The Gospel of Luke and the Issue of Privilege: Using Context to Re-read Luke to Address Systemic Racism
By Lewis Brogdon, Bluefield College
Introduction
The words rich and poor are mentioned 16 and nine times respectively in Luke’s account of the ministry of Jesus and reflect his belief that the gospel addresses issues of wealth and poverty. One of the most powerful scenes in Luke records Jesus reading a passage out of Isaiah in the synagogue that says, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me and anointed me to preach good news to the poor” (4:18). Jesus announces the gospel first to the poor. The way Luke uses this announcement to the public ministry of Jesus is an important part of the theological statement he makes about Him and the good news he brings to a world mis-ordered by injustice.
Luke mines the theme of the gospel in relation to the poor and rich throughout his gospel account. In 1:46-55, Mary sings of God filling the hungry with good things and sending the rich away empty. In 6:20, 24, Jesus pronounces a blessing on the poor and promises them the kingdom of God and promises calamity on the rich because they have already received comfort. Stories of the rich landowner in 12:15-21, the rich man and Lazarus, and the rich young ruler in 18:18-27 held in tension with the admonition that no person can serve two masters (God and mammon) in 16:13 are examples of the extent Luke goes to address the poor and the rich, their relation to the socio-political workings of Rome, and the meaning of faith and faithfulness taught by Jesus of Nazareth. In special studies and New Testament introductions, biblical scholars such as Luke Timothy Johnson, Raymond Brown and Sandra Wheeler give attention to Luke’s interest in the poor and the rich as major literary themes.1 Commentaries such as the New Interpreter’s Bible allude to this theme as well, noting that Luke refers to the poor and the rich more than any other gospel.2
However, Lukan studies have advanced beyond focusing on the poor and the rich as literary themes. Greater attention is given to the socio-political context of the first century and the relation between imperialism and suffering connected to this form of occupation. This is likely the deeper reason Luke gives attention to certain groups of people; for it reflects a critique of a system-exploiting and crushing people. For example, even when the poor and rich are not mentioned directly, Luke addresses other groups who are socially marginalized – the infirm and women. There are abundant examples of Jesus’ care for the downcast throughout Luke, including: his healing of Simon’s mother-in-law (4:38); his cleansing of a leper (5:12); his healing of a paralytic (5:17); his healing of a man with a withered hand (6:6); his raising of widow’s son (7:11); his statement that good works for those in need proved the advent of the kingdom (7:22); his forgiving of a woman (7:36); his healing (exorcism) of the Gadarene demoniac (8:26); his raising of Jairus’ daughter (8:40); his feeding of five thousand (9:10); his story of the good Samaritan that illustrated the importance of helping anyone in need (10:25); his story about the forgiveness and restoration of the lost son (15:11); and his prayer of forgiveness on the cross (23:24). The fact that the poor are only one of many groups experiencing marginalization reflects Luke’s awareness of larger forces at work impacting the lives of people, which is why he presents a radical message that critiques this system and explores ways to respond to a mis-ordered world. 2
This important development in Lukan studies is opening up our understanding of the original meaning of this gospel and its implications for contemporary Christian interpretation, theology, ethics, preaching and ministry. In the pages that follow, I provide an interpretation, a rereading of Luke’s gospel in light of the privileges systemic injustice affords some and denies to others. Luke’s focus on the poor and rich apply to issues of privilege because it connects with the original context of Luke, a context of imperial or systemic oppression. A second connection is that in the same way Luke’s Jesus announced and proclaimed the gospel in response to an unjust world that produces suffering, so too must our interpretations and theologies speak to these same issues. In other words, to faithfully interpret Luke today means to reflect upon the privileges white Americans gained from centuries of systemic oppression – slavery and segregation – and to ask hard questions of what Luke’s gospel, Luke’s Jesus, asks of us.
I. Toward a Contextual and Lexical Understanding of the Poor and the Rich
The rich and poor are literary themes in Luke; but, more importantly, they are contextual terms. As contextual terms, they require an understanding of their meaning in the Greco-Roman world, particularly in ancient Palestine, and an understanding of what these designations looked like in the lives of first century people. The contextual dimension of the words “rich and poor” is something modern readers of Luke miss, resulting in false conclusions and equivalences in our understanding of these words and how to apply them today. A common mistake is to restrict the meaning to money – rich, having a lot of money or poor, not having money. That is an oversimplification that does not help readers understand the original message and import of Luke.
A. The Socio-Political Context of Luke’s Gospel
Understanding the historical context that informed the time the text was written and the occasion of its writing are important parts of biblical interpretation. Readers of the text cannot understand what it means today without understanding – as best as we can ascertain – why it was written and what it meant to those who first read the text. Context is everything in biblical hermeneutics – informing our understanding of it as a historical document and a religious text that informs faith and ethics today.
Luke wrote his account of the life and teachings of Jesus against the backdrop of a small country with its capital city occupied by a foreign empire. Rome’s occupation and control of the region, and particularly ancient Israel, is essential to understanding the events that framed the backdrop against which Jesus and, later, Luke lived. Context brings the text to life. It is also critical in understanding the import and radical nature of Jesus’ teachings recorded in Luke’s gospel. Consequently, when Luke writes his account of the ministry of Jesus, he is thinking specifically about this historical and political context, a context in which many people suffer and are displaced because of injustice. In fact, he believes this context informed the content of Jesus’s teachings on riches, the poor, the meaning of discipleship and salvation.
Richard Cassidy examines the political nature of Luke’s gospel to identify what he calls the “social stance of Jesus” on issues relating to groups such as the poor, the infirm, women, pagans, riches and the rich. His rationale and methodology are relevant for this study.
When we refer to Jesus’ “social stance,” we mean the response that Jesus made, through his teachings and conduct, to the question of how persons and groups ought to live together. In our use of the term “political,” we include, for example, the form of government, the various political authorities, and governmental 3
policies such as taxation. In referring to Jesus’ social and political stance, our intention is to emphasize that Jesus not only responded to the social situation of the poor, the infirm, and the oppressed, but also to the policies and practices of the political leaders of his time…the chief characteristics of Jesus’ social and political stance and enable us to see how the various elements, taken together, constitute a vision of a new social order of social relationships.3
Cassidy wants readers to understand that what they read in Luke is a response to issues emanating from the political and social world of the day, to systems, policies, and ideas. Jesus’ statements about women, the infirm, the poor and rich should be understood in a dual manner: what he says to them or about them; and the relation of the statement to the socio-political context.
Because Luke gives so much attention to “material” matters or what we often call social and economic issues, Luke’s gospel and the teachings of Jesus have an inescapable political dimension to them. The connection between Luke, politics and imperial Rome has been an emerging theme in New Testament studies.
Recent scholarship has drawn particular attention to several issues relating to politics, imperial cults and imperial propaganda in New Testament studies…This intriguing phenomenon is also evident in Lukan scholarship, attempting to depict Luke’s attitude toward the Jewish and the Roman authorities. In this respect, Lukan scholars, stressing the political aspects in Luke-Acts, have dealt with the imperial context more seriously in relation to Luke’s appreciation of the imperial cults or the imperial propaganda. Regardless of the position one takes about Luke’s depiction of the Roman Empire, it is very unlikely that Luke is not interested in politics. It is almost impossible to comprehend Luke’s writing in isolation from its historical setting, the empire.4
Recent years have seen a significant growth of scholarly interest in the political aspect of the New Testament. With the rise of postcolonial studies, the imperial context of the New Testament has come to attract much attention…Therefore, in order to understand early Christianity, it is crucial to consider its political environment: the Roman Empire. The political aspect of Luke-Acts, however, has largely been neglected until recently…The picture of the Roman Empire in Luke-Acts is inseparably connected with Luke’s view of the church, the people of God, in the context of the Roman Empire. A fuller understanding of the empire will lead to a better understanding of the church in a way unattainable by simply studying the church itself.5
These quotes alert readers to issues of historical, social, and political context that inform the situation and reasons the author writes.
An important iteration of this work has been to give readers information about the people we encounter in the biblical text. Some studies flesh out terms like “the poor” by examining what poverty looked like under imperial Roman rule. Jerome Neyrey’s edited volume entitled The Social World of Luke-Acts gives careful attention to the world in which they lived and why these matters are of supreme importance for interpretation.
An agrarian society, typical of the majority of those in Mediterranean antiquity, is one built predominantly upon the plow and agricultural production. The chief productive factor in agrarian economies is land. Control of land is one of the central political questions of agrarian societies…Agrarian societies can also be considered peasant societies, a set of villages socially bound up with preindustrial cities. These types of societies are stratified into essentially two social classes – a small ruling elite in the cities and a mass of toiling agriculturalists in the villages whose labor and product supports that elite. Another way to delineate “social class” within the peasant/agrarian societies is to look at who controls the land and the distribution of its products. Elites will control more or most and be advantaged in the distribution…Lenski has estimated that only 2% of the agrarian population belongs to the ruling elite, about 8% comprises the service class in the cities, and the remaining 90% or so tills the soil or services the village.6
…the basic economic structure of ancient societies from the elites’ point of view was that of a redistributive network. This means that taxes and rents flowed relentlessly away from the rural producers to the storehouses of cities (especially Rome), private estates, and temples. This surplus, which might have gone to feed extra mouths in the village, ended up being redistributed for other ends by the ruling groups.7
In the Gospels, however, which in part reflect Jesus’ own life situation in Galilee, the poor were small farmers with inadequate or barren land, or serfs on large estates; in the cities without the assistance of produce from the land were somewhat worse off.8
Scholars uncover the unjust workings of systems bent on concentrating wealth in the hands of the few – those loyal or favorably positioned to unjust systems. Careful background work illumines readers to the fact that when a foreign nation colonizes a nation or region, access to wealth has social and political dimensions. This means then that some forms of poverty in the ancient world were a product not so much of a lack of hard work and initiative as they were the product of how political and social systems control and distribute wealth.
B. Contextual-Lexical Understanding of Poor and Rich
Contextual work is important. However, it should accompany careful lexical and translational work. Both are necessary to understand the import of Luke from the first century context and its application to issues of privilege resulting from centuries of slavery and legal discrimination in America. Lexical work on the semantic range of Greek words for poor and rich should be examined, followed by a study of how these words are translated in popular versions of the Bible.
The poor (oi@ ptwcoi) v. 20 carried a range of meaning in the first century – poor, destitute, a noun as beggar or poor person whose survival is dependent on the compassion of others — and rich (toivvvvvvvV p@louvsioV) v. 24 can mean rich, well-to-do, opulent, wealthy, ample and or abundance.9 Most translations use poor and rich, except the Message translation that misrepresents the contextual and lexical meaning of ptwcovV and plouvsioV.
New International Version (NIV) — "Blessed are you who are poor…but woe to you who are rich."
Message — "You’re blessed when you’ve lost it all…but it’s trouble ahead if you think you have made it."
English Standard Version (ESV) — "Blessed are you who are poor…but woe to you who are rich for you have received your consolation."
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