Canter Bridge

One thinks of the crowds thronging to Jesus because of his more dramatic performances, say, the noisy exorcisms and the healing of lingering diseases. Yet when Luke summarizes Jesus’ labors, he begins his abbreviation of the crowds’ vigor by referring to what they heard Jesus say:

He came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured.

What words, what voice, what personal mystique must have touched them with such impressive potency? (more…)

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The careful observer of life’s nuts and bolts soon learns that he can put up with almost anything for a little while. When you can glimpse the end of pain, you become almost invincible.

So it might have seemed entirely plausible to the young enthusiasts who gathered admiringly around Jesus that they should accompany him to his destination. He had, after all, had problems in the Samaritan villages precisely because his face was set like stone for Jerusalem. Everyone knew where Jesus was headed. (more…)

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Gabriel, ‘man of God’, has a busy year in the infancy narratives that represent more than any other material the writer Luke’s determination to set in order the jumbled accounts of Jesus’ life. He is twice sent to announce the unusual conception of Jewish boys. The responsive nature of his embassy as much as his suggestive name indicates that a higher power stands behind the events that begin to unfold promisingly in these lines. Gabriel, clearly, is doing as he is told. (more…)

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