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Book: Luke

Devilish Diversions—Luke 4:1-13

The devil sought to divert Jesus from his mission in three different ways. Walking Christ’s cruciform way, we face the same temptations.

The Implicit Grammar of the Transfiguration—Luke 9:28–43a

The transfiguration reveals the implicit grammar of Jesus’ politics and political identity. This identity did not require a retreat to heaven, but confrontation and crucifixion in Jerusalem.

The Paradox of a World Turned Upside Down—Luke 6:17-26

Luke makes it clear that it is God, and God alone, who can best align our lives and realities, to make us whole and healthy, and to give us a life worth living, a life most “human.”

Prophets Among Us—1 Samuel 2:18-20, 26 and Luke 2:41-52

Where do we place ourselves in these narratives? What is our posture toward the prophets among us? Are we the prophetic children, the parents who tentatively support yet fear their calling, or the status quo that they oppose?

Mary, Did You Know?—Luke 1:39-56

The Mary that we discover in Luke’s gospel may not be the sentimentalized and domesticated Mary of the Christian imagination.

The Politics of Advent Fire—Luke 3:7-18

John the Baptist offers a way for us to rethink Advent, suggesting that the advent of the kingdom demands the advent of justice.

A Baptism of Repentance—Luke 3:1-6

The message of John the Baptist challenges our complacency about sin, an attitude that pervades and perverts our entire life as a society.

The Coming Near of God—Luke 21:25-36

The nearness of God inspires communities to work for justice, for the Son of Man as a co-pilgrim participates in the struggles of the creation.

Resurrection at the Margins—Luke 24:36-48

Resurrection is at work among and recognized by those at the periphery long before those in the center.

The Politics of the Shepherds’ Sign—Luke 2:8-20 (Alastair Roberts)

The story of the sign given to the shepherds—the Child wrapped in swaddling clothes, laid in a manger—both recalls and anticipates other scriptural events in significant yet surprising ways. It also reminds us of our vocation, as those who must declare the good news of the sign of Christ to the shepherds of our age.

The Politics of Divine Disruption—Luke 1:46b-55 (Fritz Wendt)

The Magnificat is a song of divine disruption, the song of God’s revolution.

The Politics of Memory and Hope—Luke 1:46b-55 (J. Leavitt Pearl)

Mary’s Magnificat challenges us to bend our sight, to look both forward and backward. For without a vision of the future, without a messianic hope, we can only ever mourn the past—we can never envision its regeneration, a new heaven and a new earth.