The Ethical Teaching of Jesus

Overview

Recall questions on Luke's Sermon on the Plain and love of enemies, the poor and outcasts, the parables of the Lost, the Good Samaritan and the Rich Man and Lazarus, Marshall and Matera on Luke's ethics, and the teaching's impact today.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What is the Sermon on the Plain, and how does it differ from the version on the mountain?

   Model answer

   It is Luke's collection of Jesus' teaching, delivered on level ground to a mixed crowd. It is considerably shorter than the corresponding material in Matthew, states its blessings in the second person as direct address, and pairs each blessing with a matching woe. Its opening beatitudes speak of the poor and the hungry without the qualifying phrases found in the other version, which gives Luke's form a more immediately social edge.

2. 2

   What does Jesus teach about love of enemies in Luke's sermon?

   Model answer

   That love is to extend to those who hate, curse and mistreat, expressed in concrete actions of doing good, blessing, praying and lending without expecting return. Luke grounds this not in prudence but in the character of God, who is generous towards the ungrateful, and in the summons to be merciful as God is merciful. The measure people use, the passage adds, is the measure they will receive.

3. 3

   Why is Luke so often called the gospel of the poor?

   Model answer

   Because the theme runs from beginning to end: the song of Jesus' mother announces the lifting of the humble and the sending away of the rich, the opening sermon of his ministry announces good news to the poor, the blessings and woes are stated without qualification, and parable after parable turns on wealth and its use. Luke also gives unusual prominence to women, to Samaritans and to those regarded as outsiders.

4. 4

   How does Luke present Jesus' relationships with outcasts?

   Model answer

   As deliberate and public. He eats with tax collectors and those labelled sinners, accepts hospitality from a chief tax collector, allows a woman of poor reputation to attend to him at table, praises a Samaritan and heals another, and is criticised for exactly these associations. Luke presents the criticism itself as the occasion for some of the best-known parables, so the meals are not incidental but the setting in which the teaching is given.

5. 5

   What do the parables of the Lost teach?

   Model answer

   The three, concerning a sheep, a coin and a son, are told in answer to complaints about the company Jesus keeps. Each moves from loss to search or waiting, to recovery, to shared celebration, so that joy over recovery is the point being defended. The last extends the pattern with an elder brother who refuses to join the celebration, which turns the parable back on those who made the original complaint.

6. 6

   What is the force of the parable of the Good Samaritan?

   Model answer

   It is told in reply to a question about who counts as a neighbour, and it answers a different question, namely who acts as one. By making the helper a member of a despised group and the men who pass by respected religious figures, it removes the possibility of defining the obligation by boundaries of ethnicity or religion. The closing instruction turns the discussion from classification into action.

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