Presentation of Christ in the Temple – 2019
Luke 2:22-40
Marian Free
In the name of God who has no beginning and no end. Amen.
Consciously or not, we all use rhetoric to ensure that our point of view is heard or that others are brought around to our way of thinking. The use of rhetoric in the modern world is perhaps most obvious in politicians and preachers whose futures may depend on their ability to sway their listeners. In ancient Greece rhetoric was highly prized and there were many schools of rhetoric and a vast number of books on the subject. Assessment in the subject was pass or fail. A student who had complete the course would be sent to their home town to give a speech. If they convinced their friends with their argument, they received a pass, if they did not, they failed. This was not as harsh as it sounds. The life of a philosopher was not an easy one. They wandered around the countryside peddling their particular view of the world. Their success or failure depended entirely on their ability to command an audience and to persuade them that their arguments were valid. Success would ensure that they would have a bed for the night and food for the journey. It might even mean that they would secure a patron who would supply their every need.
Paul was a skilled rhetorician as were the gospel writers. In the first century the stakes were high. Those who followed Jesus were convinced that faith in him was the means to salvation, a source of liberation, peace and joy. They didn’t want to simply tell people about Jesus, they wanted their audiences to believein Jesus. It was not easy, they often came under attack and had to defend their faith. One way to do this was to demonstrate to their critics that the faith was rational, that it did not emerge in a vacuum but had a solid and respectable history. (In rhetoric terms this is known as an apology[1]– not in the sense of being sorry for something, but in the technical sense of mounting a defense.)
Luke uses this skill subtly, but to great advantage.
The third gospel is addressed to Theophilus who may be a high official in the Roman Empire, ora generic personage who represents Gentile (non-Jewish) readers. Either way, this and other clues suggest that Luke’s gospel was directed at a gentile audience. For example, in today’s gospel Simeon claims that Jesus is “a light for the revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel” and the Lucan Jesus is the Saviour as the world, not of the Jews alone[2]. Only Luke’s gospel includes the parable of the Good Samaritan and only in Luke do we have the account of the Samaritan leper who returns to give thanks. Luke’s inclusion of these stories ensures a receptive hearing among Luke’s gentile audience.
The author of Luke must do more than prove that Gentiles have a place in the faith. If he wants to convince people to give up their ancestral religions and practices to embrace faith in Jesus, he must also establish the credentials of the Christian faith – to demonstrate that this is not a religion that has sprung up from nowhere, but which has a deep and respectable place among the religions of the world[3]. Luke manages to weave these two goals seamlessly into his story.
Luke defends the gospel’s Jewish heritage in a number of ways. Unlike the other gospel writers, Luke begins and ends the gospel in the Jerusalem – the centre of the Jewish faith and worship. At the start we find Zechariah in the Temple when the angel appears to him and at the conclusion instead of returning to Galilee (as they do in the other gospels), the disciples remain in Jerusalem which is where Jesus appears to them. Zechariah and Elizabeth both come from long established priestly families and Mary and Joseph are shown to be pious Jews – Jesus is circumcised on the eighth day, presented at the Temple “when the time came for their purification”, and taken to Jerusalem every yearfor the festival of the Passover (2:41). It is on one of these occasions that Jesus stays behind in the Temple and impresses the teachers with his answers. More than in other gospels, Jesus is found teaching in the synagogues.
In this way, Luke makes it clear that the faith he propounds is not new and superficial but is connected to one that has a long and noble heritage. In other words, Luke’s gentile readers can trust what he is saying.
Our world is both less complex and more complex than that of the first century. In the first century, those who preached the gospel, did so against a background of multiple competing gods and philosophies and had to claim a place, indeed a priority among the religions and ideas of the ancient world. In our day, the panoply of gods has shrunk but there has been an increase in indifference, agnosticism, atheism, scepticism and even antagonism towards faith in general and the Christian faith in particular.
From the writer of Luke’s gospel, we learn that if we believe that our faith is worth sharing it is vital that we understand the context in which we preach. It is essential that we know our audience and how to engage and persuade them, that we understand our history and that we are equipped to tell our story convincingly and well.
Ours is a great story, a transformative story. Our task is to understand those among whom we find ourselves so that we can tell that story in ways that are compelling and convincing and that show that we have taken the trouble to know those to whom we speak.
[1]It is not a recent publication, but Guerra’s book provides a comprehensive discussion of apologetic and its use in the New Testament. Guerra, Anthony J. Romans and the apologetic tradition: The purpose, genre and audience of Paul’s letter.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, SNTS 81.
[2]This become even more obvious in Luke’s second volume: The Book of Acts in which the gospel spreads in concentric circles from Jerusalem to Rome (the end of the world).
[3]Matthew, who we believe is writing for a largely Jewish audience, establishes the faith’s credentials by demonstrating the ways in which the life of Jesus fulfils OT prophecies.
Swallowsrest 