Jesus' Plan of Action

Luke 8:1-3

Luke lays out his gospel with certain passages serving as key transitions where strategy ramps up. In the first few verses of Luke 8 is one of the more significant of these transitions.

In Luke 8:1, he writes that Jesus begins to travel around from one town or village to another, basically all over Galilee. What he does as he travels, Luke records, is to declare and demonstrate God's good news.

Jesus is not alone as he travels, for the Twelve disciples are with him. At this stage, they seem to follow along as observers. Everything that happens in the follow chapter is Jesus doing something with the disciples looking on or listening.

They are not the only ones in the official entourage, for there are, Luke takes great pains to clarify, several women who also travel with Jesus and his otherwise male team. Actually, there are many women who are part of this group, a group that seems to have one thing in common besides being women - they've been cured of various diseases and liberated from evil spirits. Plus freed, I should add, from the curse of being female in that ancient patriarchal society and thus left out of things deemed important to the work of God. They weren't just set free from something, they were set free to serve and minister and to be close to Jesus.

This time of going from one place to another is actually Phase II of Jesus' strategy to declare and demonstrate the Good News. Phase I begins in Luke 4 where in his own home town of Nazareth he sets forth his mission. There he quotes the words of Isaiah the prophet, telling his kin and childhood neighbors that right then and there Isaiah's words are being fulfilled. "The Spirit of the Lord is on me," he proclaims, "to preach good news to the poor, to set captives free, heal the blind, release the oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." Over the next short period, he goes about doing just that, mostly staying in the vicinity of Galilee Lake.

As he heals the sick and casts out demons and preaches to the poor, he also calls those who he has blessed to follow him. More than just the group we call the Twelve. For Jesus had many disciples. But of the many, Twelve were assigned a specific role as Apostles, specifically tasked with being "sent out". And then there were these many women referred to now in Luke 8:2-3. I'll talk more about them in the next posting. For the moment I want to focus on Jesus' methodology.

Here in chapter 8 Jesus sets out to declare and demonstrate the good news. He does this by fulfilling his mission set forth back in Luke 4 - to declare good news to the poor by proclaiming the year of the Lord's favor, speaking specifically of the Year of Jubilee when everything is made right, and to demonstrate the good news by actually making things right as in healing the sick, casting out demons, and freeing captives and other oppressed people. He has already been doing all this, but now he does so overtly with those he has been pulling together, namely the Twelve and these women. This systematic incorporation of his followers is Phase II of his strategy.

Quite often the chapter divisions get in the way of Scriptural interpretation, being added as they were long after the Scriptures were written and canonized. Luke 8-10 is one place where these chapter changes make good sense. For at the beginning of chapter 9, we see Phase III kick in. Starting with 9:1, Jesus sends out the Twelve to do just as Jesus has been doing. Then in chapter 10, we see Phase IV unfolding. Here is where he moves beyond the Twelve to include six times as many people in the work, disciples who are set out in the same manner. This group is known as the Seventy-Two (or Seventy, ancient manuscripts being hard to decipher on this).

Jesus is not only about declaring and demonstrating the good news. He is as much about calling and equipping others to do the same. Part of the good news is that it is participatory. And the plan unfolds one phase at a time as the group swells in size, less a messy mob than an organized team. Jesus doesn't worry about it being too organized, for human management is less critical than Spirit leading. And human hierarchy is not something Jesus fusses over. He apparently is much more concerned that people are communicating and doing Truth rather than that they all have their organizational ducks in a row. At least he doesn't get uptight when James and John shortly thereafter see some stranger exorcising demons in Jesus' name. Jesus cares little for copyright laws and territorial rights. The Good News is getting out and common people are doing it!