4. The Prophets
We are all familiar with the characterization of Luke's gospel as a portrait of Jesus as a man – as opposed to Matthew's account of Jesus as messianic king, Mark's of Jesus as humble servant, and John's of Jesus as the true Son of God. These characterizations all contain a great deal of truth, and Luke's gospel certainly does highlight the aspect of Jesus' humanity in many ways.
Yet we limit our understanding of Luke (and the other gospels) if we do not look beyond these basic characterizations to see what else the gospel writers show about Jesus. In Luke's account of Jesus' ministry, we need not look far to see that just as much as the Messiah is shown in terms of his humanity, he is also shown in the role of a prophet. Luke has much to say about prophets – including John the Baptist and earlier messengers of God (Luke 7:24–26; etc.) – but we will concentrate on a single important example here. What the Prophet Taught Three of the gospels tell how Jesus spoke in the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth but was rejected by the people there (Matthew 13:53–58; Mark 6:1–6, Luke 4:16–27). Each account mentions that Jesus told the people "Truly I tell you … no prophet is accepted in his hometown," but only Luke tells us what Jesus preached in the synagogue regarding the role of the prophets:
Truly I tell you … no prophet is accepted in his hometown. I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah's time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian. (Luke 4: 24–27)
In this message, Jesus reminded his hearers that God cares for and sometimes works with those who do not know him, and even with those whom God's people regard as their enemies. To do this he used the examples of the widow of Zarephath in Phoenicia and Naaman the Syrian general who were helped through the great prophets Elijah and Elisha. Jesus' underlying point was that both Elijah and Elisha helped these Gentile individuals even though they were themselves "prophets not accepted in their own land." Parallel Prophets It is easy to continue through the gospel accounts after reading of this event without noticing the striking parallels between the examples Jesus gave and two of his own miracles in similar circumstances. Matthew 15 and Mark 7 tell how Jesus travelled to the Phoenician area and there healed the daughter of a Syrophoenician woman, just as Elijah had traveled to Phoenicia and raised up the son of a widow in the city of Sidon (1 Kings 17:17–24). In Matthew 8, we find that Jesus also healed the servant of the Roman centurion at Capernaum.
There it is the servant of the military leader who is healed rather than the military leader himself (as was the case in Elisha's healing of Naaman the Syrian general in 2 Kings 5), but the stories are clearly parallel. Naaman was an officer of Israel's enemy Syria just as the centurion was an officer of Judea's enemy Rome – both were not only Gentiles, but also of the same hated profession. Both widows were Gentiles of Phoenicia – regarded by the Jews as religiously and socially inferior in terms of both gender and ethnicity. There are further similarities: Naaman was a highly valued servant of the King of Syria who is told he need not go all the way to the prophet's house. In the centurion's case, the servant is said to be highly valued by his master, and the centurion sends word that Jesus need not go all the way to his house.
However, neither Matthew nor Mark connect the stories of the widow or the military man with the healings of Jesus. But Luke uses a different one of Jesus' miracles – that of the raising of the son of a widow in Nain near Nazareth – and records it directly next to the story of the centurion's servant in order to make the connection with the healings by the prophets Elijah and Elisha clear (Luke 7:1–17). In the case of the widow of Nain, it was her only son and support who Jesus raised from the dead, rather than a daughter, and thus even more closely comparable to the story of the widow of Zarephath helped by Elijah.
But by placing these two stories of the widow and the military man together, Luke not only strengthens the connection with the two Old Testament examples Jesus gave in the synagogue at Nazareth, but he also makes a clear connection between Jesus and two of the greatest prophets of the Hebrew Bible. Luke underscores this connection by recording, in the same chapter, that after these specific healings by Jesus the people excitedly proclaimed that "A great prophet has appeared among us" (Luke 7:16).
A Greater Prophet
In these stories Luke shows that Jesus was indeed a great prophet – accomplishing deeds just like the greatest of the prophets before him. And in doing so, Luke also reminds us that, like those prophets, Jesus came not only to speak, but also to heal and to save. In these and in many other examples, Luke shows us Jesus not only as a man, but also as the greatest prophet of God with the greatest power to heal and to save.