and I saw Jesus quite differently. Again, what do you think? I think he was no sanctimonious goody-goody who would never get angry or disgusted, but truly human. Your view is as valid as mine.
Scrolling down in the text, Luke clearly means for us to see that Jesus means himself as the bridegroom, Luke the Evangelist looking ahead to the Cross, tomb and Ascension.
The parable about the wine and wineskins - - it’s a bit abstruse, isn’t it. A parable is a short story told to make a point: what’s Jesus’ point here? Luke (just as do Mark 2:21f & Matthew 9:16f) ties it to what immediately precedes, alluding to a wedding. I wouldn’t make too much of an allegory of it. Maybe Jesus is suggesting that he and his disciples are not John the Baptist and John's disciples, and that things are different now with Jesus and Jesus' disciples bringing new understandings of what’s important. Some NT scholars might point out that this parable appears as an independent saying in the Gospel of Thomas (logia 47), and that the synoptic evangelists put it here because it seems to follow the wedding allusion. In my opinion, the parable’s abstruseness is complicated by Luke adding verse 39, which seems to say the old ways are best, while the early Christian community would see Jesus as bringing new understandings of their rigid interpretations of their Jewish heritage, and of right and wrong in general, and of what's important to God and what relatively is trivia. What do you think?
I am quite taken with the wineskin picture above. It’s a whole animal skin. Surely not porkskin, eh, it must have been sheep or goat. Even the animal's four legs are still on it, and what appears to be the head. From which end do you suppose one is meant to draw wine? Smaller, the picture is less graphic:
