Luke 23:49
But all his acquaintances, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things.
Luke’s generosity as a story-teller again surfaces. Not just for the crowds of spectators this time, but also for Jesus’ disciples.
In most of the gospel accounts, the disciples – and here I mean specifically the group of twelve of his many followers designated as disciples or apostles – flee the scene altogether and are nowhere to be found. It is only the women who followed him who linger, tarrying near the cross to witness the fate of their Lord and to prepare to honor him one last time after his death.
But Luke shares a slightly different story, placing all of his acquaintances – followers, disciples, men, women – near enough to the cross to watch and wait. Earlier in Luke’s account, Jesus had told Peter that he would fall away but would come back again to strengthen the company, and assuming Peter is here we see that already beginning to happen.
Some readers of the Bible are troubled by such disparate accounts and discrepancies in the story, but I think the early church was wise to include all four accounts, even when they differ. Because, truth be told, there are moments when my faith and courage have failed altogether (as in the accounts of Mark and Matthew), and there are times when I did not have the strength to take action but managed to hold vigil (as here in Luke), and there have even been occasions when I found it possible to be of more use (as John describes of the “beloved disciple”). All of these are possibilities for Jesus’ disciples then and now, disciples who are each a mix of faith and fear, courage and desperation. And so the variety in the gospel stories offers, I think, a more true picture than any one could offer on its own.
And so in Luke’s story we hear the true description of one element of the life of faith: that sometimes all you can do is watch, and wait, and be ready when the time comes when your strength is renewed and you need to act.
That time will come soon for some, the women disciples and followers who have followed and supported Jesus for so long. And then it will come for all. But for now, they watch and wait, and we wait with them.
Prayer: Dear God, thank you for the varied and valuable testimonies of the gospels, that in and through their accounts we might behold and grasp the truth of your Son, a truth too big for any one account to capture. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Post image: Pieter, Bruegel the Elder, 1564, “Carrying the Cross.”
Thanks, David, for your assuring and probing insights based on “realistic faith” in these posts, as well as “Working Preacher”. Whenever I come across a gospel text that seems “tired” to me, I refer to your posts and find renewed energy to tackle the text again. So maybe the tiredness is not in the text, but in me sometimes!
Thanks very much, Jack.
One of the things I’ve learned by working this last year with passages devotionally is to relax a little, even be more playful, with interpretation. Time and again I’m not sure that what I come up with is what the passage “means” – in the classic, historical-critical sense – but I do know that it’s what the passage suggests to me and is helpful in shaping the way I look not just at that passage but at life. And maybe, just maybe, that’s what our reading of Scripture should be about: being in serious and intentional conversation with biblical passages such that they suggest new ways of being and acting in the world. Just a thought. 🙂