We have reached the turning point in the Gospel. Up till now Luke has been describing the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ into our world. But at this point there comes a very significant change: our Lord begins to go, and the whole of the remainder of the Gospel is devoted to an account of that going. First the turning point is very clearly marked: 'When the days drew near for him to be received up, he resolutely set his face to go to Jerusalem' (see Luke 9:51); and then throughout the rest of the Gospel Luke will from time to time remind us that Christ is on a journey (see Luke 9:52, 57; 10:1, 38; 13:22, 33; 17:11; 18:35; 19:1, 11, 28–29, 37, 41, 45; 24:50–51).
We should at once notice carefully what the goal of the journey is said to be. It is sometimes stated on the basis of Luke 9:51 that our Lord's goal on this journey was Jerusalem. But that is not so. Our Lord's journey certainly lay via Jerusalem; but the goal of the journey was what Luke here describes as 'being received up'. The phrase has the same sense as that given it by the early Christian hymn quoted by Paul (1 Tim 3:16) which says that Christ 'was believed on in the world, received up in glory'. In other words by 'being received up' Luke is referring to Christ's ascension into heaven. That and no less was the goal of the journey.
This observation is important. A journey from Galilee to Jerusalem need be nothing more than a literal, geographical journey; but a journey from Galilee to heaven cannot be simply a literal, [p 186] geographical one. Moreover, when we take into account what the goal of the journey was, it becomes obvious that the reason why the journey had to go via Jerusalem was not geographical either. Jerusalem is not geographically nearer heaven than anywhere else on earth. The reason for going via Jerusalem was in the first place historical. Jerusalem was the capital city of the Jewish nation to whom God had promised the Messiah. It was the capital city of the kings of Judah, who were the ancestors and prototypes of the Messiah. In that city God had deigned to localize his presence in the temple in a way in which he had not done in any other temple on earth. To that city God had sent a succession of inspired prophets, predicting with ever more detail the coming of Messiah. Jerusalem, then, was Messiah's city, where he had a right to be received and acclaimed and enthroned. To present himself as Israel's king he must, as Zechariah 9:9 had declared he would, present himself at Jerusalem.
But the reason why Christ's journey from earth to heaven must go via Jerusalem was not only historical: it was moral, spiritual, and redemptive. Jerusalem, the city favoured and privileged by God above all other cities had killed the prophets and stoned those who were sent to her by God (see Luke 13:34). If Christ had come to expose and then to deal with human sin, then he must go to Jerusalem. There he would find the darkest form of rebellion against God that sin has ever produced: the rebellion not of open, sworn, avowed and honest enemies; but the rebellion of people who professed to be the most religiously enlightened and the most loyal to God of any people on earth. As he himself remarked, 'Nevertheless I must go on my way today and tomorrow and the day following, for it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem.' (Luke 13:33 RV).
Moreover, at Jerusalem divine wisdom and love had determined to make Israel's murder of the Messiah the occasion of the atoning sufferings of Christ which should make redemption possible for Israel and the world; and for this very reason Jerusalem was the place from which it was ordained that the gospel should go out to the whole world: 'Thus it is written, that Christ should [p 187] suffer, and rise again from the dead the third day; and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name unto all nations, beginning from Jerusalem' (Luke 24:46 RV).
Then, as we have already noticed [p . 169], just before Christ set out on his journey from earth to heaven, he invited all who would to follow him (see Luke 9:23). He was to be the 'pioneer of salvation' for all those many sons whom God proposed to bring to glory (Heb 2:10). It is obvious, therefore, that here, too, the road along which disciples are invited to follow Christ must be understood in a double sense. For a few disciples contemporary with him, discipleship involved following Christ along a very literal road through Palestine to Jerusalem. But even progress along that literal road involved them daily in experiences which would call for, and produce, progress along the metaphorical road of discipleship. For all who have followed him since, however, following him does not necessarily involve travelling any particular literal road (except of course where duty involves literal travel of some kind) but is altogether a question of pursuing a road of moral and spiritual progress that leads to glory.
The journey, then, that Christ took from Galilee to heaven via Jerusalem was both literal and metaphorical, both spiritual and geographical; and that fact will necessarily have an important effect on the way in which Luke records the journey. To help us anticipate what these effects are likely to be, so that when we come across them they do not worry us, it will be helpful to construct a simple analogical model. The analogy will not, of course, be exact, but it will be exact enough for our practical purpose.
Suppose an American citizen rises from obscurity to become president of the United States, and eventually writes his autobiography. He entitles it My Journey from a Log Cabin to the White House; and some visitor gives us a copy for Christmas.
What kind of journey shall we expect to find described in the book? A literal geographical journey from his birthplace to the White House in Washington? Or a metaphorical journey from poverty to wealth, from obscurity to fame, from political insignificance [p 188] to being the most powerful political leader in the world? The answer is that we shall not expect the journey to be one or the other, but both. It would be a dull book indeed if it described only the geographical journey; on the other hand the metaphorical journey, though by far the more important and interesting, would be impossible without the geographical journey, and we shall therefore expect references to the geographical journey to keep appearing from time to time throughout the book.
Next—at the risk of casting doubt on our sanity—let us ask whether we may expect the words 'log cabin' and 'White House' in the book's title to refer to literal material dwelling places whose geographical location could be pinpointed on a map, or whether we are expected to understand them as symbols of humble obscurity in the one case, and dazzling political glory in the other. (We could ask the same kind of question about Luke's earlier record that Jesus was born 'in a manger' and 'in the city of David'.) Again, of course, the answer is that our question poses a false alternative. The log cabin will turn out to be a very literal, geographically positioned building; and yet at the same time the words 'log cabin' will carry powerful emotional and metaphorical connotations. And the term 'White House', though a metonym for 'presidency of the United States', will also refer to a very literal—and elegantly comfortable—house.
Now some commentators, though presumably recognizing that in theory our Lord's journey in Luke's narrative could be understood as both literal and metaphorical, have decided that in fact it is nothing but an artificial literary construct. They reason as follows. Having stated that our Lord set himself resolutely to go to Jerusalem, Luke represents him as leaving Galilee and proceeding through Samaria; but when Christ eventually approaches Jerusalem, he has him approaching it by Jericho, which he would not have done had he travelled by the direct route through Samaria into Judaea. Moreover they point out that after passages which indicate that our Lord has reached Samaria, come other passages that suggest that he is back in Galilee. They conclude that obviously Luke [p 189] did not know the geography of Palestine very well, for if he had been familiar with it, he would have represented our Lord as proceeding directly from Galilee to Jerusalem, and he would not have later on let drop remarks which would imply that instead of resolutely proceeding to Jerusalem he was going in different directions all round the country. They feel, however, that the geographical inconsistencies do not matter, because the supposed geographical journey is not historical, but only an artificial literary device to create a thread along which Luke can string the large quantity of special material which he introduces into this part of his Gospel.
Our presidential autobiography can help us assess the validity of this kind of reasoning. Suppose the log cabin was situated a thousand miles due west of Washington. If the politician's journey to the White House were simply a geographical one we might expect the narrative to indicate that the route taken proceeded more or less directly due east. But we realize in advance that the journey is more than geographical: it is also the journey of a political career. We shall not be surprised to find then on reading the book that the one journey from the log cabin to the White House comprised hundreds of journeys in all directions all over the States and literally scores of journeys which our politician took as a congressman and then as a senator from his constituency to Washington—and back again! Yet in whatever geographical direction his journeyings might be taking him at any one moment we shall understand perfectly well that as far as he is concerned he is still taking the most direct route he knows to get to the White House. What kind of literary critics would people think us to be if we were to criticize the autobiography thus: the author of this book obviously does not know the geography of the USA very well. Having declared at the beginning that he was about to describe his journey from his log cabin in the Midwest eastwards to the White House he records that later on he made a speech in San Francisco which we all know is not on the way east from the log cabin to Washington but in the far west.
Our analogy may help us also with another difficulty that others have felt. Though there are in the second half of the Gospel a number [p 190] of references to the geographical journey from Galilee to Jerusalem, these references are comparatively few when one considers that the journey narrative itself lasts for at least 400 verses. What is more, in the great majority of the items of narrative in this part of the Gospel there seems to be no explicit journey motif present whatsoever. They are simply sermons and miracles which Christ preached and performed in the course of his journey to Jerusalem; but their meaning and message seem to have little to do with the fact that he was on his way to Jerusalem. This might suggest, therefore, that we ought not to make too much of this supposed journey motif in the second half of the Gospel.
Before we accept this suggestion, however, let us look again at our presidential autobiography. We shall find that though the book contains, all told, quite a large number of references to geographical journeyings, these references tend to be fairly sparse and to come into the narrative irregularly. A tremendous lot will be made of a literal journey to New York, early in his career, and of a ticker-tape parade through its streets; and after that very little may be said about literal journeying until the chapter that deals with the first ever journey of an American secretary of state to and through China. After that again very little of any consequence may be said for chapters on end about literal journeying. And that will not surprise us: literal journeys are after all only subsidiary to the main theme of the book, the one great metaphorical journey.
And then we shall notice another feature of the book. Large sections will go by without any explicit reference even to the metaphorical journey. For example, in one chapter our politician will describe at great length his diplomatic successes as the US ambassador to Moscow. He will not stay to point out what relevance these successes had to his advancement along the road to the White House; not because they had no relevance, but because their relevance is self-evident.
As we apply this analogy to Luke's narrative of our Lord's journey, there is just one other thing we must remember. We must constantly recall our earlier observation that the goal of the road [p 191] along which our Lord was journeying, and along which he invited his disciples to follow him, was not Jerusalem, but heaven. If we forget this and fall back into the mistake of thinking that the goal was Jerusalem, we shall naturally be puzzled that few of the stories, miracles, sermons and parables have anything to do with the journey to Jerusalem. But if we remember that the goal of the journey is 'being received up into glory', the exodus from this world to the one beyond, the leaving of time for eternity, we shall find that the material given us on the geographical journey is highly relevant to the metaphorical journey, and particularly to the progress of would-be disciples along that road. Many of the stories and parables, for instance, are concerned to warn us that some people will arrive at the end of the journey unprepared for heaven. Some, says Luke 13:25, will arrive when the door is shut. Some, like the farmer in the parable of the Rich Fool (see Luke 12:16–21), will arrive at eternity much sooner than they expected and unready. For some, like Lazarus, the end of the journey will mean the end of a life of pain and the beginning of eternal consolation; for others, like the rich man in that same story, the end of the journey will mean the end of any joy they ever knew and the beginning of eternal sorrow (see Luke 16:19–31). The parable of the Unjust Steward (see Luke 16:1–9) reminds us to be ready for the moment towards which we are travelling when like the steward we must be put out of our present temporary stewardship and enter the world of the eternal tabernacles.
Of course, it can be objected that if we are going to insist that the journey in the second half of Luke's Gospel is a journey from this world to the next, from time to eternity, then there is nothing in the whole of life, let alone in the second half of Luke's Gospel, that could not be said to be relevant both to the journey and to its goal. That is perfectly true; but then that is perhaps Luke's point. The whole of life is a journey. We are always on the move. There is no staying still. We can never say we have 'arrived'. But if we are uncertain of the goal, life's travelling, instead of being a deliberate journey towards a glad destination, can become an uncertain meandering or a purposeless going round in circles. And then, of [p 192] course, Luke makes another point. While all men travel along some road or other, and all roads lead to eternity, not all roads lead to God's heaven. Which road is it then that can be trusted to lead us with certainty to God's heaven? Luke undertakes to show us. He will show first Christ himself travelling that road, passing through Jerusalem and the sufferings of the cross, and entering into glory; and then he will tell us how and on what grounds those who follow him may be certain of entering that same glory, and how they may rightly prepare themselves for what life will involve in that glorious world. [p 193]
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