Before we get to John and Jesus and everything that will come after let's begin at the beginning folks. And in the beginning Luke tells you what every pastor and theologian and scholar should always tell you, "I am not the first one to tell you about these things." Luke deftly tells the audience what they already know, other people have written about the people, places, and events that Luke is going to write about. What this does is instantly give credence to what Luke is going to say because most of it you have already heard before.
And when I say "heard" I mean "heard" because, more than likely, the gospels existed as an oral story before they ever became a written one. I don't know if you have ever heard the gospels in their entirety out loud, but if you haven't I suggest that you download an audio version of the Bible or just look one up on YouTube, it can be dramatic or straight forward, either way you are going to experience it in a different way than if you just read the words or hear it in bits and pieces on Sunday morning, or Saturday night, or whenever you happen to find yourself inside the walls of a church or in front of a T.V.
After that, rather long, 2 sentence aside let me get back to the point, Luke is not telling this story in a vacuum, and neither is anyone else, including myself. What this means is that there is a wealth of other sources to compare and contrast. For the gospel of Luke there is the other 2 synoptic gospels [Mark and Matthew], the non synoptic gospel [John], non-canonical gospels [Thomas, Mary, etc.]. For me there is about 2000 years or so of preaching and teaching and writing on all things Jesus. In particular I come at Jesus from a Wesleyan Holiness tradition [Church of God, Anderson, IN], and am a firm believer that faith should be shaped by Scripture, Tradition, Experience, and Reason [otherwise known as the Wesleyan Quadrilateral]. In addition I hold three concepts very close to my heart in relation to the church, that it should be a place of real people, real faith, real love [which you can read about in a set of blog posts that start here.]
What I set out to write here, much like Luke, is to help move the story along, I am not the first, I will not be the last, but I play my part in the production willingly.
Luke does go on to say that he has a perfect understanding of all things from the beginning, while I, on the other hand, am about as imperfect as you can find in a "pastor". As I confessed to friend a month or so ago, I am a spectrum, some days I'm a great guy, other days I'm an ass. Because of that my understanding is in no way perfect, but I'm going to share it anyway, in hopes that it speaks to you in the same way that Luke speaks to me.
I find quite a few things interesting about Luke, but one that I find the most interesting is that while Luke talks about "things that have been fulfilled" he doesn't introduce his subject matter in explicit terms. In Mark's first sentence he calls it the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In Matthew's first sentence he starts with a genealogy of Jesus Christ. Even John starts his off with In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. Luke on the other hand doesn't mention the name Jesus until verse 26.
So Luke starts off by saying I'm not the only one who has written about this, but my understanding is perfect so I'm going to write about this, but I'm not going to tell you quite yet what I'm going to write about.
I kinda love that!
Depending on the scholar Luke is either writing to a particular person, Theophilius, or to a group of people, because Theophilius literally means God-lover, in either case Luke is writing to someone(s) who has been taught about what he's going to speak about already, just like all [or at least most] of us have been. As I stated in that other prologue, in my own journey I have already preached through all of Mark and all of Matthew, so here I am coming at Luke having already known some of the others who have taken it upon themselves to write accounts of what has been fulfilled. I know, but I come wanting to know more.
I pray that is why you come as well, because you want to know more. Because you hope that by reading my thoughts something may be sparked in your own mind that lets you move into a deeper place. That's what I'm after, a deeper place. A deeper place of understanding, and a deeper place of question, because in my experience new understanding always brings new questions. A deeper place of peace, and a deeper place of unease, because in my experience unease always follows peace. So often we long for the peace and understanding and flee from the uneasiness and questions, but I believe that they go hand in hand. At least they do for me, and maybe some of you, or maybe one of you, out there are like me.
Well, friends, that seems like a good stopping point for our First (second) installment, next week I'll be back with some birth proclamations and then the week after we get to celebrate Christmas all over again. [and maybe, just maybe, for those of us in the Midwest there will not be snow for 2nd Christmas]
Peace and Love,
Pastor K
Thursday, April 19, 2018
Thursday, April 12, 2018
Road Trippin' with the Doctor - A Prologue
How would you like to spend about a year together?
I do not know your answer to that question, well unless you comment here or on the tweet or Facebook post that will inevitably follow the completion of this particular blog post, how else would you find yourself here to read that question in the first place? Anyway, before I lose the plot too badly, let's go back to that year thing...
I've been on a mini-sabbatical from this blog, partly because, once again I found myself stepping away from the physical pulpit and wondered if this blog should be retitled or deleted or what. But, I still have a little card in my pocket that I pay $40 a year for that says I am still a pastor, plus as my wife would tell me and others I seem to pastor people all the time, whether I want to or not, so the name is staying.
Another reason for my mini-sabbatical is because if this blog does exist I wasn't sure what it's purpose should be, just randomness, I've done that before, some main thrust, I've done that too, or something else entirely. I gave up on the something else entirely because that would have required way too much thought and creativity, which led me to randomness or particularity. Randomness can work, as I said I've done it before, but even in the times when this blog has been random it has had a certain order to it, even if that order existed only in my mind. But, life is still a little more random than it used to be and I began to think that I would like a "something" to focus on. To that extent I landed squarely on doing some main thing on this blog. That was about a month ago.
So why the wait? I couldn't figure out what that main thing should be. I have been schooled in the church and church related things, so that was an obvious angle, but knowing that may have limited me from a universe of possibilities but it still left me with at least a galaxy of possibilities, if not several galaxies worth. Next I narrowed it down to the Bible, but again I was left with 66 possibilities. That was three weeks ago, right around the time I turned 40.
Then two weeks ago as I sat in church listening to a sermon on Acts it was brought to my attention by my Pastor, who happens to be my wife, that the guy who wrote Acts wrote the gospel of Luke. Now, I already knew this, I was taught it in church and in college and in seminary, but I realized it in the larger scope of my life. You see when I first became a pastor in Linton, the kind that preached every week, I set my anchor in the gospel of Mark, preaching through it chapter by chapter. Then when I found myself a pastor yet again, this time in Elwood, I set my anchor in the gospel of Matthew [my favorite gospel, fyi] preaching through it chapter by chapter, and in some cases verse by verse, sentence by sentence, or even word by word. And here I find myself at another beginning in my life as a pastor and it all makes perfect sense to set my anchor in the gospel of Luke. As I said, that was two weeks ago.
Which catches us up, well almost. I still had to think of whether or not I should begin and end in Luke, and after much thought I decided that I would not. I would begin in Luke chapter 1 but I will end in Acts chapter 28. So if you add together Luke's 24 chapters and Acts 28 chapters you come up with 52, which incidentally is the amount of weeks in a year...so why did I say "about a year"?
That answer is the easiest one of all, my goal is to post weekly, but it won't always happen, there will be hard weeks and birthdays and anniversaries and holidays and vacations and sickness and untold other things that will happen in my life and the lives that surround mine so I may not hit that weekly goal, but I promise that if you keep showing up I will too, until it's done.
One last question and answer and you can get back to your evening, or morning, or afternoon or night. Why this particular title, Road Trippin' with the Doctor? First off, I like it. Secondly these two books are a journey from before the first breath of Jesus's life to the first breath of the church and beyond. We will encounter stories both well known and hardly known. We will follow followers that don't follow very well. People will fall down dead and others who are dead will live again. There will be the miraculous and the mundane. There will be the holy and the ungodly. That all together sounds like one hell of a good time to me, that sounds like a journey I want to go on, so I am, I'm going with Luke, who happens to be a Doctor, so obviously I am Road Trippin' with the Doctor...come along if you would like, there is always room on the journey for a few friends, a few acquaintances, a few strangers and even the occasional outsider and enemy who hopefully won't be by the journey's end.
See you next week for the beginning.
Peace and Love,
Pastor K
I do not know your answer to that question, well unless you comment here or on the tweet or Facebook post that will inevitably follow the completion of this particular blog post, how else would you find yourself here to read that question in the first place? Anyway, before I lose the plot too badly, let's go back to that year thing...
I've been on a mini-sabbatical from this blog, partly because, once again I found myself stepping away from the physical pulpit and wondered if this blog should be retitled or deleted or what. But, I still have a little card in my pocket that I pay $40 a year for that says I am still a pastor, plus as my wife would tell me and others I seem to pastor people all the time, whether I want to or not, so the name is staying.
Another reason for my mini-sabbatical is because if this blog does exist I wasn't sure what it's purpose should be, just randomness, I've done that before, some main thrust, I've done that too, or something else entirely. I gave up on the something else entirely because that would have required way too much thought and creativity, which led me to randomness or particularity. Randomness can work, as I said I've done it before, but even in the times when this blog has been random it has had a certain order to it, even if that order existed only in my mind. But, life is still a little more random than it used to be and I began to think that I would like a "something" to focus on. To that extent I landed squarely on doing some main thing on this blog. That was about a month ago.
So why the wait? I couldn't figure out what that main thing should be. I have been schooled in the church and church related things, so that was an obvious angle, but knowing that may have limited me from a universe of possibilities but it still left me with at least a galaxy of possibilities, if not several galaxies worth. Next I narrowed it down to the Bible, but again I was left with 66 possibilities. That was three weeks ago, right around the time I turned 40.
Then two weeks ago as I sat in church listening to a sermon on Acts it was brought to my attention by my Pastor, who happens to be my wife, that the guy who wrote Acts wrote the gospel of Luke. Now, I already knew this, I was taught it in church and in college and in seminary, but I realized it in the larger scope of my life. You see when I first became a pastor in Linton, the kind that preached every week, I set my anchor in the gospel of Mark, preaching through it chapter by chapter. Then when I found myself a pastor yet again, this time in Elwood, I set my anchor in the gospel of Matthew [my favorite gospel, fyi] preaching through it chapter by chapter, and in some cases verse by verse, sentence by sentence, or even word by word. And here I find myself at another beginning in my life as a pastor and it all makes perfect sense to set my anchor in the gospel of Luke. As I said, that was two weeks ago.
Which catches us up, well almost. I still had to think of whether or not I should begin and end in Luke, and after much thought I decided that I would not. I would begin in Luke chapter 1 but I will end in Acts chapter 28. So if you add together Luke's 24 chapters and Acts 28 chapters you come up with 52, which incidentally is the amount of weeks in a year...so why did I say "about a year"?
That answer is the easiest one of all, my goal is to post weekly, but it won't always happen, there will be hard weeks and birthdays and anniversaries and holidays and vacations and sickness and untold other things that will happen in my life and the lives that surround mine so I may not hit that weekly goal, but I promise that if you keep showing up I will too, until it's done.
One last question and answer and you can get back to your evening, or morning, or afternoon or night. Why this particular title, Road Trippin' with the Doctor? First off, I like it. Secondly these two books are a journey from before the first breath of Jesus's life to the first breath of the church and beyond. We will encounter stories both well known and hardly known. We will follow followers that don't follow very well. People will fall down dead and others who are dead will live again. There will be the miraculous and the mundane. There will be the holy and the ungodly. That all together sounds like one hell of a good time to me, that sounds like a journey I want to go on, so I am, I'm going with Luke, who happens to be a Doctor, so obviously I am Road Trippin' with the Doctor...come along if you would like, there is always room on the journey for a few friends, a few acquaintances, a few strangers and even the occasional outsider and enemy who hopefully won't be by the journey's end.
See you next week for the beginning.
Peace and Love,
Pastor K
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)