The Gospel of Luke, while it does many things in relation to
Jesus ministry, provides believers with a firmly rooted understanding of the
significance of meals, not only within the communities, but also within Jesus’
ministry. Because of what they demonstrate, and because of what they
allow to be demonstrated, Jesus consistently seizes upon these occasions to
teach and to make points about the nature of the kingdom of heaven. These
meals also become the source of ongoing controversies concerning Jesus.
Engaging with Luke, one finds a
perfect example of that in the seventh chapter, as Jesus is following up on
inquiries made of Him by disciples of John the Baptist, and speaking about him
to the assembled crowds, doing so in the context of the kingdom of His God (Luke
7:28). At the close of this dissertation about John, Jesus references the
controversial nature of His meal practice (and even that of John in a
roundabout way), by saying “For John the Baptist has come eating no bread and
drinking no wine, and you say, ‘He has a demon!’ The Son of Man has come
eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look at Him, a glutton and a drunk, a friend
of tax collectors and sinners!’” (7:33-34) One cannot take lightly the
importance that Jesus and the Gospel authors attribute to meals. A hermeneutic
must be allowed to be fundamentally influenced by this meal dynamic.
Both Luke and Matthew have Jesus
closing out His discourse on John the Baptist by adding, “But wisdom is
vindicated by all her children” (7:35). Though there is an implied break
in the narrative following these words from Jesus, with the words of the
thirty-sixth verse of Luke seeming to present a new situation, it is noteworthy
that Luke immediately moves to inform the reader that “one of the Pharisees
asked Jesus to have dinner with him” (7:36a). With this, the author
appears to be communicating the importance of meals, as even though there is a
break in the action, so to speak, the theological narrative continues, with
Jesus being moved directly from His statement about wisdom and her children
(which follows a statement about eating and drinking with tax collectors and
sinners), to the acceptance of an invitation to dine at the house of a
Pharisee.
If an observer maintains a
mental framework that does not have Jesus or Luke diverging from speaking from
a context of meals and their importance, then it is quite possible to hear
Jesus speaking in that context when He says that “wisdom is vindicated by her
children.” This, then, is not a disconnected aphorism recorded by Luke
and randomly placed within the text, but rather, a transition that maintains
the meal-related motif. Of course, this cannot be asserted without addressing
the fact that Matthew places Jesus’ speech about John within a different
sequence of events, and does not move from the wisdom and children statement to
Jesus’ meal in the house of the Pharisee.
Without attempting to rectify or harmonize the chronological
conflicts, the difference can be explained by noting Luke’s greater emphasis on
Jesus’ meals. Though Matthew certainly holds Jesus’ participation at
various meals in high regard, rightly signifying their importance for
understanding Jesus and their significance for the communication of His
mission, it is Luke that has Jesus spending more time at meals, while also
sharing some of His most impactful parables (the parable of the prodigal chief
among these as one of Jesus’ most important, elaborate, and impactful parables)
while at a banqueting table.
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