Tag Archives: Reading Luke

“The story [of the Gospel of Luke] is thus one of movement and fulfillment; movement and mission; God and his promises to Abraham; God and Abraham’s seed; God and his covenant with David; God and recalcitrant Israel; God and renewed Israel; God and the nations he said he would bless: for God himself is on the move (keeping promises, answering prayer, filling a people, working  miracles, stretching out his hand, setting prisoners free, spreading his people abroad, and overseeing their participation in his redemptive mission). God is doing something new in the world – first through his Spirit-empowered servant Jesus (3:22; 4:1, 14, 18-19) and then (and now) through the Spirit-filled followers of Jesus (11:11-13; 24:48-49; Acts 1:4-8; 2:1-21). But this new thing is the age-old promised thing, the thing for which faithful Israel had for so long been waiting. The story of national Israel has reached its divinely intended climax – it is time for Yahweh’s renewed temple-people to be a house of prayer made up of all nations.” (Craig G. Bartholomew and Robby Holt, ”Prayer in/and the Drama of Redemption in Luke” in Reading Luke: Interpretation, Reflection, Formation, Bartholomew, et. al. eds., p. 360)

“‘God’s reign arrives wherever Jesus overcomes the power of evil.’ Thus Jesus erects signs of healing and salvation that point to the presence of the kingdom. Again we see the missionary thrust of Jesus’ ministry. His ministry inspires us to prolong the logic of his mission. Since God’s reign has already come, it will come. God’s reign is both gift and promise, celebration and anticipation. The church’s mission is to live in the tension of the already-but-not-yet so that ‘something of the “not yet” may take shape in the here and now.’ Thus the church, like Jesus, erects signs of God’s reign; it commits itself to attack evil in its manifestations and ‘to initiate, here and now, approximations and anticipations of God’s reign,’ especially in the life of the church. The church’s communal life itself will be a sign to the coming kingdom, a people in whom something of the ‘not yet’ is in evidence. As sign the church will embody new relationships that point to the love and justice of the kingdom. As such it will be a ‘radically revolutionary movement’ providing an attractive alternative.” Michael Goheen, “A Critical Examination of David Bosch’s Missional Reading of Luke,” in Reading Luke: Interpretation, Reflection, Formation, p. 238.