Dear Theophilus

When I was a kid, I used to have to listen to my mom’s stories about her family. These stories used to go all the way back to the very beginnings of our family in America. She used to talk about the Oteros and how they came from Spain with a Spanish land grant. She used to talk about how our family, once upon a time, used to own all of what is now Tucson, Arizona. She used to tell us stories about how they were wealthy in cattle. And I used to listen to these stories and think, yeah, right. Then how come we’re so poor now? Then I would hear the story of the daughter who was cut off, disinherited, because she married a gambler. But I never put too much belief in these stories. I figured they had all been blown out of proportion. Then I grew up and gave no more thought to the stories.

Then my sister started working on the family tree. She found out that most of what my mom had said was true. The family had indeed come from Spain, back in the 1700s. They had received a large Spanish land grant, not in Tucson, but in Tubak, Arizona. There were wealthy in cattle. The were important people in that part of the country.   Recently, I was contacted by a member of the Otero family who was getting the family tree all straightened out.  She confirmed all the things my mom used to say about the family.  All those old stories were true. There was more to them which my mom left out, probably because she had forgotten, or had never heard the whole story. But they turned out to be basically true. I guess these stories were passed along because the family considered them important. They were about family, after all.

That’s what the gospels are.  Soon after the departure of Jesus, his followers began to expect him to return in short order.  All of the epistles, the letters, written by his loyal followers, indicate that he was coming back soon.  Times got bad for the early Christians, and they certainly felt like they needed Jesus to return soon.  But he didn’t.  Decades passed.  And the people who actually knew Jesus and heard his teachings were starting to dwindle.  Some were killed in nasty unpleasant ways.  Others simply passed on.  I’m sure people started to think, “Damn!  Somebody ought to write all this stuff down!”

And somebody did.  Actually, a lot of somebodies did.  There was the gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John—the ones we all know.  But there were also the gospels of Peter, Thomas, Mary, Pilate, and even Judas (as in “the guy who handed him over to the cops”).  A group of bishops gathered by the Roman Emperor, Constantine, finally limited them to the four we know for a number of reasons, one of which being to cement the claim to power of Constantine.  Mark’s was the oldest, being written a little over twenty years after Jesus was gone (wherever you think he left).  John’s was the latest, written some seventy to a hundred years after Jesus.

The Gospel According to Luke was modeled after Mark’s gospel. It was written somewhere before 70 CE, although the earliest fragments we have of this book date to the early third century. So how do we know it was written much earlier than this? For one, it was mentioned in the writings of other early church fathers (whose works are not in the Bible) going back as far as 160 CE. The other reason has to do with authorship.

Luke is considered an anonymous gospel. We don’t really know who wrote it for sure. Tradition says it was written by a companion of the apostle Paul, but we have no concrete proof of that, although we do have some circumstantial evidence that it may well have been written by a companion of Paul’s. We do know that the person who wrote Luke, also wrote the book called The Acts of the Apostles. This is a book which carries the story of the early church on after the departure of Jesus. It relates what happened to the various apostles, Peter, James, etc. It goes into great detail into the adventures of Paul, formerly known as Saul of Tarsus. Now, the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70 CE, and both Peter and Paul were martyred in Rome sometime during the reign of Nero, sometime before 68 CE, and the Book of Acts makes no mention of these rather important events. Therefore, we can conclude that Acts was written before these events transpired, which would put authorship sometime after Mark and before the fall of Jerusalem.

Mark was written for a primarily Greek audience, explaining Jewish traditions along the way, in order to give them the story of Jesus in order to show them the teachings. Luke was written for the people who were already Christians. The gospel of Luke was not intended to convert people. It was a document designed to transfer the teachings of Jesus to the neo-Christian. Luke begins, “Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to draw up a narrative concerning those matters which have been fulfilled among us, even as they delivered them unto us, who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, it seemed good to me also, having traced the course of all things accurately from the first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus; that thou mightest know the certainty concerning the things wherein thou wast instructed.” Wouldn’t you hate to have to diagram that sentence! What Luke is saying is, “Since a bunch of people have started to write down the story of Jesus from those few eye-witnesses who are still alive, I thought I would do the same. So I did a lot of research, and then wrote them down, and then sent them to you, Theophilus, so that you’d have a record of the things you’ve been taught.” The Book of Acts starts the same way, basically. It is written to this “Theophilus” guy. Theophilus may have been a Christian of some means, or not. The name “Theophilus” means friend of God, so he could have meant just any old run of the mill Christian, too.

It is primarily Luke, which gives us the Christmas story with which we are all familiar. It was written for Christians living in the Roman Empire (or at least hoping to). So Luke is a lot less rabble rousing than Matthew or Mark. Luke is the one who has Jesus telling God to forgive the Romans, they don’t know what they’re doing. The Jesus in Luke is a lot more like a Greek philosopher. There are 17 parables peculiar to this gospel. This Jesus gives a lot more advice on how to live your life. It borrows heavily from the Q document, a missing gospel which is a collections of the sayings of Jesus, Mark’s gospel, and from oral tradition from the first century that biblical scholars call the L, for no damn good reason ( L for lore, I guess). That’s where the birth story comes in. Both Mark and John begin with the baptism of Jesus. Only Matthew and Luke have a birth account. Women are also more prominent in Luke’s gospel. It is well written in polished Greek which tells us the author was well educated and therefore rolling in Denari.

Today’s story is the baptism of Jesus. We’ve already been through the birth story of Jesus, and besides you know all that by heart by now having watched the Peanuts Christmas Special for many years. Luke places the time frame as during the reign of Tiberius Caesar. John the Baptist is now grown and living in the desert, preaching and baptizing people. Luke is the only one to make special notice of John baptizing Roman soldiers which gives us a preview of the idea that God is reaching out to people other than the Jews. It also gives a certain amount of legitimacy to the Roman government, which would have gone down well with the Christians living in Rome. But, whereas Mark makes rather a big deal about Jesus coming up to John for baptism, Luke sort of glosses over it. He mentions John telling the people that he is NOT the messiah, but one is coming after him who IS. He tells us the Herod threw John in prison. Then, he simply mentions that John was thrown in prison after the people and, oh yeah, Jesus, were baptized. Then he mentions the Holy Spirit, in the form of a dove coming down from heaven and God announcing that Jesus is the son. But he doesn’t specifically say this happened in front of everybody.

The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ (not in the Bible, obviously) maintains that this is the moment when the Christ spirit descended on Jesus. This was the epiphany of Jesus, according to that book. In the three synoptic gospels (Luke, Mark, and Matthew), this is where Jesus goes off into the desert for forty days to fast and pray. It is at the end of these forty days, the last day, that the devil comes to tempt Jesus, according to the story. Christian tradition loves to paint a picture  of Christ in which he knows his mission and proceeds through his ministry with perfect faith. But, I see, over and over in these accounts, evidence to show otherwise. Here, Jesus, deciding himself in need of baptism, a cleansing ritual, comes to his cousin, John for dunking. This (according to Mark) even surprises John. Then, AFTER this dove flies down and lands on his shoulder, and AFTER the voice of God comes out of the sky, Jesus feels the need to go off on his own into the desert and pray for forty days. And it is not until the end of those forty days that Jesus has his first crisis of faith wherein the devil comes and tries to tempt him away from his ministry.

This shows me a Jesus a lot more like the rest of us. In spite of everything that has happened to him so far, he still has to wrestle with his doubts. We all have our doubts to wrestle. Even after we thing we know what we believe about things, we have to re-examine our beliefs and deal with temptations to throw them all away. Because the paradox of the Tao is that what is truth doesn’t always seem to match up with our view of the universe. Sometimes the truth just doesn’t make logical sense. But then, any student of quantum physics will tell you reality doesn’t always make sense. That dove settling on Jesus’ shoulder is Siddartha sitting below the Bodhi Tree. It is his enlightenment. It is his epiphany. And we all have our epiphanies. That is one of the promises that Jesus makes. He says that whoever looks for truth, will find it. And when we do find it, then we have our own epiphany, and then the Christ spirit descends upon us.

Or perhaps it would be better to say that it springs forth from us, because the message of Jesus is that we are a part of the divine. The divine spirit is always present within us. The baptism is all about renewal. It cleans us. It’s a nice way of saying that it’s time to do something new. It’s time to start treating ourselves like the divine beings we are. So much of the destructive things we do to ourselves is because we don’t place a high enough value on our lives. If we consider and recognize our own divine nature, we might not be so willing to abuse ourselves, physically, spiritually, and emotionally. And if I recognize the divine spirit in you, then perhaps I won’t be so quick to abuse you, either.

So we’ll go traipsing off into the gospel of Luke this year and see what it has to tell us. I’m sure there must be a tidbit or two that might be worth reading about. And then, oh Theophilus, you can see what the message of Jesus was all about. It’s all about love.