Homework #8: Jesus’s Teaching
UBBL230 Luke/Acts
- Read Luke 6:12-8:56. As you read through the passages, prepare responses to the following questions:
- a) Identify 3-5 elements of this material that you find especially striking, surprising, puzzling, or offensive. You may also include any questions that this material raises for you.
- b) In this section of Luke, a number of the accounts convey Jesus’s authority over different things. Make a brief list of things over which Jesus shows his authority in this section of the text. You do not need to use complete sentences in this list, but you should provide chapter/verse citations (e.g., 6:12-14)
- Luke 6:17-49 is often called, “The Sermon on the Plain” (as opposed to the more famous “Sermon on the Mount” in Matthew 5-7). Note that the passage mentions both Jesus’s disciples and large crowds from many surrounding areas (6:17), but that Jesus’s teachings seem to be addressed, in some sense, to his disciples in particular (6:20). Answer the following questions about this material:
- a) Reread 6:20-26. We already compared this passage to a similar passage in Matthew on an earlier homework assignment. This time around, construct a single sentence that encapsulates this set of “blessings and woes” as fully as possible. (I am not looking for one very long, awkward sentence here, but rather a concise “synthesis” of the specific things Jesus says.)
- b) Reread 6:27-36. Where does the kind of lifestyle Jesus presents in this passage differ from our present cultural norms?
- c) Where do our present cultural norms overlap with the kind of lifestyle Jesus presents in 6:27-36?
- Reread 7:36-50
- a) How does Jesus’s approach toward the woman in this passage differ from Simon the Pharisee’s approach? What do these differing approaches suggest about their values?
- b) In what sense is the woman “saved” (7:50) in this passage?
- Reread 8:4-15, which has to do with the “Parable of the Sower”
- a) What does Jesus want his followers to do and/or not do, based on this passage?
- b) Jesus uses the phrase, “Let anyone with ears to hear listen!” in Luke 8:8 and many other times in Matthew, Mark, and Luke’s Gospels. What do you think he means by it, based on this passage?
