First, Do No Harm, but Then…

In Luke 3:18, John’s proclamation is described as “good news.” On the face of it, that seems like a somewhat odd characterization. We don’t tend to hear words about the coming wrath or unquenchable fire as positive predictions. Perhaps we need to listen with ears better tuned to the message.

Levine and Witherington suggest that “the more informed among Luke’s readers would have recognized the Baptizer’s allusion to Isa. 51:1-2” (page 87). If that is the case, then we have the chance to do some “little text, big context” work to better appreciate what the Lukan audience may have been taught to hear. The verses in question say,

“Listen to me, you that pursue righteousness, you that seek the Lord. Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug. Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you; for he was but one when I called him, but I blessed him and made him many” (Isaiah 51:1-2, NRSV).

If you are going to look to “Abraham your father,” John may be saying, then this is the place to look. Isaiah 51:3 offers words of comfort to those who are returning from the Babylonian Exile. That comfort will come in the waste places, and the wilderness will become like the Garden of Eden. Here’s a connection to John’s place of residence (as Luke describes it) in the wilderness. This will be a place of joy and gladness, of thanksgiving and the voice of song.

John’s proclamation in verse six ends with the declaration that all flesh shall see the salvation of God. “Salvation” comes into the poem in Second Isaiah three times in five verses. God’s salvation has gone out in the new regime of God’s rule over all the peoples. Heaven and earth will vanish like smoke, but God’s salvation will be forever, and God’s deliverance will be unending. Those who revile and reproach God’s people will be eaten up like old fabric, but God’s deliverance will be forever and God’s salvation to all generations.

The poem in Isaiah 51 carries the Good News of God’s faithful deliverance. That deliverance will set people free from domination and oppression. That deliverance and salvation shall have universal scope and shall be available for all peoples. This universal deliverance and salvation shall be about justice and redemption. The first result of this salvation shall be the return of the “ransomed of the Lord” with songs on their lips and joy on their heads.

If this text is part of what stands in the background of John’s proclamation, then it is more plausible that it would be heard as “good news.” If that is the case, then the question, “What, therefore, shall we do?” is not a fearful response. It is rather something more like, “What can we do to help?” If things are getting better, then count us in! For the first time in a long time, there is reason to hope.

The popular notion is that the essence of the Hippocratic Oath taken by (some) doctors is the phrase, “First, do harm.” It is often noted in its Latin form, “primum non nocere.” In fact, this language doesn’t show up in the Hippocratic oath. When it does show up in the writing of the ancient Greek physician, in a work entitled On Epidemics, it is more ambiguous than perhaps we would like. Physicians and their instructors debate the practical meaning of the phrase and know that in the real world applying it is always complicated and sometimes counterproductive.

“First, do no harm” seems to be more John the Baptist than Hippocrates. Tax collectors, don’t gouge the public. Soldiers, don’t extort more than you have coming to you. However, this is perhaps about more than refraining from criminal behavior. Richard Swanson helps us to see this urging in a wider and deeper context.

“Even people who made their living collaborating with the enemy,” Swanson writes, “heard the call to turn the world right-side-up” (page 67). He suggests that John tells them to do just what the rules require and not one thing more. “John tells even the collaborators that they can join the resistance against Rome,” Swanson continues. John “tells them simply to do the bare minimum, to do what native peoples have always done to resist powerful colonizers: never to make it easy for the oppressors, follow their orders, but no more than that” (page 67). John offers the soldiers similar counsel.

It is certainly the case, as I noted in the previous post, that John urges his listeners to do what is possible within the scope of their daily lives. But that doing may be more than trying to straddle the fence between collaborator and revolutionary. If the Lukan account is a hidden transcript of resistance, then these small actions are part of that hidden transcript. Done enough times, such actions can cause a large system to simply grind to a halt.

Scheffler notes the slight change in Luke 3:17 as compared to Matthew 3:12 (page 24). In the Lukan recension, the clearing of the threshing floor and the gathering of the wheat are aorist infinitives rather than future tenses. These things are happening in the ministry of Jesus, according to Luke. Only the final judgment is put off to the future. Salvation is happening in the here and now. That is part of the good news the people are hearing.

This can help to make some sense of the final paragraph in this section. Immediately following this declaration that John’s proclamation was “good news,” we hear the Lukan report of John’s arrest and imprisonment.

I think the Lukan author has provided an inclusio at this point in the text. That’s another of those oral/aural techniques for which we need to keep our eyes and ears open. Herod is noted in verse one as the ruler of Galilee. He is described again in verse nineteen as “the ruler.” In both cases, the formal title of “tetrarch” is used in the Greek text. The “good news” leads, in literary terms, to an immediate and negative response from one of the so-called rulers.

Scheffler points to this connection in his article. “Luke pictures the Baptist as the forerunner of Jesus, not only as far as the latter’s socio-ethic is concerned, but also with regard to his suffering. As was the case with Jesus,” Scheffler continues, “the notion that a consistent socio-ethic leads to suffering also applies to John. Therefore,” he concludes, “it is important that John’s sufferings are mentioned here where he explicitly reports about the relationship between John and Jesus” (page 25).

I think the context supports the notion that the socio-ethical actions John advises are more than “good deeds.” Instead, they are actions of resistance against oppressors. They are part of the larger reality of the Kin(g)dom of God that challenges the domination systems which embody the oppression of Evil in the world. John urges people caught up in the System to find ways to resist the System and to make it grind to a halt. John takes on the corruption of the rulers directly and pays for that confrontation with his life.

The Lukan author is a master of the oral and/or literary technique of foreshadowing. The shadow of the cross falls over this part of the narrative as John is hauled off to prison for eventual execution. On the one hand, John proclaims the Good News that will be fulfilled in Jesus. On the other hand, he is apprehended by the forces of Evil who seek to suppress that good news.

“John’s message is, given his audience, one of comfort,” Levine and Witherington write, “people who have brought themselves to John and repented are the wheat; those who deny John and his baptism are the chaff…” They suggest that we have a clear indication of such chaff in verses 19-20. Herod Antipas and Herodias represent the chaff that will be destroyed.

I think that the Lukan account picks up a new section at verse 21, although the connection to “all the people” keeps a bridge to the previous section. Luke 3:21 through 4:30 is tied together by a reflection on the nature of Jesus as the Son of God. Therefore, as I suggested reading Luke 3:1-9 for last week, this week I would read Luke 3:7-20. I don’t think we honor the Lukan text by stopping at verse 18.

In the previous post, I encouraged us to wonder (at least by implication) how we can prepare the way of the Lord through our everyday lives and small actions. I want to stick with that wondering. But I think the text in its fullness urges to think not only about where we might engage in such actions, but where those actions might be tools of resistance to the powers that seek to dominate. And if those actions are such tools of resistance, then perhaps we should be ready to suffer as a result of our engagement with the powers.

It takes very little effort, for example, to speak up in support of someone who has endured a racial slur in our presence. Yet, we White people find it incredibly difficult to respond to such language with resistance to the wrong and support for the sufferer. We know that if we do, we may experience some suffering on our own. At the very least we will surrender some of our White solidarity, and we hate to relinquish that property.

Yet, that is precisely the sort of action I suspect John would call forth from us as the fruit that befits repentance.

References and Resources

Levine, Amy-Jill, and Witherington, Ben. The Gospel of Luke. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

SCHEFFLER, E. H. “THE SOCIAL ETHICS OF THE LUCAN BAPTIST (LK 3:10-14).” Neotestamentica, vol. 24, no. 1, New Testament Society of Southern Africa, 1990, pp. 21–36, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43047935.

Swanson, Richard. Provoking the Gospel of Luke: A Storyteller’s Commentary, Year C. Cleveland, OH.: The Pilgrim Press, 2006.

Last week we noted two things about the Lukan account.

First, the Lukan author is writing an orderly account for the long haul, for a setting in which it appears that the Second Coming of the Son of Man will be “delayed” indefinitely. I want to take a moment to reflect on what that means. It doesn’t mean, in the Lukan perspective, that there has been a change in the Divine Timetable. Instead, the Lukan author is suggesting that perhaps the generation of the Markan composition hadn’t gotten the eschatological expectations quite right, especially in connection with the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple.

I worked for a boss once who insisted that we would never suggest that the boss was “late” for anything but rather was “delayed.” The purpose was to indicate that our boss was organized and stuck to a schedule unless some unavoidable task came up unexpectedly. That is not really the case with the Lukan account. The issue of the “delay” was with the schedule assumed by early Jesus followers, not because God was disorganized or needed to go to Plan B.

Second, the Lukan author is addressing a complicated mix of people in sociological, psychological, and theological terms. The Lukan audience is largely Jewish-Christian, but Gentile god-fearers are becoming more and more numerous in those communities. While the great majority of the Markan audience likely came from the lowest socioeconomic segments of the Roman populace, the Lukan audience seems to have more people of wealth and influence, as well as soldiers and mid-level bureaucrats. We can see that difference reflected in the characters who take center stage in the Lukan drama.

We will come back to that second point in a moment. But first, let’s think about what this difference might mean for how the Lukan account was delivered to readers, or was it listeners? The addressee of Luke/Acts, the “most excellent Theophilus,” was clearly literate. Some scholars wonder if Theophilus was an actual person or simply a stereotype, a literary conceit by the Lukan author. For present purposes, that distinction doesn’t make a difference. Whether Theophilus was real or fictional, the character was assumed to be literate.

That is quite different from the clear Markan assumption that the composition would be primarily spoken and that the written document was really a transcript of one or more of those oral performances. But this doesn’t mean that the literacy rate in the Roman Empire suddenly skyrocketed between 70 and 90 CE. At best, the Lukan author could have assumed about a ten percent literacy rate. It is likely that the real number was somewhat lower.

The great majority of people who came into contact with the Lukan account would have heard it read aloud rather than reading it themselves, either aloud or silently. So, it is worth our time to continue to ask performance critical questions of the texts as we go through this lectionary year. One of those questions entails wondering who was really addressed in a text. More properly, this question invites us to imagine who it was who heard themselves addressed as these texts were read aloud.

In Luke 3:7-22, the text contains clear indications about who was being addressed. In verses seven and ten, it is the “crowds that came out to be baptized by John” who are addressed and then raise questions in response to John’s proclamation. In verses 15, 18, and 21, it is “the people” (and then “all the people”) who are the target of the text. As I noted last week, this is different Matthew’s targeting of the religious authorities. This is a direct address similar to the “you (plural)” passages in the Markan composition.

That direct address takes up most of verses seven through nine. It continues in verses ten through fourteen and is focused on specific social groups. In verses fifteen through seventeen, John responds to questions which may still have reverberated in the Lukan community fifty years after the fact. And in verse twenty-one, we hear that “all the people” have been baptized, a remarkable statement on its own. John’s work was finished, and Jesus’ ministry could then begin.

As we look more closely at the text, and as we remember that oral/aural techniques still apply, we can begin to look for (and to see) some of those techniques and use them in our interpretation. You may recall the Markan fondness for chiastic structures. And you may recall that this is a characteristic of oral/aural presentations in the Greco-Roman world. In Luke 3:7-10, I would suggest that we have a small chiasm. It works like this:

A:        Luke 3:7 – John warns the crowds

B:        Luke 3:8a – Be fruitful trees

C:        Luke 3:8b – Children of Abraham from stones

B’:       Luke 3:9 – Unfruitful trees are cut down

A’:       Luke 3:10 – The crowds ask their question

The center of this paragraph is John’s reminder to the crowds that their cultural and religious pedigree is neither necessary nor sufficient to “flee the wrath to come.” Stones don’t have such a pedigree. Neither do Gentiles, by the way. Remember that the Lukan author always has an eye toward how this will all work out in the Book of Acts. One of the major themes of Acts is that new “children of Abraham” will be raised up in the most unexpected of places.

On the one hand, this is a caution to Jewish Christians who are perhaps tempted to lean back on their pedigrees and relax a bit as the Second Coming seems to recede into the historical future. On the other hand, it is good news for those who do not have and cannot have that pedigree. They may become living stones just as Jesus is the living cornerstone upon which the Church is now built. Regardless of their backgrounds, the listeners can indeed “bear fruits worthy of repentance.”

We contemporary Jesus followers are long past the Jew/Gentile divide of the first century. We are not, however, long past the boundaries we create between “insiders” and “outsiders” in most of our congregations. Pedigree, whether in terms of genealogy or tenure, does not substitute for repentance – changing one’s mind to be aligned with God’s intentions. Nor does recent arrival require one to sit on the sidelines until one has “earned the right” to be part of the real community.

The Lukan author moves from a chiastic paragraph to one that exhibits the Rule of Three. Did you happen to notice that? The crowd replies to John and says, “What, therefore, shall we do?” Rather than offering a broad-brush description, the Lukan author has John respond to three specific situations: less-poor people, tax-collectors, and soldiers. I want to make a few observations here.

First, John accepts the question as the right one. But his reply might not be quite what the first audience or the Lukan audience was expecting. I would connect Luke 3:10 to the previous paragraph in part because it is connected with an “and.” Luke 3:11 has a “but” in it to indicate a mild adversative sense. While we might expect John to urge some “spiritual” reformation, he goes for the pocketbook, at least metaphorically.

Second, John affirms that the crowds can indeed do something. They have, in contemporary language, agency. That agency is not determined by economic status. It is not only people of means who can do something that matters. Someone with two coats was not a wealthy person. But that someone was also not the poorest of the poor. Do something with what you have. Tax-collectors could obey the rules, and soldiers could be satisfied with their wages.

These are actions from normal, everyday life. On the one hand, the Lukan author is not advocating for a social or economic revolution on some historic scale. On the other hand, a modest social position is no excuse for doing nothing. We can all do something, the Lukan author seems to say. And that something will likely be specific to the dynamics of our particular situations.

I cannot do “everything.” So, I am sometimes tempted to do nothing. But the fact that I will not bring about change on some historic scale is not a reason to despair. I don’t think that my commitment to a plant-based, whole foods diet will solve the climate crisis or reform industrial agriculture. But it is something. I don’t think my charitable gifts to a variety of organizations will eliminate hunger or childhood poverty. But those gifts make some small difference. In the language of the theater, there are no small parts – only small players.

In addition, doing something changes me. Remember, this is about bearing fruit worthy of repentance. The Western, Enlightenment assumption is that we think ourselves into acting. But the truth is that we more often act ourselves into thinking. When I share my cloak with the one who has none, I nudge myself to be more of the person who does such things. Habits form character and change minds. That sounds like repentance to me.