The Gospel of Mercy

The third Gospel has been loved by the Church above all as the Gospel of mercy and of the lost. The parables that the world knows best — the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, the Pharisee and the Publican, the lost sheep and the lost coin — are found in Luke alone, and around them gathers a sustained concern for the poor, for women, and for sinners and outsiders that is the theological signature of this Evangelist. This file draws out that signature through the persons and parables peculiar to Luke, and shows why a medieval tradition called him “the scribe of the gentleness of Christ.”

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle and Evangelist)

The Parables Found Only in Luke

The most famous parables of Jesus are, almost all of them, preserved by Luke alone, the majority gathered in the great central travel narrative on the way to Jerusalem (Luke 9:51–19:27; on its structure see The Third Gospel). The Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37) answers the lawyer’s question “And who is my neighbor?” by making the hero a member of the despised Samaritans, who does what priest and Levite would not, and ends with the command “Go and do likewise.” The Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11–32) — the third and longest of a trio of “lost-and-found” parables — shows the father running to meet the returning son “while he was yet at a distance,” embracing him, and answering the elder brother’s resentment with “It was fitting to make merry and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found” (Luke 15:20, 32). The Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19–31) sets the reversal of fortunes beyond death itself, the beggar carried to Abraham’s bosom and the rich man in torment. The Pharisee and the Publican (Luke 18:9–14) contrasts the self-justifying prayer of the Pharisee with the publican who “would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, God, be merciful to me a sinner” — and it is the publican, Jesus says, who “went down to his house justified.”

These are framed by the paired parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin (Luke 15:3–10), which open the fifteenth chapter — the shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine to seek the one, and the woman who sweeps the house to find one coin, each ending in the same refrain: “there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents” (Luke 15:10). The seeking God, the joy of recovery, and the welcome of the returning sinner are the heart of Luke’s gospel, and it is no accident that the whole sequence is provoked by the Pharisees’ complaint that “this man receives sinners and eats with them” (Luke 15:1–2).

The Poor and the Great Reversal

Luke’s Jesus inaugurates his ministry by reading from Isaiah in the synagogue of Nazareth: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor” (Luke 4:18, citing Isaiah 61:1) — a programmatic text that sets the key for the whole Gospel. Where Matthew’s Beatitudes bless “the poor in spirit,” Luke’s bless the poor simply: “Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God . . . Blessed are you that hunger now, for you shall be satisfied” (Luke 6:20–21), and he balances them with a corresponding set of woes: “But woe to you that are rich, for you have received your consolation . . . Woe to you that are full now, for you shall be hungry” (Luke 6:24–25). This pattern of reversal — the lifting up of the lowly and the casting down of the mighty — is sounded already in the infancy narrative, in the Theotokos’s song: “he has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away” (Luke 1:52–53). The Magnificat is the overture to a Gospel of reversal, and it is treated in its own place (see The Magnificat; on the broader theme, The Spirit and the Poor).

The Place Given to Women

No Gospel gives women so prominent a place as Luke’s. The infancy narrative is carried by women — Elizabeth, who prophesies at the visitation (Luke 1:41–45), and Mary, whose Magnificat is the first canticle of the New Testament (Luke 1:46–55) — and it is the aged prophetess Anna who, at the presentation, speaks of the child “to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem” (Luke 2:36–38). In the ministry, Luke alone records the raising of the only son of the widow of Nain (Luke 7:11–17), where Jesus “had compassion on her” and gave the dead man back to his mother; the visit to the home of Mary and Martha, where Mary, sitting at the Lord’s feet, “has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:38–42); and the notice that, along with the Twelve, “some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities” — Mary called Magdalene, Joanna, Susanna, “and many others, who provided for them out of their means” — travelled with Jesus (Luke 8:1–3; on Mary Magdalene, see St. Mary Magdalene). This attentiveness to women is a thread running the length of the Gospel (on its significance in the tradition, see Women in Orthodoxy).

Sinners, Samaritans, and the Outsider

Luke’s mercy reaches especially to those outside the circle of the respectable. He alone tells of Zacchaeus, the chief tax collector of Jericho, into whose house Jesus invites himself, drawing the crowd’s murmur that “he has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner,” and answering with the Gospel’s own summary: “the Son of man came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:1–10). He alone records the sinful woman who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears in the house of Simon the Pharisee, of whom Jesus says, “her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much” (Luke 7:36–50). He gives the Samaritans a sympathy found nowhere else — the Good Samaritan of the parable (Luke 10:33), and the one leper of ten, “and he was a Samaritan,” who returned to give thanks (Luke 17:11–19). And it is Luke alone who preserves the word of the cross most precious to penitents, the promise to the good thief: “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise” (Luke 23:39–43). At every turn the Gospel sets the welcome of the outsider against the murmuring of the respectable.

Joy, Prayer, and the Spirit

Three further notes sound through Luke and give his mercy its atmosphere. The first is joy: the Gospel opens in joy (“you will have joy and gladness,” Luke 1:14; “my spirit rejoices,” Luke 1:47), the parables of chapter 15 each end in rejoicing, and the Gospel closes with the disciples returning to Jerusalem “with great joy” (Luke 24:52). The second is prayer: Luke shows Jesus at prayer at every turning-point — his baptism, before choosing the Twelve, before Peter’s confession, at the Transfiguration, in Gethsemane — and gives parables on prayer (the friend at midnight, the unjust judge) found in him alone. The third is the Holy Spirit, who fills Elizabeth, Zacharias, and Simeon in the infancy narrative and descends on Jesus and his Church. These themes — joy, prayer, and the Spirit — are the connective tissue of Luke’s theology of mercy, and they are drawn together in The Theology of the Third Gospel and The Spirit and the Poor.

“The Scribe of the Gentleness of Christ”

The Church’s sense of what is distinctive in Luke found a memorable phrase in the Latin Middle Ages. Dante, defending the office of Luke as historian of Christ’s gentleness, calls him “the scribe of the gentleness of Christ” (scriba mansuetudinis Christi) — the standard attribution of the phrase, from his political treatise De Monarchia (Dante Alighieri, De Monarchia, c. 1313). The epithet has fastened to Luke because it names exactly what the parables and persons of his Gospel display: a Christ who seeks the lost, eats with sinners, raises the widow’s son, forgives the woman who loved much, and promises Paradise to a dying thief. If Matthew is the Gospel of the kingdom and John the Gospel of the Word made flesh, Luke is the Gospel of mercy — and the Orthodox Church, which keeps his feast on October 18 (see Veneration and the Feast), has received the third Gospel as the abiding charter of God’s compassion toward the lost. That this same Evangelist is, by later tradition, the first to paint the merciful Mother of God only deepens the association of Luke with tenderness (see Reception and Legacy).

References

The Gospel According to Luke (the Good Samaritan, 10:25–37; the Prodigal Son, 15:11–32; the Rich Man and Lazarus, 16:19–31; the Pharisee and the Publican, 18:9–14; the lost sheep and coin, 15:1–10; the Beatitudes and Woes, 6:20–26; the Magnificat reversal, 1:46–55; the widow of Nain, 7:11–17; Mary and Martha, 10:38–42; the women who followed, 8:1–3; Zacchaeus, 19:1–10; the sinful woman, 7:36–50; the grateful Samaritan leper, 17:11–19; the good thief, 23:39–43; the Nazareth sermon, 4:16–21). Cited by chapter and verse.
Dante Alighieri. De Monarchia (c. 1313). (The phrase scriba mansuetudinis Christi, “the scribe of the gentleness of Christ,” the standard attribution to Dante.)
Fitzmyer, Joseph A. The Gospel According to Luke. 2 vols. Anchor Bible 28, 28A. New York: Doubleday, 1981–1985. (The Lukan special material; the theme of the poor and the reversal; the place of women.)
Bovon, François. Luke 1: A Commentary on the Gospel of Luke 1:1–9:50. Hermeneia. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002.
Green, Joel B. The Gospel of Luke. New International Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997. (Luke’s concern for the poor, women, and the outsider.)