00:00:00:37 – 00:00:27:40
Clint Loveall
Hey friends, happy Monday. Thanks for joining us. As we continue here, look at the Christmas texts, out of the New Testament. Matthew and Luke. Last time we were together, we looked at the distinctiveness of Matthew’s presentation of the Christmas story. Relatively simple. Fairly nuanced, heavily influenced by the fact that Matthew is writing to a Jewish community today.

00:00:27:41 – 00:01:02:58
Clint Loveall
We take that same kind of look at the Gospel of Luke, I think, Michael, fair to say, Luke is a bigger story really, in every sense of the word. It it is longer, it is more detailed. Also, I think it seems clear when you compare the two that Luke is writing to a much more universal audience. Luke is less concerned about the particulars of any one tradition, and more interested in using Christmas to make a case for the kind of universal Christ figure.

00:01:03:03 – 00:01:32:40
Clint Loveall
And there are some things in Luke I think, that are a little surprising. The first one of them, right off the bat in verse five of chapter one, Luke devotes nearly an entire chapter to the back story of John the Baptist. And perhaps that would seem like a thing Matthew would do. But for Luke, that is, that’s a crucial part of the story.

00:01:32:40 – 00:01:58:57
Clint Loveall
So only in Luke do we meet, Elizabeth and Zechariah, and we find out that there’s a family connection. We get this story where Zechariah isn’t sure about what the angels told him, and so he gets up, he gets made mute and isn’t able to speak. We get told that they’re to name their son John, and then we get that visit between Mary and Elizabeth, which we’ll talk about in a minute.

00:01:58:57 – 00:02:05:24
Clint Loveall
But it it is in some ways, I think, a surprising place for Luke to start.

00:02:05:29 – 00:02:35:49
Michael Gewecke
Yeah. No doubt. I think when you’re reading Luke and you are aware of how interested Luke is in telling, historical a, a very character driven story of Jesus’s life. And by that I mean that kind of a supporting character telling it. It’s then not surprising when you get into Luke and you start discovering that Luke doesn’t just want to talk about Mary and Joseph.

00:02:36:03 – 00:03:21:50
Michael Gewecke
Luke wants to tell you about this priest, and he wants to tell you about the prophet who’s going before Jesus, which all the gospel writers care about. John the Baptist in their own ways. And he makes their stories in interesting ways. But here there’s a great amount of time setting up the birth of John, the Baptist and then connecting that birth with Jesus’s birth when Mary actually comes to visit Elizabeth there, there’s this actual story connection point for those two, and I think there’s a kind of back story here to the Christmas story that involves all of these forces and character connections that the other gospel writers are completely not interested in, including in the

00:03:21:50 – 00:03:34:30
Michael Gewecke
story. And so it does, Clint. It puts Jesus’s birth story inside a larger story. It gives the context, and it gives that a kind of connection between people that we wouldn’t have otherwise.

00:03:34:30 – 00:03:55:05
Clint Loveall
And I think he does that literally. And though again, maybe it’s surprising that that’s Luke instead of Matthew, but this this Christmas story is kind of bracketed by the temple. You know, it happens in a manger and there’s shepherds in fields. But the first thing that happens is a priest gets told your wife is going to have a child while he’s in the temple.

00:03:55:10 – 00:04:24:37
Clint Loveall
And then at the end of the story, Mary and Joseph are going to take Jesus to the temple to be named circumcised as as is required by law. And those things feel like maybe Matthew would have been interested in them, but Matthew uses them as a way to say that this story of Jesus is deeply connected to the worship of God, and to the God who is worshiped by the Jewish people.

00:04:24:37 – 00:04:43:28
Clint Loveall
Luke is not the most Jewish of gospels on the whole, but certainly this is deeply sensitive to that Jewish expectation of the Messiah. And as he bears that out in a different way than Matthew does, I think it’s equally as important.

00:04:43:33 – 00:05:12:28
Michael Gewecke
Yeah. And I want to point out that I think one of Luke’s distinct is does show up very brightly here in the Christmas story. And that’s Luke’s interest in women in particular and the outcast in particular. And we start here with women. You have Elizabeth, who’s in her old age conceiving of a son, which this I think is fascinating, Clint, because that this is a very Old Testament idea and the fact that Luke is including it as opposed to that Matthew, that is fascinating.

00:05:12:41 – 00:05:34:03
Michael Gewecke
But what we discover here is after the angel visits, Elizabeth then you have Mary who visits Elizabeth, and I’m going to skip past this section. There’s a greeting and the connection and the child, John the Baptist, you know, leaps inside Elizabeth’s womb. But then you get to Mary. Song of praise. What is often called the Magnificat.

00:05:34:03 – 00:05:59:09
Michael Gewecke
And in this Luke retells this amazingly beautiful, poetic height of literature kind of song in which Mary here is talking about, God, who looks down on the lowliness of a servant. The Mighty One has done done great things for me. You just go along. He’s brought down the powerful from their thrones. He’s lifted up the lowly, filled the hungry with good things.

00:05:59:09 – 00:06:26:03
Michael Gewecke
Sent the rich away empty. But Luke here is making it abundantly clear that the Christmas story is fundamentally a reversal of powers story. That the child who has been promised to Mary is going to be the kind of child who inverts the world order, where those who have don’t need, and those who have the greatest need will be put in a position of not having that need anymore.

00:06:26:07 – 00:06:49:01
Michael Gewecke
It’s this transformational kind of power shifting story, and Luke wants it embedded. Even before you’ve got angels coming to shepherds, you have Luke recounting this kind of prophetic, awareness that Mary has as to what to what extent God’s promise to her is going to impact the world.

00:06:49:06 – 00:07:17:31
Clint Loveall
And I want to follow up on that, Michael, and introduce something on the way there. One of the things that Luke is known for is, as you said, these almost lyrical passages, they could be poetry. Many of them, including Mary’s song, the Magnificat, has been set to music, have been set to music, and there is this poetic license that Luke takes as he tells the story.

00:07:17:36 – 00:07:56:35
Clint Loveall
Now contrast that, and the first one we hear in that is Elizabeth. Elizabeth says, blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me? And then we have Mary’s song. Keep in mind, if we flip back over to Matthew, we didn’t hear from Mary, we didn’t hear. And and now we have these women as integral characters, not only being involved in the story, but professing praise, singing praise in these deeply profound passages that continue to to be drawn upon by the church.

00:07:56:40 – 00:08:27:41
Clint Loveall
And we continue to borrow their words to seek to understand what is the meaning and what is at stake in the Christmas story. We’re going to see that again after the two women have done this. Zechariah is going to give us a kind of poetic song. And then, of course, the angels do so in singing out to the shepherds that Luke is, artistic in a way that Matthew isn’t.

00:08:27:41 – 00:08:38:30
Clint Loveall
And that’s not a criticism of Matthew. It’s just that Luke brings that sort of poetic bent to the way that he tells the story. And you see it in those kind of passages.

00:08:38:34 – 00:09:26:04
Michael Gewecke
Well, and Luke wants it to be abundantly clear from the start that this is not just the fulfillment of prophecies that have come before. And it’s not just the Messiah who’s now being defined as Jesus, that this is a moment in which the the incarnation, God taking on flesh is happening amidst the most surprising cast of characters. Because you have a priest who’s struggling to have a child, you have two women who are singing some of the the most beautiful songs in the scriptures one.

00:09:26:04 – 00:09:27:18
Clint Loveall
Old, one young.

00:09:27:25 – 00:09:33:32
Michael Gewecke
Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah. And you’ve got shepherds who are outcasts. They’re, you know, if they’re not outcasts.

00:09:33:44 – 00:09:34:06
Clint Loveall
Or they’re.

00:09:34:06 – 00:10:09:54
Michael Gewecke
Outsiders and they’re working dirty jobs at the worst time of night, and they’re the people who receive this great company of angels. Right? Hey, Luke wants us to know that it’s not wise men that come bearing amazing gifts. It’s this surprising cast of characters who God has chosen to be the key characters. And it reminds me of what we have in the, epistles, where we get things like you know, God’s greatness is seen in our weakness.

00:10:09:59 – 00:10:19:22
Michael Gewecke
And ultimately, that’s what’s happening here is the weakness of these characters serves to illustrate the greatness of what happens when God comes in the midst.

00:10:19:22 – 00:10:56:53
Clint Loveall
And you could add to that, Michael, you know, we have Joseph, who is going to be a father but lives life under the whims of the government and has to travel. Yeah, you find this child, Matthew says, House here we have stable and manger. We have a crowded city away from home. It’s a very different telling. I think you and I said this before, but for those who may not have been with us in that episode.

00:10:56:58 – 00:11:26:31
Clint Loveall
If we only had Luke’s version of Christmas, we would still have. 80, 85%. I mean, we have the star. Well, no, we don’t have the we have light, we have shepherds, we have the census, we have Bethlehem, we have the manger. We we, I think, lean heavily on Luke’s version with a couple of things thrown in from Matthew.

00:11:26:31 – 00:12:06:16
Clint Loveall
Not surprising. Luke’s is a larger version, but also Luke’s is a far more earthy version. He he addresses the reality of this situation and there’s there’s discomfort and struggle written all over this. And, you know, it’s not exactly in the Christmas narrative, but when Joseph and Mary take Jesus to the temple to name him and and offer their offerings, they give the offering of a poor couple they give birth to, which is the provision made for those who don’t have much.

00:12:06:16 – 00:12:22:46
Clint Loveall
And so even even in those little details, Luke paints a picture for us of the Christ child, the Messiah, coming from the most humble of starting points. And that that is no accident in the gospel of Luke.

00:12:23:00 – 00:12:45:05
Michael Gewecke
I think that Luke is really interesting, and if we read Luke closely, Luke is going to dispel some of the ideas that we have about Christmas in the Bible. You might be surprised to know there is one verse dedicated to what you think of as the nativity scene here in Luke, and you find it right here, verse 16.

00:12:45:05 – 00:13:25:09
Michael Gewecke
The shepherds are the key characters. They just got revealed. The thing that has happened by this chorus of angels. So we have here in verse 16, so they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph and the child lying in the manger. All of the stuff, Clint, that the movies have been made and, books that have been told to tell us, help us imagine what this event was like fundamentally, really, the thing that Luke wants you to know is that the shepherds get told this thing, they go to find the baby, and then notice it when they they being the shepherds, they made known what had been told them about this child.

00:13:25:13 – 00:13:50:44
Michael Gewecke
So what’s fascinating? And then you got verse 19, Mary’s the one treasuring up all these words, pondering them in her heart. In Luke’s telling, it’s almost as if the shepherds are the key characters to the coming of the Christ. And that’s a Luke telling that that’s what Luke wants you to know is that God is using the shepherds to be the witnesses to the amazing thing that God has done.

00:13:50:49 – 00:14:13:08
Michael Gewecke
But to anyone else, that amazing thing looks like another baby being born in a out of the way place without any kind of recognition. It’s God’s announcement and the shepherds willingness to spread it. That’s what Luke wants to talk about and and that’s the interesting thing. I think you’re exactly right. 85% of our Christmas story that make up a number, 85% comes from Luke.

00:14:13:22 – 00:14:18:34
Michael Gewecke
And how disinterested Luke is in painting the picture of that night.

00:14:18:46 – 00:14:46:30
Clint Loveall
Well, here’s here’s the narrative, verse seven of chapter two. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. Think of how broadly we’ve expanded. Yeah, that story and how Luke just states it as fact. I think you’re on to something like, I think it’s.

00:14:46:35 – 00:15:14:04
Clint Loveall
It is a risk to look at the differences of Scripture, because it can give the impression that they’re somehow not compatible, which I don’t think is the case. But think of the characters we met in Matthew. We have traveling nobility of some kind. We’ve even called them kings. They’re carrying gold, frankincense and myrrh, some of the most valuable commodities known at the time.

00:15:14:09 – 00:15:52:36
Clint Loveall
They go to the palace of Herod, the most powerful man in that region of the earth. And and contrast that with Luke, who has a poor couple away from home, in a manger, in a stable, and some shepherds show up. It it such very different, lenses to look through, to see the story and the reality of Christ and in a way and I it’s hard.

00:15:52:40 – 00:16:31:07
Clint Loveall
Could you say this is intentional? That’d be an argument. We could certainly have. But it is wonderful that in these only two Christmas narratives that we have, we have such wildly different pictures of the person, the place, the role, and the mission of Jesus Christ, the earthly king above all kings, who is worthy of every offering, and the humble man born to a humble family, who said yes to the crazy plans of God and would commit to be obedient to whatever that meant in the future.

00:16:31:12 – 00:16:52:18
Clint Loveall
It it is the perfect bookends with which to look at the beginning of Jesus life. And again, is that is that intentional? Is it accidental or is it divine intervention? I, I don’t know what it is, but I think that it works really well.

00:16:52:22 – 00:17:20:45
Michael Gewecke
I think it’s worth noting here before we close out, Luke, that if it’s not for Luke’s telling, we know nothing about Jesus’s childhood. And make no mistake it, the story starts in the temple, and then it comes back to the temple. When Jesus, is circumcised and named. And then we get this story about the boy who goes to the temple, and then gets lost on the way home.

00:17:20:45 – 00:17:55:33
Michael Gewecke
And, why wouldn’t you expect to be my father’s house? Clint, there’s about as much detail in that story in Luke as there is in the Christmas story, minus we don’t have the supporting characters on the side. And that’s because in Luke, the Christmas story, as in the manger scene, is not the most important of all of the stories, far in the way it is part of the most important story, which is Jesus Christ, who’s born takes on flesh that has substantial meaning.

00:17:55:33 – 00:18:31:12
Michael Gewecke
Don’t want to detract from that, but look at how much supporting material is embedded around the Christmas story. That’s not an accident. That’s there to show you that it’s not just that one night, that special. It’s the fact that Jesus grew up as a young man and that he was faithful to be in the temple. He sincerely and wholeheartedly wanted to learn and do what God the Father had called him to do that it’s important that Jesus was surrounded by prophetic men and women who would speak the truth, and that God would empower them to do things even beyond their ability.

00:18:31:12 – 00:18:49:43
Michael Gewecke
Like all of this in Luke is the coming of God in the story, which is the Christmas story. We just have tended to, compress it, condense it into the the sort of snapshot moment that we imagine when we think of the Christmas story.

00:18:49:48 – 00:19:18:10
Clint Loveall
Yeah, I think we have expanded it. We’re fascinated by it. And it is a fascinating story. The details of Christmas as you and I try to preach our way through them again and again and again each advent season. They are amazing stories. But the gospel writers on the whole, I think are far more interested in where Jesus goes than where Jesus comes from.

00:19:18:10 – 00:19:50:48
Clint Loveall
And and given that half of the gospels that we have don’t mention Christmas, I think that’s a fair statement. There are there’s just one other thing that I think is. To your point, Luke does some foreshadowing here. So when the shepherds come and they’re praising, there’s this wonderful verse that says, But Mary treasured these words and pondered them in her heart.

00:19:50:52 – 00:20:17:46
Clint Loveall
And then when Jesus is presented to the temple, a prophet speaks over him and says that he’s destined for the rising and falling of many, and tells Mary, and a sword will also pierce your heart. So these these references to Jesus mother, to her pondering, to her heart. She’s treasuring in her heart. Her heart will be pierced. There is already here.

00:20:17:51 – 00:21:04:51
Clint Loveall
And we see it in Matthew’s two. The threat that Herod brings to the story in the shadow of his vile actions against the two year olds of Bethlehem that hangs over that story and colors it dark and this is where I think we can. We can be reluctant to recognize that though. The Christmas story is a beautiful story, a beautiful set of stories, neither of these authors flinch from the reality that when God comes into the world, the world is not altogether pleased with that.

00:21:04:51 – 00:21:30:45
Clint Loveall
That this child that is born is headed for the cross. Now that you have to be careful of that, because there’s a lot of ground in between. But but I don’t think the Gospels flinch from that. We love the idea that Christmas is happy and warm and fuzzy, and that there were friendly sheep and cooing doves, and that’s the way that we’ve tried to watercolor this scene.

00:21:30:50 – 00:21:46:22
Clint Loveall
And it’s interesting that both of the Gospels are not adverse to getting some of those darker colors out, because they know that ultimately, that is why Jesus is here. That is why Jesus came. That’s why Christmas happened.

00:21:46:37 – 00:22:17:18
Michael Gewecke
Which is absolute. And complete speculation. So I’m just going to name there’s there’s no research foundation to this other than just an opinion. But it seems to me, Clint, that one of the reasons Christmas appeals to Christians is because as opposed to Good Friday in the cross, this is a story with angels and announcements and good thing will, there’s a there’s a simple reading of this story that says, well, this is happy.

00:22:17:18 – 00:22:51:58
Michael Gewecke
And so let’s focus on this one. But you’re 100% right that the biblical writers, clearly, in the way they structure these stories and the details that they include, they’re not telling this as a little aside to make you smile, that this is necessary information for you to understand the task that God took on himself when he decided to take on flesh so that he could die in a cross, that that whole story arc is the essential thing that we use the word gospel or good news to describe.

00:22:52:03 – 00:23:15:03
Michael Gewecke
And so it’s funny, we’re breaking. Well, here’s Matthew’s telling. Here’s Luke’s telling it. They’re they’re not thinking about, well, here’s one tiny part of one story in one book. They’re thinking, what is the fundamental story? The fundamental story is a God who takes on flesh for the purpose of dying. All of that cannot be separated from their understanding of it.

00:23:15:03 – 00:23:27:59
Michael Gewecke
And so we’ve got to be careful tonight. Well, I, I really like Christmas Eve service. I don’t particularly like Good Friday. That that doesn’t work in a biblical way because all of these stories are integrated into each other.

00:23:27:59 – 00:23:42:10
Clint Loveall
I don’t think, biblically speaking, you can separate them. I don’t think the authors will allow that, that there’s darkness. The light shines in the darkness, but it doesn’t erase it.

00:23:42:14 – 00:23:57:09
Michael Gewecke
Right. Well, that’s what we’ve got for Luke. I hope there’s something there that’s interesting or challenging or new. Certainly hope that if this has been helpful, you like it helps others find it in their study. I’ll wait years to come and then subscribe so you don’t miss studies like this one. We’ll see you all soon.

00:23:57:09 – 00:23:57:52
Clint Loveall
Thanks, everybody.