Luke,
an accountant
September 21, 2014
BMC - Luke1:1-4 and Acts 1:1-5
Also Col. 4:14, II Tim 4:11, and Phil. 1:24
Introduction:
The Accountant
When you think of accountants, what
comes to mind? A book keeper? One who
works with finances? Someone who
reconciles financial records? Someone
who takes a vast amount of information and presents it in a unified and
understandable format? According to
dictionary.com an accountant is “a person whose profession is inspecting and
auditing personal or commercial accounts.”[1] Typically we think of these accounts as
financial.
This week in leadership as we have
been discussing the budget for next year and all that goes into that, I have
found myself dabbling in the world of accounting. I’ve been trying to get a better handle on
the numbers and how they fit together.
It is certainly not my area of expertise. And it is certainly not something that is
life giving to me.
For me, finances is something that feels like it takes a tremendous
about of attention to detail. It can
also feel very time consuming and daunting.
And I’ve found that even when you present “the numbers,” things that we
assume are very concrete and definitive, after all we say, “the numbers don’t
lie,” right? That even when we are
working with numbers, there is still perception and interpretation that is
involved. We have to agree together how
we will interpret the numbers and what they are telling us.
As a parent, I experience this aspect
of accounting all the time. In fact in
some ways, I feel like my role as a parent often includes accountant work. But I’ll come back to that in a moment. First, I’d like for us to consider the ways
that Luke is an accountant. He is often
referred to as the doctor or the physician because of the reference to him in Colossian 4:14. But I wonder if perhaps we should
consider him as more of an accountant.
Luke takes the vast amount of information about Jesus and the early
church and he condenses it into two connected narratives: The Gospel of Luke
and the Acts of the Apostles, which together make up about ¼ of the entire New
Testament[2]. He doesn’t work with numbers. He works with accounts, with people’s
testimonies of what they have seen and heard of Jesus, of the Holy Spirit, and
of the early church.
The Gospel of
Luke
Luke 1 begins, “Many have undertaken to draw up an
account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were
handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of
the word. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully
investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly
account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty
of the things you have been taught.”
Luke knew that there are other accounts of
Jesus out there. But he carefully
investigated everything from the beginning and decided also to write an account
of what he had learned. And he addressed
this account to Theophilus, which literally means “lover of God.” It is possible that this was a real
person. It is also possible that this is
a generic title for anyone who would choose to read this account out of love
for God. Either way, Luke began this
tale as an account-ant, as one who collected and organized and sorted through
the accounts to bring an understandable and focused message.
Now the Gospel of Luke reads as a third
person account of collected testimonies of who this Jesus of Nazareth was, what
he had done, and what it all meant for people.
Luke, unlike Mark or John, set the stage with an account of both the
birth of John the Baptist and of Jesus.
The first chapter is itself 80 verses
long. It tells of the foretelling of
these miraculous births and includes Mary’s song and Zachariah’s prophecy. Chapter two tells of Jesus’ birth, His presentation
at the temple, His return to Narzareth, and the only account that we have of
Jesus between his birth and his adult ministry.
It is Luke, the accountant, who includes Jesus’ experience at the temple
as a boy talking with the teachers.
Luke goes on to tell of Jesus’ baptism, His
ancestry, His temptation in the wilderness and His teaching in the synagogue
that almost got him thrown off a cliff.
Luke tells of His calling of the disciples, His healings, His preaching,
and His teaching. And Luke shares a
number of Jesus’ parables including the Sower, the Good Samaritan, and the
Prodigal Son.
Luke tells of how Jesus calmed the storm, fed
the 5,000, and was transfigured on the mountain. And Luke tells of Jesus final week; from His
triumphal entry into Jerusalem and cleansing of the temple to His celebration
of the Last Supper and betrayal at the Garden of Gethsemane. And ultimately, Luke tells of Jesus’ death on
the cross, burial in the tomb, and Easter morning resurrection. Luke then concludes his gospel account with a
few post-resurrection appearances like the walk to Emmaus.
In all, these 24 chapters testify to the
reality of who Jesus was, what he did and said, and ultimately the impact that
he had on the lives of the people that he came into contact with. They form an account that instructed
discipleship and empowered transformation in the lives of people all over the
world.
The Acts of the
Apostles
But Luke’s account was not complete at the end
of the gospel. In it, he had told of the
life of Jesus; but the story continued on after His death and
resurrection. There was still the work
of the Holy Spirit and the early church to account for. And so Luke wrote a second volume, an account
of the Acts of the Apostles that we often simply refer to as the book of Acts.
After
a brief introduction that alluded to his first volume and again named
Theophilus as the audience, Luke dove right into the ascension of Jesus and the
replacement of Judas. He told of the day
of Pentecost with the coming of the Holy Spirit and Peter addressing the
crowd. And while Luke does recount some
amazing and positive aspects of this early church. He also shares fairly candidly about the
short comings and the struggles.
He
told of the ongoing challenges that the early church faced against the ruling
authorities. He told of the failure to
care for the Hellenist widows. He told
of the stoning of Stephen. He told of
the skeptism of Saul’s conversion by many believers. He told of Peter’s initial resistance to the
Gentiles when the sheet was lowered down.
And he told of the challenge that was involved with the council of
Jerusalem.
And
then about Acts 16, the tone of the sharing shifts. We begin to read a lot more “we” language in
the account. Now this is after Paul and
Barnabas separated. This is when Paul,
Timothy and Silas ventured out. And
perhaps this is when Luke joined in with the missionary work. He doesn’t refer to himself directly, but we
begin to wonder if he is no longer working on 2nd hand
information. We wonder if the account is
now from firsthand knowledge and experience.
We begin to wonder if it was after this point that he began to be aware
of the breadth of the account that he would then work on drawing together.
The
rest of Acts focuses in on the journeys of Paul, of his challenges and his
successes. But once again, the whole of
this account serves as testimony to who the followers of Jesus were. It serves as testimony of the work of the
Holy Spirit. And it serves as testimony
of the transformative impact that all of this had in the lives of the people
that these accounts tell of.
Parental Accounting
Well, as I said I sometimes feel
like a bit of an accountant in my role as a parent. In the first place, I am the bookkeeper of
our house hold, the one who handles our “accounts payable.” But that’s not really the accountant role that
I am speaking of this morning, it is?
I also find myself in that of a mediating role, of one who hears one
child’s account of what has happened as well that of another child’s account of
what has happened. The accounts though they
are about the same event can sometimes appear to be strikingly different upon
first hearing. Then I as an accountant
try to summarize and recount what I have heard, sorting out truth and looking
past spin on the information so that we can move forward together.
But more than either of these roles, Beth and I serve as accountants of
the testimony of the scripture and the experience of our lives that speak to
who Jesus was, what Jesus did, the movement of the Holy Spirit and the power
that this has yet today in our lives and in the lives of those around us.
This is an important role because we all know that it is typically not
as simple as just giving them the word and that bringing about
understanding. That wasn’t the case for
the Ethiopian Official anyway. He needed
Philip to help him to understand what the words meant. And I believe that this is often true not
only of our children and young believers in the faith, but that this is also true
of us as well.
A week or two ago, Josiah went to Beth and said, “Mommy, how can God
have sin. He’s God but I heard Daddy say
that God had sin.” Beth wasn’t sure what
he was talking about so she encouraged him to come and talk to me about it. In hearing his question and probing a little
further into what he was saying, I came to realize that Josiah had heard me
reading from the book of Romans to Maggie and talking to her about sin.
I had shared with her about how Jesus as a perfect sacrifice, takes on
the sins of the world that we might be forgiven and redeemed. Josiah had heard that as God had sinned
rather than that we were the ones who sinned and that Jesus removed that sin
from us. The account needed some
interpretation.
We Too Are AccountantsIt is my belief that each one of us are accountants as well. Not that we have the whole story and that we are to pour that out into the lives of others for them to just absorb. But rather that we know the accounts of those like Luke of who Jesus is, what Jesus did and said, and of the impact that this had in the lives of the early believers.
Moreover that we have the account of our own life stories, of our own part in the grand story of God in the universe. This is entrusted to us not only for our own spiritual development but also for the impact that sharing of these accounts, of these testimonies can have in the lives of people around us both fellow believers and those who have yet to believe.
When we share of our experiences, of our stories, of our accounts of what God is doing in our midst, we create kingdom ripples. We send out waves like a pebble dropped in a still pond that release the movement of the Holy Spirit in our midst, in our lives and in the lives of those that we encounter.
To me, that is the significance of things like the radio spots that we partner with our sister Mennonite congregations to produce. In doing them, we are inviting others to learn more about us and to come to worship with us. But more than that, we are testifying to God’s movements in our own lives and inviting others to participate in God’s kingdom movement.
And this series on the Stories of God’s People does not end with Luke, our final character to consider. It does not end with the testimony of John in the book of Revelation or with the letters of Paul. As Luke demonstrates for us in his accounting of things, the Stories of God’s People continue in our own lives as we join in God’s ongoing story. He began by recounting what others experienced, but he concluded by speaking out of his own experiences.
We gave nods to this reality in the midst of the series when we heard from the Bylers and from the Youth. I have attempted over the last several weeks in a more focused and intentional way to share of my own testimony. And next week as we wrap-up this series, our focus will be on our own stories, our own accounts, our own testimonies of the ways in which God is working in and through and around us.
Conclusion: Living as an Accountant
Though Luke is typically seen and referred
to as a physician or a doctor, it seems to me that he served as a sort of
accountant of the gospel message of Jesus Christ and the early church activity
of the Holy Spirit. And through his account
of what transpired, he testified not only to the who, what, when and where; but
also to the why, to the why this matters, to the life changing impact that this
had and continues to have.
Each of us is a part of this ongoing
story. Each of us has an account to
share. May we go forth this day
accounting of the ongoing work in our own lives that we might send out Holy
Spirit ripples among fellow believers and beyond. And may we be receptive to the Holy Spirit
ripples that come our way as well.
Amen
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