Structure and Literary Form
CHAPTER 2 Luke 1:5 – 25
II. Priestly service in the temple (1:8 – 10)
4. Hope against Hope
For all his righteousness, Zechariah does not believe when his prayers and deepest hopes are about to be fulfilled, because he felt it was an impossible dream. He stands in contrast to Abraham who, in the same situation, hoped against hope (Rom 4:18). Zechariah had been praying faithfully but apparently did not believe that his prayers would be answered.
He was faithfully carrying out the ritual perilously near the Most Holy Place in the temple, where God’s presence was believed to emanate, yet he could not quite bring himself to believe the angel who appeared to him in this Holy Place was on the up and up. Instead of the joy and exultation one might expect Zechariah to exude at the news, he expressed doubt and consternation. His reaction reveals that his hope for a child was all but dead even though it kept itching like a scab. He went through the motions of religious activity, prayer, and priestly service, but after all these years he could not bring himself to believe that God would ever really do anything.
Perhaps his hopes had been raised so many times in the past and then dashed that he could not bring himself to dare to believe. He did not want to go through the pain of disappointment again. Perhaps the routine of all his priestly activity caused him to forget that God remembers and fulfills promises. If it is true that hope is like oxygen for the soul, then Zechariah needed an oxygen tank and respirator.
His doubting in the face of the fulfillment of hopes is not a foreign experience for Christians through the ages. When Peter escaped from his shackles and passed by the guards and through an impregnable iron gate that miraculously opened by itself and then made his way to the room where the believers had gathered and were fervently praying for his release, the reaction is almost comical (Acts 12:1 – 17). The young maid Rhoda met him at the gate but forgot to open it for him. When she announced that Peter was at the gate, the people chided her for interrupting the prayer meeting for his release and basically told her, “You are mad. How could Peter ever get free? You are seeing ghosts.” It is easy to be caught off guard when God
answers prayer. Frequently, the church is dumbfounded in the face of liberation.
It is possible that in praying Christians only go through the motions without faith that God will answer. There may be little interest in seeing how God might answer prayers. A lack of anticipation that anything will ever change can lead to spiritual languor, which, in turn, leads to a voice that is mute about the hope that God’s promises awaken. How can Christians “always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have” (1 Pet 3:15), if they have no hope in them?
There is another danger that our hopes can become domesticated and self-centered. We as Christians can become so wrapped up in our own little world that we fail to lift up our eyes to see the unimaginable things God has planned and promised. The bold challenge in Heb 13:13 – 14 (“Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come”) cannot be answered if our hopes are centered only in this world and its possibilities. Bauckham and Hart write, “Most readers of this book live in a society where the fear of death and loss holds the majority subconsciously in its grip, and where ideologies of self-advancement and the artificially stimulated appetite for ‘more of everything good now’ dominates our view of the world, our practical priorities, and our understanding of life’s ultimate meaning and goal.”32
We as Christians should measure our hopes for today and tomorrow in a despairing world by the promises that God has unfolded in Scripture that extend far beyond the materiality of this orb. Mostert writes:
To live in hope is to adopt a basic stance or direction, like iron filings in a magnetic field. It is to be drawn to something beyond the immediate concerns of the everyday, to look to the horizon and to see more than a limit to our vision, and our own possibilities. In short, it is to be oriented to the future, understood as a gift with God, with new divinely imagined possibilities, not just the outcome of events and actions in the past and present. To live in hope is to live in the energy field of the future.33
1.Mark L. Strauss, The Davidic Messiah in Luke-Acts: The Promise and Its Fulfillment in Lukan Christology (JSNTSup 110; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1995), 86.
2.Brendan J. Byrne, The Hospitality of God: A Reading of Luke’s Gospel (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 2000), 18.
3.Thomas L. Brodie, The Birthing of the New Testament: The Intertextual Development of the New Testament Writings (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2004), 101.
4.Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in Matthew and Luke (New York: Doubleday, 1977), 156. See Gen 16:7 – 12; 17:1 – 21; 18:1 – 15; Judg 13:3 – 21.
5.Edgar W. Conrad, “The Annunciation of Birth and the Birth of the Messiah,” CBQ 47 (1985): 656 – 63. The form takes the reader back to the patriarchal narratives.
6.Abraham (1:55, 73); Moses (2:22); David (1:27, 32, 69; 2:4, 11).
Elizabeth is the name of Aaron’s wife (Exod 6:23), and Mary (Miriam) is the name of his sister (Exod 15:20).
7.Because Jerusalem did not recognize her visitation from God, the story that begins on a note of hope and joy will end ominously. The rejection of Jesus casts a wintry pall of looming disaster on the nation as Jesus predicts,
“The days are coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren and the wombs that did not give birth and the breasts that did not nurse’ ” (23:29).
8.The term “division” ( ) literally means “daily” and refers to their daily duties in the temple ritual (see Heb 9:6).
9.Dennis Hamm, “The Tamid Service in Luke-Acts: The Cultic Background behind Luke’s Theology of Worship (Luke 1:5 – 25; 18:9 – 14;
24:50 – 53; Acts 3:1; 10:3, 30),” CBQ 65 (2003): 22. On the preparation of the incense, which would have been done by other priests, see Exod 30:34 – 38.
10.Mark Coleridge, The Birth of the Lukan Narrative: Narrative as Christology in Luke 1 – 2 (JSNTSup 88; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1993), 33.
11.Green, The Gospel of Luke, 62.
12.FranḉcLois Bovon, Luke 1:1 – 9:50 (Hermeneia; trans. Christine M.
Thomas; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002), 34, notes that in each case the announcement of births in the Old Testament “happened for the good not only of individuals but of the whole nation.”
13.Coleridge, The Birth of the Lukan Narrative, 36.
14.Ibid., 35.
15.Schweizer, Luke, 23.
16.Frederick W. Danker, Jesus and the New Age (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988), 27.
17.Sirach 48:10 interprets this final role more positively, “At the appointed time, it is written, you [Elijah] are destined to calm the wrath of God before it breaks out in fury, to turn the hearts of parents to their children, and to restore the tribes of Jacob.”
18.Bovon, Luke 1:1 – 9:50, 37.
19.Brown, The Birth of the Messiah, 271.
20.Coleridge, The Birth of the Lukan Narrative, 44.
21.Ibid., 45.
22.Brown (The Birth of the Messiah, 280) claims that his inability to speak also means that he cannot join in uttering the priestly blessing (Num 6:24 – 26). Jesus does so in 24:50 – 52.
23.It also reveals that Zechariah is not a member of the priestly establishment in Jerusalem but on the periphery and shared the struggle of ordinary people living in small villages and struggling for survival.
24.Tal Ilan, Jewish Women in Greco-Roman Palestine (Peabody MA:
Hendrickson, 1996), 111.
25.Coleridge, The Birth of the Lukan Narrative, 48.
26.Helen K. Bond, Caiaphas: Friend of Rome and Judge of Jesus?
(Louisville/London: Westminster John Knox, 2004), 109.
27.See C. Kavin Rowe, Early Narrative Christology: The Lord in the Gospel of Luke (BZNW 2/139; Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 2006), 34 – 35.
28.Daryl D. Schmidt, “Rhetorical Influences and Genre,”52. Nils A. Dahl (“The Story of Abraham in Luke-Acts,” in Studies in Luke-Acts [ed. L. E.
Keck and J. L. Martyn; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1966], 153) claims that Luke intends to “write the continuation of the biblical history.”
29.Coleridge, The Birth of the Lukan Narrative, 30.
30.Henri Nouwen, “The Path of Waiting,” in Finding My Way Home:
Pathways to Life and the Spirit (New York: Crossroad, 2001), 95.
31.Coleridge, The Birth of the Lukan Narrative, 41.
32.Richard Bauckham and Trevor Hart, Hope against Hope: Christian Eschatology at the Turn of the Millennium (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1999), 203.
33.Christiaan Mostert, “Living in Hope,” in Hope: Challenging the Culture of Despair (ed. C. Mostert; Hindmarsh: ATF, 2004), 62.
CHAPTER 3:
Luke 1:26 – 38
Literary Context
The birth announcement by the angel Gabriel to Mary parallels the announcement he made to Zechariah in the previous episode. Luke intends for Jesus and John to be compared in these two panels and for the reader to see that Jesus is demonstrably greater than John. The step-parallelism of the two annunciations, therefore, serves a christological purpose. John’s conception is remarkable, but Jesus' conception through the creative power of the Holy Spirit is miraculous. The angel announced to Zechariah that John’s role is “to prepare a people made ready for the Lord” (1:17). The announcement to Mary reveals that John will prepare the way for Jesus, who is the Son of the Most High and embodies the Lord in his mission and person.1John’s significance in salvation history is tied solely to his connection to Jesus. The themes of mercy, showing favor (1:25, 28, 30, 48, 50, 54), the power of God to do the impossible (1:35, 37, 49), and God who brings salvation (1:47, 69, 71, 77; 2:11) run through the passages.
The step-parallelism of the two annunciations also marks a paradoxical downward trend. The scene shifts from the temple to a nontemple setting, from the holy city to a village of no consequence. The prestige of the character the angel visits shifts from an elderly male with high status to a young female with no status. The contrasts portend that the reign of God will turn everything topsy-turvy. In the immediate context of the infancy narratives, they foreshadow the surprising developments that the Son of God will be born in a manger and acclaimed by shepherds.
Main Idea
The life of Jesus that Luke records, beginning in 4:1, is possible because his conception was the result of God’s direct, creative intervention so that Jesus shares in both the divine and the human sphere. Mary’s response to this divine intervention shows that God’s action requires human submission to the divine will.2
Translation
Structure and Literary Form
Like 1:5 – 25, this unit contains a birth oracle, but it modifies the form more heavily. 3The structure also forms a chiastic pattern:
A The angel’s appearance and greeting and the introduction of Mary, a virgin espoused to Joseph (1:26 – 28)
B Mary’s consternation over the angel’s greeting and the angel’s reassurance not to fear (1:29 – 30a)
C Announcement that she has found favor with God and will conceive and bear a son who will be called the Son of the Most High (1:30b – 33)
B Mary’s questioning about how this will occur and the angel’s reassuring explanation (1:34 – 37)
A Mary’s submissive response to the angel’s announcement and the angel’s departure (1:38)
Exegetical Outline
I. Setting and introduction of Mary (1:26 – 27) A. The town of Nazareth in Galilee (1:26)
B. Mary, a virgin, espoused to Joseph of the house of David (1:27) II. The angel’s greeting of Mary (1:28 – 30)
A. Greeting as a favored one (1:28)
B. Mary’s perplexity over this greeting (1:29) C. Reassurance as favored by God (1:30)
III. The angel’s announcement of the conception and role of the