The Passover Meal from Luke

From the “Gospel According to Luke, Chap. 22, verses 7-13” [NRSV]

Then came the day of Unleavened Bread, on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed. So Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, “Go and prepare the Passover meal for us that we may eat it.” They asked him, “Where do you want us to make preparation for it?” “Listen,” he said to them, “when you have entered the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you; follow him into the house he enters and say to the owner of the house, ‘The teacher asks you, Where is the guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ He will show you a large room upstairs, already furnished. Make preparations for us there.” So they went and found everything as he had told them; and they prepared the Passover meal.

Luke, the historian, has been telling us how Jesus was born, grew to manhood joined by his disciples while teaching across the land, and now comes to His triumphal entry into Jerusalem. By now the people along His way have heard His teaching, know the parables, have seen the healing, and He has foretold the death of the Son of Man.

Still, what are we to make of this? Yes, we know that the chief priests, the scribes, the elders are objecting to His preaching to the people. Jesus, however, continues on the road, town to town, knowing the wide reception of the people while receiving also the anger and flat rejection of the temple chiefs. What are they all to do, His supporters, followers, His enemies? Jesus is here now, off the roads from so many places, telling the word of God to so many people.

So the time has come then for the Day of the Unleavened Bread, honored by every good Israelite. And here is the group of travelers, away from home, not connected with a temple, and what does Jesus do? How does He do it? Are these places known beforehand, these people already informed? Or have they understood God’s word all the time and how to carry out this word for His presence among them?

by Ken Wylie
for the Adult Discipleship and Member Development Council

From the Gospel According to Luke

Luke 8:4-15

When a great crowd gathered and people from town after town came to him, he said in a parable: “A sower went out to sow his seed; and as he sowed, some fell on the earth and was trampled on, and the birds of the air ate it up. Some fell on the rock; and as it grew up, it withered for lack of moisture. Some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew with it and choked it. Some fell into good soil, and when it grew it produced a hundredfold.” As he said this, he called out, “Let anyone with ears to hear listen.”

Then his disciples asked him what this parable meant. He said, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God; but to others I speak in parables, so that ‘looking they may not perceive, and listening they may not understand.’

“Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. The ones on the path are those who have heard; then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts so that they may not believe and be saved. The ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy. But these have no root; they believe only for awhile and in time of testing fall away. As for what fell among the thorns, these are the ones who hear; but they go on their way, they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature.. But as for that in the good soil, these are the ones who, when they hear the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patient endurance.”

Rabbi or teacher is a title used in the Gospels for Jesus, and in these verses we see that skill exercised so well as historian Luke continues his account of Jesus’ peripatetic ministry. He has been more located in one area but is now out and moving again with his group up to Magdala, a village near the city of Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee. The companions are the 12 disciples and several women (including Mary Magdalene) cured of what are called “evil spirits and infirmities.” Knowing He was coming, the local people have gathered, and now Jesus speaks to them.

He will tell them a parable (by definition a story in any of several styles—metaphor, fable, proverb, etc.) It is a story that as people close to the soil, villagers and farmers, they can relate to. He tells the parable, perhaps more clear to some than others, then calls out, Let anyone with ears to hear listen!

Those ready to receive the parable’s message could believe they have received a secret of God about His kingdom and now being given to the people through the teaching of Jesus. Those not ready for this message of the Lord, the ones opposed to Jesus, refusing to receive him as their rabbi, teaching of God, would hear it, understand it in only a vague, indirect or shadowy form. They did not “get it.”

So there Jesus is as the disciples are asking what the parable means, and He is answering with a reference, as often, to an Israelite prophet of centuries before (Isaiah 6:9), To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God; but to others I speak in parables, so that ‘looking they may not perceive, and listening they may not understand.

by Ken Wylie
for the Adult Discipleship and Membership Development Council