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Study Gateway's First Listens: Find your next Bible study! Join host Shelley Leith as she curates first sessions of Bible studies on various themes each season, taught by some of the world’s most influential Christian authors, teachers, and pastors. To learn more, visit https://StudyGateway.com.
First Listens Season 6: Episode 5
Luke: Gut-Level Compassion, by Lisa Harper
Plus interview with Lisa Harper
[MUSIC PLAYING] SHELLEY LEITH: Well, welcome to Study Gateway's First Listens, where you get first listens to the first sessions on Study Gateway so that you can find your next video Bible study. Hi there, I am your host, Shelley Leith, and today I am personally geeking out because I get to meet Lisa Harper, who when you Google her, the first thing that pops up is some famous person calling her “my butt-kicking, Bible-wielding, Scripture-swordswoman friend!” Welcome, Lisa!
LISA HARPER: I know exactly who that person was because she's my only friend who refers to me as a “devil butt kicker.” So my mother would spank me if I used that phraseology. But thank you. I have loved being associated with you all for this project. I love your whole team. So I am a little bit geeking out myself.
SHELLEY: Well, thank you. Now, before we get started, I want everyone to be aware that by just listening to this podcast, you can get a 15% discount on any subscription plan at Study Gateway. For the life of your subscription, using the code PODCAST15, that code works on any type of plan, personal, small group, or church. So go ahead and write that down, PODCAST15, and thank you for being a first listens listener.
So Lisa. We are in Season 6 of First Listens here at Study Gateway, which we are calling Explore and Discover. We've been featuring studies that either take us right to a location in the Holy Land or that help us explore and discover something about the Bible that we never knew before. Now, you are a theologian, a Bible teacher, you're getting your doctorate from Denver Seminary right now. So with all that experience with the full canon of scripture, I am curious. When you were presented with the Beautiful Word Project, why did you zero in on the book of Luke to teach through?
LISA: I immediately zeroed on Luke. I love that Luke is the only gospel written by an outsider. Luke is the only non-Jewish writer, really of all holy writ. You know, we've got some books that are formally classified as anonymous, so we don't know definitively who wrote some of those 66 books of our canon. But the two books we know definitively were written by a non-Jew are The Gospel According to Luke and The Acts of the Apostles. He wrote both of those. Most scholars think he wrote them together as a seamless document. Like The Empire Strikes Back. When they canonized scripture, they inserted the Gospel of John between them. But if you read from the end of the Gospel according to Luke to the beginning of Acts, you see that symmetry of his writing style. And Luke, since he was a literary outsider, that's kind of the theme of his gospel. He really highlights outliers, the marginalized. He writes more stories about women. You know, in first century culture, women… in that Semitic culture were marginalized. One of the rabbinic Proverbs was, better that Torah be burned than read by a woman. And so the fact that Luke reached to these groups who would kind of be on the outskirts of religious propriety, if you will, and he just illustrates the inclusive compassion of Christ. This messy compassion of Christ, I just wanted to explore that. I've done curriculums on Matthew's Gospel and on Mark's Gospel, but I'd never spent a year in Luke. And so this afforded me that time, and I fell more deeply in love with Jesus through the lens of Luke. I have loved this particular project.
SHELLEY: Well, one thing that is so powerful about your teaching is your love of theology and theologians. And in fact, just about every session of Luke, you reference one of my favorite theologians, but then you never say the same name twice. So, so many favorites. This is one of the things I love about you. You make theology accessible, not some erudite mind game that's reserved only for biblical scholars. So give us a glimpse into a few of your favorite theologians and tell us why each one has made your favorites list.
LISA: Oh, that's a good question. First of all, I'd love to, if it's okay, just break down the term theology because I think that's why so many people think, oh, that's not for me, or they think of it as some arcane academic pursuit. It comes from two Greek words, teos refers to God and logos is conversation or words. So theology, a working definition of theology, the best concise working definition of theology is conversations about God. That means everybody's a theologian. It's just you've got some wackadoodle theologians. You've got some theologians who base their conversations on God, on the revelation of God through scripture, which I believe is authoritative. And so we all wanna talk about God. So theology is actually, it's a much more user-friendly arena that most of us think. It's not just for brilliant academics. You don't have to know how to pronounce all the hard words in the Bible to be a theologian. You just have to be interested in knowing more about who God is and who He's called us to be.
I have a list of theologians that is longer than my list of favorite carbohydrates. At the top of the list would, of course, be C.S. Lewis. I love pretty much everything Sir Lewis has written. I really love a theologian. named Helmut, German theologian named Helmut Thielika. And Dr. Thielika said that a theology is not good if it doesn't work at the messy margins of life. That even if a theology works at the easy middle, it actually has to work at the messy margins.
A modern theologian, because I love all the dead guys, but a modern theologian I love is Dr. Craig Keener from Asbury in Kentucky, and he says that if we get out of the Bible what we are expecting to get out of the Bible, we need to change our expectations because this love letter we call the Bible is always bigger, it's always better than we expect it to be or than our previous interaction with scripture. It's not static. God's love gets bigger and bigger and bigger through this supernatural love story.
There's so many of them I love. There's a female named Dorothy Sayers. wrote a book called Mind of the Maker. She was in a group with Dr. C.S. Lewis. She's profound. I love Madeline L’Engle, more modern. I really love Jeanne Guyon. She was kind of like the first Beth Moore. She wrote basically a commentary, an application, on the Song of Solomon. This is way back, hundreds of years ago. And she is the first formal theologian who had the audacity, the wonderful redemptive audacity, to say that in the Song of Songs, where it talks about Shulamith falling in love with Solomon, a regular girl falling in love with King, and she says, I'd love to give him my kisses, Madame Jeanne Guyon said, that's actually about the intimacy we can experience with our divine bridegroom, Jesus. And when she wrote that, clergy at that time, hundreds of years ago, said, no, that's too intimate. She ended up being imprisoned in the Bastille for having such a passionate faith in Jesus that she believed we could have an intimate relationship with him. So again, I could talk for hours about people who love Jesus that I really respected and admire.
SHELLEY: Madeline L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time. She’s a fiction author!
LISA: She has a book called Walking on Water. She actually, most people don't know, she's literally brilliant, but was also a theologian. Her book, Walking on Water, talks about because we as God's people are made in His image, we're imago dei, that we are inherently creative. And modern culture tends to say, well you're not really a creative unless you can write or sing or paint. And she says no. as God's image bearer we're made in his image, we are made to be shaped like him. She said we are inherently creative. So what is your canvas? What does he called you to paint on to help other people see the picture of who Jesus is and how much he loves us? So I love that concept. Yeah, I think she is a really good one.
And I don't, I like reading theologians that I don't agree with every jot and tittle. because I want to think bigger as long as they believe in the authority of Scripture. So I am not a cut and paste girl. I am not a just take one concept out and throw it up on Instagram. I believe in the entire canon. I believe it's still relevant. I believe it was God breathed. So as long as it is a theologian who believes in the authority of Scripture and the full sufficiency of Jesus Christ for salvation. Then it's kind of like everything else. I'm okay if I disagree on nuance, I'm probably wrong.
I love Leslie Newbigin. He was an archbishop, a male, even though his name is Leslie. And he's the one who said that the most effective hermeneutic of the gospel, the lens through which we see Jesus, the most effective hermeneutic of the gospel is community. Sometimes we forget that 96% of the imperatives in the Bible where God tells us to do something are given in the context of community. I love that Luke highlights that a lot. Luke and his gospel really highlights that need we have as God's people to be in community with each other.
SHELLEY: Okay, you have woven this theme of outliers and outcasts throughout the study of Luke. So who is your favorite outcast in the book of Luke?
LISA: Wow, that's a good question. I would probably say, and this is a little selfish because I align myself a lot with her story, her story is almost like my biblical biography, it would probably be the woman in Luke chapter 13 who's not named, but she has been ill over for 18 years. And she takes a huge risk and goes to a synagogue where Jesus is preaching his very last sermon. It's his last public hurrah, if you will, prior to the cross. And she tramples religious propriety to be in this place where it's testosterone only, it's Emanuel's last message, but she goes there because as the story unfolds, you realize that what she's thinking is, if there's any hope for me to be healed after being bent over for 18 years, it lies with him. And so she tramples propriety to... basically interrupt Jesus, but instead of calling her out as an interruption, he beckons her to come closer. And when he touches her, after almost 20 years, Shelley, of being bent over, she immediately stands up straight.
And I think I spent so many years, even though I knew Jesus as my Savior, I spent so many years bent by shame. And I knew I needed God to cleanse me of my sins. I knew I needed Him for salvation. but I didn't think he liked me very much. There's some molestation and just some hard stuff in my background, so I felt dirty and damaged for as long as I can remember. So I believed in Jesus as my deliverer. It was hard for me to believe he delighted in me, that a perfect God like that could actually delight in a damaged woman like me. And so that story, that particular marginalized woman who was missed. who surely felt like she didn't fit. I love her story. I also love the woman in Luke 7 who no, I mean, all of them I can identify with at some level, identify with all the outliers, but either the woman in Luke 13 or the woman in Luke 7.
SHELLEY: Well, you've touched on my last question for us today, which is that another reason that your teaching resonates with people so deeply is that you're willing to be vulnerable about your own story. So are there any experiences in your life where you felt like an outcast, where you saw Jesus seeing you and healing you that you would be wanting to, that come to mind?
LISA: Absolutely. I mean, again, there's a long list, and I think that's a human experience. We were, you know, G.K. Chesterton, another one of my favorite theologians, who's long since been with Jesus. But he says that we have to recognize we've come to the wrong star, that we were not made for this broken world, that we're aliens and strangers here. And so I think the human experience is at some level, we may not admit it, but we all realize I was made for perfect love and I haven't received that here. I was made for perfect peace and apart from Jesus, I don't experience that here. And so I think all of us, if we're honest, at some level feel missed and marginalized, even if we've crafted really beautiful facades.
But for me, I guess kind of a... A real touchstone for me was about 15 years ago. God just knocked all the legs out from under my stool. I lost two people who mattered very, very much to me. And I was diagnosed with cancer all in the same month. And the cancer ended up being no big deal. Presented is a very big deal, they thought, for a moment, that I had brain cancer. And I lost my father. And then I lost a very, very dear friend. And I remember thinking. You know, I've always been able to pull myself up by my bootstraps, which I tried to do. I could teach grace, but I didn't want God to regret the fact that in my mind he had lowered the bar to let me into his kingdom. So I just always tried to keep my head down and be a good girl. And I remember thinking, I can't peel my heart back up off the pavement anymore. Like, I can't carry the weight of my own life anymore. And God, I've never heard his audible voice. Sheila, I don't know if you have. I never have, but I've heard his voice so loud and so unmistakably in my mind and heart. And he said to me during that season, "Lisa, you've been running scared your whole life, even though you know me, you haven't fully trusted in me. And so I'm gonna take you to the basement and I'm gonna sit there with you in the dark until fear doesn't own you anymore." And for about six months, I learned what it was to be weak, which I'd always been afraid of, and to be held. I'm a good worker bee for Jesus. I had a really hard time being held by Jesus. And he just, he loves us so much, he will not allow us to get stuck in a place where we have distance between us and him. And so that was one of those moments where I wasn't just an outlier, I was a messy, broken, weak outlier and he enveloped me in that season. And I feel like that's when I really learned that he didn't just come to save me, he actually delights in me.
SHELLEY: With that. I want to thank you, Lisa, for being with me today.
LISA: Thank you. It’s been my privilege. Thank you for inviting me.
SHELLEY: And now I'm so pleased to present Session 1 of Luke: Gut-Level Compassion called Outliers, Outcasts, and the Outrageous Mercy of God. Here we go.
[MUSIC PLAYING] LISA: Thank you all so, so much for being here for this very first session on a Bible study on Luke. We're calling it Gut-Level Compassion. And I think in the third session, we're going to talk about the Greek word that subtitle comes from. But before then, I just want to tell you a story that I hope will kind of give you an umbrella, a canopy, if you will, under which all of Luke's Gospel hangs.
A couple of years ago, I was working with some girls who are in recovery. That's my favorite group of women to spend time with, are women who are recovering from addiction. I'm not dissing y'all. I love being with y'all. But there's just something about a woman who has dealt with heavy addiction. Many of my friends in recovery have experienced prison as a result of felonies on their records. They just don't have as many facades as I think the rest of us do. Those have dissipated in their quest to get free. And most of my friends in recovery met Jesus behind bars. They got free while they were incarcerated. So anyway, they are the loveliest group of women to be with. And I love taking them to church. And we have these rules. And the rules are, when they're in my car going to church, they can smoke—because most of them have had meth or crack addiction in their background, so usually cigarettes are kind of a steppingstone to them getting completely free—so I said, y'all can smoke, but I can't stand the smell of cigarette smoke, so the windows have to be rolled down. And then, the only other rule when I take my friends to church is, I curate half of the music, because I want to really get them to fall in love with worship music and to see that it's not kind of the boring music of our past but they'll actually love it. So, half of what we listen to is worship music—more modern worship music. And then the other half they get to choose, as long as it doesn't have trashy lyrics or misogynistic lyrics demeaning women. And so usually, I pull into church—windows down in my car, smoke's billowing out the windows—and we're typically listening to the Commodores. We may have just been listening to something really wonderful and God honoring, but usually, by the time we pull in the church parking lot, it's all, She's a brick [vocalizing a bass beat]…. So, I know people are church are like, who are these people coming to church this morning?
Well, anyway, I was in exactly that posture not too long ago. And we all came in and sat on the second row. The girl to my left—she's amazing, I mean, just amazing—was extremely addicted as a result of an abusive relationship. And the day she was planning to commit suicide, there was a federal raid on her trailer. And she said, “Lisa, I know those FBI agents in flak jackets were actually angels in disguise because had they not come in and arrested me that very day, I was planning to kill myself.” And I mean, her face is radiant. She's so in love with Jesus—still has the track marks on her arms. Well, anyway, she's sitting to my immediate left. Our pastor started talking about how the disciples were such a motley crew, how they did not have it all together. And she's listening. And it had been a while since she'd been in a conventional church service. So, I think she had forgotten some of the protocol of church. She was just sitting, there kind of sprawled next to me. And after he explained how rough these men were—her name was Lindsey—she elbowed me real hard in the ribs, and she went, “Miss Lisa, Jesus had a thing for losers, didn't he?” And I thought, that is better than any of my professors in seminary have framed it.
And I think that's basically the principle of Luke. Over and over and over again in Luke's gospel account, you see that that's kind of the theme, that's kind of the ring tone. Jesus has a thing for losers. More than the other gospel writers, Luke includes outliers. He includes outcasts. He includes the least of these, the unlovely. Those are the characters in his euaggelion. That's the Greek word that means gospel.
Now, before we dive into some of those characters, I want to give you a few other details about the Gospel of Luke so you kind of see how it hangs different than the other three Gospels. Luke was written about the same time that Matthew was written—early 60s AD. And by the way, AD—sometimes we think it means "after death." It means anno Domini, the year of our Lord, in Latin. And so it was written 30 or so years after the crucifixion and resurrection. Mark was actually the first gospel. I don't know why, when they canonized scripture, they listed Matthew first. Mark was actually the very first literary compilation of the earthly life of the ministry of Jesus Christ. So, Matthew and Luke borrow quite a bit from Mark's material. And that's why those three gospels are called the Synoptic Gospels. That's a fancy seminary word. All it means is they're similar in their literary format. John, the Gospel of John, is written about 25 years later. And his gospel is very different in the literary format. He does not include parables. He does not have a birth narrative. So, his gospel kind of stands alone as the Johannine Gospel.
Now, where Luke is different from Mark and from Matthew is Luke is a Gentile. As a matter of fact, he's the only known Gentile author of a book in the Bible. We've got a couple of books that are formally classified as anonymous. We aren't sure exactly who wrote them. A couple of Psalms are formally classified as anonymous. But the only books we know definitively were written by a non-Jew—that means he would be considered an outsider in his culture—were written by Luke. He wrote the Gospel according to Luke. He also wrote the Acts of the Apostles. Now, when they made Scripture a collated book that included 66 books, they inserted the Gospel of John between Luke and Acts. But most scholars now will tell you those two should be together because he probably wrote those as a seamless document. So, if any of y'all are those women who read through the Bible in a year—first of all, my hat's off to you. I usually burn out around Leviticus. But if you make it to the New Testament and you get to the end of Luke, vault over John. Come back for John later. Go straight from the end of Luke to the beginning of Acts. And you'll see this just symmetry of compassion. We're actually going to do that in the eighth session in this Bible study.
But right now, I'm going to read y'all something that may clarify that a bit more from one of my favorite scholars when it comes to the Gospels—also one of my favorite professors, Dr. Craig Blomberg. I've been reading Dr. Blomberg's works for 30 years. He is the reason I chose to go to Denver Seminary for my doctorate because it was the last time he was teaching. He's now retired. Anyway, Dr. Blomberg writes this about the Luke-Acts connection. “At first glance, Luke seems to be the hardest gospel to outline. A survey of commentators certainly reveals the least amount of agreement compared with treatments of Matthew, Mark, and John. Yet at the same time, we must always keep in mind when studying Luke that he wrote a sequel to his Gospel, the Book of Acts.” In other words, Luke and Acts are kind of like Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. I don't know if you all saw the movie Star Wars when it came out. Some of y'all might not be as old as I am. But I love the first Star Wars. But then, when I saw The Empire Strikes Back, all of a sudden I had more context. That's Luke and Acts. As you study Luke, you've got to recognize, oh, this is kind of the first book. There's a second book, a sequel, if you will, to Luke.
Now, in light of that context, I want to dive into what we've already established as the theme that Jesus has a thing for losers. And I want to talk about some of the outliers—that would be a more appropriate word, the outliers—and the outcasts that he had a thing for. First would be the Samaritans. Now, you hear Samaritans in some of the other Gospel accounts. John talked about the Samaritan woman at the well. He made her a recipient of grace. Luke makes them heroes. And to understand how radical that was, you've got to understand the huge rift between Samaritans and Jews. It goes all the way back to the 10th century BC. Y'all remember the third king of Israel? Anybody remember him? Solomon scored great on his SAT—not so great with women. He was a player, total player—had hundreds of pagan wives. And his wives were always jockeying for position for who was his favorite, who got the majority of his wallet. And so all of those children of all of those wives who were jealous of each other did not get along very well. And Solomon totally bungled passing the baton to an heir apparent. His son, Rehoboam, ended up being the fourth King of Israel. He was such a bonehead that just a few years into his leadership, Israel went from being one nation united under God—a theocracy—it ended up splitting into a Northern Kingdom and a Southern Kingdom. The Northern Kingdom was called Israel. The Southern Kingdom retained the name—I mean, they got the name Judah, but they retained Jerusalem, the crown jewel. Well, about 200 years after they split, a warring people group called the Assyrians came into Northern Israel, completely eviscerated Northern Israel, killed most of the men over the age of 12, took the rest of the people to Assyria as slaves, and left behind just a smattering of Jews. Well, the smattering of Jews who were left behind in Northern Israel—most of them married Assyrians or other Gentiles. Well, those children—the offspring of a half-Jewish mama and a Gentile or Assyrian father—those became known as Samaritans. To a Jew, they were half breeds. Horribly punitive term, but that's exactly how they saw them.
And the Samaritans didn't do a great job with regards to getting back into the Jewish good graces because when the Jews came back from Babylonian captivity—the Southern Jews—and began to try to rebuild the temple and the wall around Jerusalem—as a matter of fact, that's where you first read about the Samaritans, is in the Book of Nehemiah and Ezra—the Samaritans tried to sabotage that rebuilding process. Then the Samaritans went on to go, we're going to build our own temple on Mount Gerizim. You may remember the woman at the well talks to Jesus about, but our temple is on Mount Gerizim. They declared that the Jewish priesthood—you remember what high regard Jews held their priesthood in—the Samaritan said, nope, Jewish priesthood is illegitimate. We're going to start our own. Then, they went on to say, we also don't like the Jewish scriptures. We're just going to cut and paste and use the first five books of Moses, the Pentateuch, and we're not going to listen to the rest of it. So, you can imagine for a Jew to see these Samaritans take everything they held sacred and throw it under the bus—this resentment began to grow.
By the time you get to the first century to the earthly ministry of Jesus Christ, there is such a huge rift between Jews and Samaritans that Jews would publicly curse Samaritans when they went to Temple. And that rift makes the fact that Luke makes the Samaritan the hero—not just a recipient of grace, but a hero in one of his parables—that is just absolutely radical. Instead of saying, let's have mercy on an outcast, he's like, let's actually elevate the outcast to the role of hero. It's shocking if you get the context of what was going on historically.
The second group of outcasts and outliers we could loosely call "losers" that Luke spent a lot of time talking about are tax collectors and sinners. Now, a lot of people in the first century would have said those two were synonymous because most Jews hated tax collectors. Do you all remember why?
AUDIENCE: They were extortionists.
LISA: They were extortionists. A Jewish tax collector was basically in cahoots with Rome. And so Rome would levy a tax. The Jewish tax collector—remember, Matthew was one of these before he became an evangelist—they would pad that tax, give what was due to Rome to Rome, and then keep the rest for themselves. So, you had Jewish tax collectors who were driving bimmers and had beach houses, and they had accumulated that wealth by exploiting their neighbors, by stealing from their neighbors. So, the other writers talk about tax collectors and sinners. Luke, of course, is the only one who makes the tax collector a hero. Turn to Luke, chapter 18. And Bridget, would you read that short story about a tax collector? Sometimes they're called publicans because they exact tax from the public for the Roman government. Bridget, read that short story about a Pharisee and a publican in Luke, chapter 18, verses 9-14.
BRIDGET:
To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, and adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’ But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."
LISA: See, you've got a Pharisee, a religious leader. We could loosely call him a deacon if he was in modern context. So, he goes to church all the time. He's got his Torah highlighted with all kinds of different colors. He looks the part, definitely seems to put religion on a high view. And yet, Luke tells a story that says, nope, he's actually the loser. And the tax collector, who's a flagrant sinner—he's actually the one with a softer heart. He's the one who's going to recognize his need for mercy. I love that Luke takes the people that we would kick to the religious curb. And he says they're actually the ones who are cognizant of the fact that they need a relationship with me.
[MUSIC PLAYING] SHELLEY: Alright—Lisa has told us about the outcasts – the Samaritans, and the losers – the tax collectors, and stay tuned to hear who the marginalized group is that the gospel of Luke makes the hero. We’re listening to the first session of Luke: Gut-Level Compassion, by Lisa Harper. As a bonus for our listeners, we have unlocked this session on Study Gateway, so you can go there and watch the entire first session for free, and see Lisa, and the women in the room who are reading the Scriptures. Luke is part of the Beautiful Word series, published by HarperChristian Resources and streaming on Study Gateway. For our First Listens listeners, when you use the promo code PODCAST15 at studygateway.com, you’ll get any size of plan – for yourself, your small group or your whole church, at a 15% savings for life! And, for a complete experience with Luke, take advantage of our publisher-direct pricing on the essential Bible study guide designed to be used with the videos. You’ll get the group discussion questions and leader materials, and personal Bible study and reflection exercises to do between sessions, PLUS you’ll get all the signature Beautiful Word features such as Scripture verse coloring pages and word art. Get all the details at Studygateway.com.
And now, let’s return to Lisa and find out who else Luke elevates in his gospel.
[MUSIC PLAYING] LISA: The other marginalized people group that Luke writes about more than any of the other gospel writers are women. And I know it's odd to think of a woman as an outlier or even a loser in our culture. But in the first culture, you've got to remember, women are second class citizens. One of the common rabbinical proverbs in the first century was better that the Torah—the Jewish scriptures—better that Torah be burned than read by a woman. Women were not allowed to give witness in a public trial because we were considered too emotional. Women were largely regarded as chattel, as something a man could own. There's a few exceptions like Deborah in the Old Testament, who was essentially the prime minister of Israel for a while. But by and large, women were mistreated in Jewish culture. And Luke not only talks about them a lot, he doesn't cast them in a punitive light or even in a weak light.
Turn to Luke, chapter 8. I love this story. Luke, chapter 8,
Soon afterwards, he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. And the twelve were with him and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities. Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod's household manager, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their means.
So, these are not weak women. These aren't women who are cross stitching in some back room and praying for disciples who have the hard jobs. They're not making casseroles. These women are lit, y'all. You've got Joanna, the wife of Chuza. Chuza is Herod's household manager. Remember, this is Herod Jr. Remember who Herod Senior was—Herod the Great? He's the megalomaniac who tried to have Jesus killed. He was a narcissist—named all his sons Herod. This is one of his sons. He hates Jesus too. Interestingly enough, Joanna, who was in Jesus' crew, is married to Chuza, his right-hand man. Don't you know that was some interesting pillow talk. Where's Herod going to be tomorrow? What's his itinerary? Where is he going? Have you ever wondered why Jesus was able the slip away from the Roman soldiers when they came in to try to apprehend him? Do you wonder if it wasn't Joanna going, oh, I wouldn't go to that coffee shop today because Herod and his cronies are going to be there. She wasn't a weak-willed woman. She didn't have some subjugated position or job. She was the head of Jesus' security details. She was in counterterrorism.
I love that Susanna, it says, provided for Jesus out of her own means. So, she underwrote his ministry. Doesn't sound like a weak woman begging for scraps, does it? And then you've got Mary from Magdala. We always called her Mary Magdalene, but Magdalene is not her last name. That's where she's from. Magdala means fish tower. She is from this two-bit city on the Sea of Galilee. There's a tower there. They call it fish tower. And it says before she met Jesus, she had seven demons. What does the number seven represent in biblical literature, y'all?
AUDIENCE: Completion.
LISA: Completion. And so most scholars think what Luke was trying to tell us there in Luke 8 is Mary from Magdala was completely oppressed. If you were a Jewish momma with a son in high school, you're not going to let your son ask Mary from Magdala to prom. She's an outcast, an outlier—marginalized. Jesus engages with her. He heals her. And then God chooses her. Our sovereign God who is so specific about details—he put stripes on zebras, he gave my baby the perfect amount of melanin in her skin—such a specific God when he thought, who am I going to choose to be the very first witness to the risen Christ? Should I choose somebody with a degree, somebody with a platform, somebody with a ton of followers on Twitter? Nope, I'll choose Mary from Magdala, arguably the most marginalized woman from her town. I'll choose her for what's the most important job in human history, certainly biblical history. I love that Luke elevates women. He's really the only Gospel author who does.
And then, the last outlying group that we'll talk about are the poor. The other Gospel writers talked about the poor, but usually they were talking about the poor insSpirit. It's what Matthew's talking about in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is actually talking about the literal poor—those people who can't afford to shop even on the end caps at Target, those people who get food stamps. Luke not only talks about the poor. Once again, he elevates the poor. Melinda, would you real quickly read Luke, chapter 16, verses 19-24?
MELINDA: Parable of the rich man and Lazarus.
Jesus said, “There was a certain rich man who was splendidly clothed in purple and fine linen and who lived each day in luxury. At his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus who was covered with sores. As Lazarus lay there longing for scraps from the rich man's table, the dogs would come and lick his open sores. Finally, the poor man died and was carried by the angels to sit beside Abraham at the heavenly banquet. The rich man also died and was buried. And he went to the place of the dead. There, in torment, he saw Abraham in the far distance with Lazarus at his side. The rich man shouted, ‘Father Abraham, have some pity. Send Lazarus over here to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue. I am in anguish in these flames.’”
LISA: It would be highly unlikely in the first century to have any kind of regard or respect for a man of no material means, especially if he had open sores, because open sores made him ceremonially unclean according to Mosaic Law. And so, someone might sling a little mercy his way, hurl a coin at him from time to time, but not elevate him to the position of authority. And yet, that's exactly what Luke does. Luke takes the wealthy man who was selfish and had no mercy, and he denigrates him to the point of begging the beggar for help. Luke turns conventional understanding, especially in their culture, on its head. You can see why that ring tone—Jesus had a thing for losers, didn't he—really permeates the entire Gospel of Luke.
I was having coffee with a friend recently. We had been to the same seminary class, and we were talking about how much we loved that class. And this girl's much sweeter than I am—has a much stronger Southern accent. And about 10 minutes into our conversation, she leaned back and sighed and she went, “Don't you think the gospel is like the Cinderella story, Lisa?” And I was like, no, no, I don't. But I didn't want to be impolite. So I didn't say no. I just kind of—I don't even remember what I said, just kind of hmm, hmm. But the whole way home from that coffee I was thinking, why did it bug me that she compared the Cinderella story to the gospel?
And about the time I pulled in my garage, I realized why it bugged me. Jesus didn't choose Cinderella. Because if you're familiar with the story or you watched the movie, Cinderella deserved the prince, right? She was a hard worker. She helped the mice. She was beautiful. The glass slipper fit. I mean, when she gets paired with the prince, everything in us goes, ah, that was supposed to happen, right? She deserved to be queen. That's not the gospel. In the gospel, the ugly stepsister stands on the edge of the dance floor—the one with frizzy hair and a huge, hairy mole—and she's wearing a horizontally striped dress, and there's muffin top from her Spanx—hasn't had a pedicure in a long time. Everybody's avoiding her. And the handsome prince walks into the room and sees her, and he makes a beeline for her. And people gasp when the prince asks the ugly stepsister to dance. But when she moves into his embrace on the dance floor, she becomes beautiful.
Y'all, that's the gospel. It's certainly Luke's gospel. It's where outliers and outcasts and the least of these and those others we'd call unlovely become the beloved bride of Christ. Let's sit in that for just a second. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, thank you for this love letter called the Bible. And thank you for this particular Gospel of Dr. Luke. Thank you for that theme that we don't have to have it all together to capture your heart. Lord, we pray as we embark on this journey—seven more weeks of exploring Luke's Gospel account—we pray you would give us bigger eyes and bigger ears and softer hearts so that we would see more clearly and hear louder and understand more fully who you are, as our perfectly gracious Redeemer, and who you've called us to be, as your messy, mistake-prone, unconditionally-loved daughters. We love you Jesus. We pray all these things in your name, the name that one day every knee will bow before. And all of God's girls in Nashville, Tennessee said, Amen.
AUDIENCE: Amen.
[MUSIC PLAYING] SHELLEY: Okay, don’t you just want to go and see the rest of this study? I have never heard the book of Luke taught through this lens of the outliers and outcasts in the book, and Lisa does such a beautiful and masterful job of teaching with her signature insights from her background as a theologian.
Luke: Gut-Level Compassion is a video Bible study by Lisa Harper, part of the Beautiful Word Series which is published by HarperChristian Resources and streaming on Study Gateway. Here at Study Gateway you can find your favorite authors, pastors and Bible teachers, all in one place. We’re the only streaming video subscription service that offers plans for individuals, small groups, AND has user-based pricing for churches, no matter what the size. And don’t forget, you can use the promo code PODCAST15 to get a 15% savings on the plan of your choice, and that discounted rate lasts as long as you keep your subscription!
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