OT: Exod 26:31–33, 36–37; Ps 31:6; Amos 8:9
NT: Luke 8:2–3; 18:13; 24:10; Acts 7:59. // Matt 27:45–56; Mark 15:33–41; John 19:25–30
Catechism: Jesus’ death, 730; Christian death, 1011
Lectionary: Luke 23:44–46, 50, 52–53; 24:1–6: All Souls; Masses for the Dead
[23:44–45]
The penitent thief experienced the saving significance of the crucifixion. Now its cosmic implications are manifested in signs, which also bring the Scriptures to fulfillment. For three hours on that first Good Friday, from about noon till three in the afternoon, darkness came over the whole land, because the light of the sun “failed” (NRSV).26 At Pentecost, Peter appears to refer to this sign as the fulfillment of the prophet Joel: “And I will work wonders in the heavens above. . . . The sun shall be turned to darkness . . . before the coming of the great and splendid day of the Lord” (Acts 2:19–20, quoting Joel 3:3–4).27 The darkness is thus a warning about the coming day of the Lord (see Luke 17:24).28 The three hours are a sign of God’s judgment, like the plague of three days of darkness over the land of Egypt before the exodus (Exod 10:21–22).
A second sign occurs around three o’clock: then the veil of the temple was torn down the middle. On the one hand, this is likewise a sign of judgment, similar to Jesus’ cleansing of the temple (Luke 19:45) and his temple prediction (21:6): the era of seeking atonement through the temple’s animal sacrifices will soon come to an end. However, in contrast to the restricted access to God symbolized by the veil,29 the torn veil also indicates that access to God is now readily available through Jesus’ atoning sacrifice: “Through the blood of Jesus we have confidence of entrance into the sanctuary by the new and living way he opened for us through the veil, that is, his flesh” (Heb 10:19–20).
Though Matthew and Mark also note these two signs (Matt 27:45, 51; Mark 15:33, 38), only Luke mentions them together, suggesting a joint interpretation.30 Since Jesus’ crucifixion is accomplishing his “exodus” (Luke 9:31),31 the key may lie in recognizing that similar signs occurred at the original exodus: “there was darkness” and “the water was divided,”32 giving God’s people open access to salvation through the middle (Exod 14:20–22 NETS).
LIVING TRADITION
The Suffering and Death of Jesus
Blessed John Henry Newman reflects on how Jesus intentionally and completely gave himself on the cross:
He took a body in order that he might suffer . . . and when his hour was come, that hour of Satan and of darkness [Luke 22:53] . . . he offered himself wholly . . . as the whole of his body, stretched out upon the cross, so the whole of his soul, his whole advertence, his whole consciousness, a mind awake, a sense acute, a living cooperation, a present, absolute intention, not a virtual permission, not a heartless submission, this did he present to his tormentors. His passion was an action; he lived most energetically, while he lay languishing, fainting, and dying. Nor did he die, except by an act of the will; for he bowed his head, in command as well as in resignation, and said, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit” [23:46]. He gave the word, he surrendered his soul, he did not lose it.a
a. John Henry Newman, “Mental Sufferings of Our Lord in His Passion,” in Discourses Addressed to Mixed Congregations (repr., Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002), 330–31.
[23:46]
Crying out in a loud voice, Jesus speaks his last word from the cross: into your hands I commend my spirit (pneuma). Whereas Matthew and Mark record a saying drawn from the beginning of Psalm 22 about the experience of feeling forsaken by God (Matt 27:46; Mark 15:34), this saying comes from another psalm (Ps 31:6) and emphasizes trusting abandonment to God, whom Jesus again addresses as Father (Luke 10:21; 11:2; 22:42; 23:34). At his martyrdom, Stephen will follow Jesus’ model but will address his prayer to Jesus himself: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit” (Acts 7:59). Through these prayers, as well as the penitent thief’s plea (Luke 23:42), Luke teaches Christians how to prepare for death.
The death of Jesus follows, as he breathed his last. The verb here is related to the noun pneuma, which can mean “breath” or “spirit.” In dying, Jesus thus carries out what he just prayed, in control and fully intent on his mission right to the end.
[23:47]
Three sets of people react to Jesus’ death. First, the Roman centurion, seeing Jesus’ death, glorified God. Throughout Luke, such a response indicates recognition that God is at work in Jesus, bringing his plan of salvation foretold in the Scriptures to fulfillment.33 The centurion also affirms that Jesus undoubtedly was innocent or “righteous” (NIV; dikaios).34 This confirms Pilate’s repeated declaration that Jesus was not guilty (23:4, 14, 22), as well as the penitent thief’s similar statement (23:41). However, Luke also intends a further meaning. The word dikaios elsewhere in the Gospel describes those who are righteous or upright before God—for example, Zechariah and Elizabeth (1:6), Simeon (2:25), and Joseph of Arimathea (23:50). In this regard, Jesus is the foremost “Righteous One” (Acts 3:14; 7:52; 22:14), whose coming was foretold (Jer 23:5; 33:15). Despite being “the righteous one” (Wis 2:12, 18), Jesus is condemned “to a shameful death” (Wis 2:20). He thus also fulfills the mission of the †suffering servant: “A righteous one . . . shall bear their sins” (Isa 53:11 NETS).35
[23:48]
Second, all the crowds who had gathered (Luke 23:4, 27, 35) now returned home beating their breasts. Their gesture is a sign of mourning (23:27) over Jesus’ death. It also suggests repentance (see 18:13), inasmuch as they regret their own role in having him condemned to death (23:13, 18, 21, 23). Later, Peter will explicitly call them to such repentance (Acts 2:38; 3:19).
[23:49]
Third, also present are all of Jesus’ acquaintances, presumably including some of his disciples (see John 19:26), though the only ones mentioned are the women who had followed him from Galilee (Luke 8:2–3). These women will play a significant role in the following accounts of Jesus’ burial (23:55–56) and resurrection (24:1–10). They stood at a distance, perhaps because they could not or were afraid to get closer (see 22:54). Their stance may also suggest humility and reverence, like that of the tax collector who “stood off at a distance” and prayed for mercy (18:13). He went home from the temple “justified” (18:14). Now, on account of Jesus’ death, there is a new means of atonement: sinners “are justified freely . . . through the redemption in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as an expiation” (Rom 3:24–25).
Jesus Is Buried (23:50–56)
50Now there was a virtuous and righteous man named Joseph who, though he was a member of the council, 51had not consented to their plan of action. He came from the Jewish town of Arimathea and was awaiting the kingdom of God. 52He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. 53After he had taken the body down, he wrapped it in a linen cloth and laid him in a rock-hewn tomb in which no one had yet been buried. 54It was the day of preparation, and the sabbath was about to begin. 55The women who had come from Galilee with him followed behind, and when they had seen the tomb and the way in which his body was laid in it, 56they returned and prepared spices and perfumed oils. Then they rested on the sabbath according to the commandment.
OT: Exod 20:8–11; Deut 5:12–15
NT: Luke 8:2–3; 19:30; 24:10; Acts 13:29. // Matt 27:57–61; Mark 15:42–47; John 19:38–42
Catechism: sabbath rest on Holy Saturday, 624
[23:50–51]
As a man named Joseph (1:27) cared for Jesus in his infancy, so also at his death. This Joseph is a member of the council, the †Sanhedrin (22:66), but had not consented to their plan of action of seeking to put Jesus to death (22:2–6; 23:1). He was originally from Arimathea, which is likely Ramathaim—that is, the Ramah of the prophet Samuel (1 Sam 1:1, 19).36 Like Simeon at the presentation in the temple, Joseph is righteous and is awaiting the fulfillment of God’s plan (Luke 2:25). Simeon had prophesied that Jesus was coming for both Gentiles and Jews: “a light for revelation to the Gentiles / and glory for your p
eople Israel” (2:32). Despite Jesus’ being put to death by Gentile and Jewish leaders (Acts 4:27), Simeon’s prophecy now has a measure of fulfillment in the Roman centurion and Joseph.
[23:52–54]
Going to Pilate, he asked for the body of Jesus. Since the sabbath was about to begin at sunset, it was necessary to bury him immediately (Deut 21:23). Having obtained Pilate’s permission (Matt 27:58; Mark 15:45; John 19:38), he took the body down from the cross and wrapped it in a linen cloth.37 Jesus was then laid, according to a burial custom common among Jews of the area, in a rock-hewn tomb—that is, a chamber cut out of the limestone, with a shelf on which the body was laid—and a disc-like stone was rolled into place at the entrance (Luke 24:2). Jesus was buried in a new tomb (Matt 27:60), one in which no one had yet been buried.38 This detail recalls the colt “on which no one has ever sat” (Luke 19:30), used by Jesus when he entered Jerusalem and was acclaimed as “king” (19:38). Despite dying like a criminal, “the King of the Jews” (23:38) is buried with royal dignity.
Figure 22. Church of the Holy Sepulchre. [Silvano Kim]
[23:55–56]
Besides Joseph, the women who had come from Galilee are eyewitnesses attesting that Jesus was really buried. They saw not only the tomb but also the way in which his body was laid in it. These details anticipate a possible objection that Jesus’ tomb was later found empty because he was never buried. Paul will likewise affirm: “I handed on to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures; that he was buried . . .” (1 Cor 15:3–4).
These women followed behind Joseph to the tomb. They in turn have been followed by millions of pilgrims over the centuries who have visited the tomb of Jesus, over which the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was constructed.
Because of the lack of time on Friday to complete the burial customs, the woman then prepared spices and perfumed oils with which to anoint Jesus’ body after the sabbath (Luke 24:1). On that Holy Saturday, they rested in faithful observance of the commandment (Exod 20:8–11; Deut 5:12–15),39 while Jesus’ body rested in the tomb.
1. E.g., Josephus, Jewish War 2.171; Jewish Antiquities 18.57.
2. Most scholars locate the praetorium at Herod the Great’s upper palace in the western part of the city. Others favor the older †Hasmonean palace near the temple mount’s southwest corner or the Antonia Fortress, the army barracks at the temple mount’s northwest corner. See Bargil Pixner, Paths of the Messiah, ed. Rainer Riesner, trans. Keith Myrick, Sam Randall, and Miriam Randall (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2010), 266–94; Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, Keys to Jerusalem: Collected Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 108–9.
3. Jean-Noël Aletti, L’art de raconter Jésus Christ: L’écriture narrative de l’évangile de Luc (Paris: Seuil, 1989), 162–64.
4. James R. Edwards, The Gospel according to Luke, PNTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015), 671.
5. Some interpret the silence as an allusion to the †suffering servant: “Though harshly treated, he submitted / and did not open his mouth” (Isa 53:7).
6. Luke 19:47; 20:1, 19; 22:2, 4, 52, 66; 23:4, 10, 13; 24:20.
7. Verse 17 (“For of necessity he must release one unto them at the feast,” KJV) is missing from many early manuscripts and is omitted in most modern Bibles. It is considered a later addition to Luke based on the verses in Matthew and Mark that explain the Passover amnesty. Among Jewish sources, a possible, later witness to this custom is m. Pesahim 8:6.
8. E.g., Ambrose, Exposition of the Holy Gospel according to Saint Luke 10.100, trans. Theodosia Tomkinson (Etna, CA: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 1998), 424.
9. Aletti, L’art de raconter Jésus Christ, 168–69.
10. Luke also does not mention the crown of thorns (Matt 27:29; Mark 15:17; John 19:2, 5).
11. The Gennath gate (see Josephus, Jewish War 5.146), so named because there was a garden nearby (John 19:41).
12. Latin patibulum.
13. The Greek word opisthen (“behind,” Luke 23:26) is similar to opisō (“after,” 9:23; 14:27).
14. This beatitude is virtually the opposite of the one spoken earlier by a woman to Jesus (Luke 11:27).
15. This seems to be another example where Luke quotes verbatim a unique string of words from the †Septuagint (see Luke 7:15; 13:17; 24:31), in order to highlight how Jesus brings an Old Testament figure or text to fulfillment.
16. Mount Moriah (Gen 22:2) was identified as the site of the temple (2 Chron 3:1), and the Passover time of year (Exod 12:2–6) was linked to the sacrifice of Isaac (Jubilees 17.15–18.3). See Edward Kessler, Bound by the Bible: Jews, Christians, and the Sacrifice of Isaac (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 90, 151.
17. Jerome, Epistle 58.3.
18. See Murphy-O’Connor, Keys to Jerusalem, 159–218.
19. John G. Cook, Crucifixion in the Mediterranean World (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 216–17, 398.
20. Josephus, Jewish War 2.308; 5.451. In 1968, in a tomb in the Giv‘at ha-Mivtar neighborhood of Jerusalem, the heel bone of a first-century man was discovered with a nail still through it, physical evidence of such a form of crucifixion.
21. Because the evidence of the manuscripts is divided, the NABRE puts this verse in brackets. However, by considering other evidence—such as the similarities to the Lord’s Prayer (Luke 11:2, 4) and the parallel prayer of Stephen (Acts 7:60)—many recent commentators hold to the verse’s authenticity. For a thorough discussion and defense, see Nathan Eubank, “A Disconcerting Prayer: On the Originality of Luke 23:34a,” JBL 129 (2010): 521–36.
22. Cook, Crucifixion, 427.
23. Cook, Crucifixion, 427.
24. E.g., 4 Ezra 7.123; 8.52.
25. Jerome Neyrey, The Passion according to Luke: A Redaction Study of Luke’s Soteriology (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1985), 179–92.
26. Though the NABRE refers to a solar eclipse, such an event can only happen at a new moon, when the moon is between the sun and the earth, and not at a full moon as at Passover. Rather, the darkness could be caused by “thick black clouds” (Zeph 1:15) or by a dust storm (see Sibylline Oracles 3.800–802).
27. Joel 2:30–31 RSV. See also Amos 8:9: “On that day . . . / I will make the sun set at midday / and in broad daylight cover the land with darkness.”
28. See Ezek 30:3; Joel 2:1–2; Amos 5:20; Zeph 1:14–15.
29. Scholars are divided as to which veil is meant: the outer one at the entrance to the temple sanctuary (the Holy Place; see Exod 26:36–37), or the inner one in front of the Holy of Holies (Exod 26:31–33). The tearing of the outer veil would have been visible to people outside, not just the priests inside. However, the tearing of the inner veil would have greater significance. See Heb 6:19; 9:3.
30. Whereas Matthew and Mark say the veil was torn from top to bottom, Luke says it was torn in the middle.
31. Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel according to Luke, 2 vols., AB (New York: Doubleday, 1981–85), 2:1502, 1514.
32. The verb for the “tearing” of the veil and the “dividing” of the sea is the same (schizō). See Daniel M. Gurtner, The Torn Veil: Matthew’s Exposition of the Death of Jesus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 177–78.
33. See Luke 2:14, 20; 5:25–26; 7:16; 13:13; 17:15; 18:43; 19:38. Peter Doble, The Paradox of Salvation: Luke’s Theology of the Cross (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 46–47, 66.
34. In Matthew and Mark, the centurion instead calls Jesus “Son of God” (Matt 27:54; Mark 15:39). Raymond E. Brown, The Death of the Messiah: From Gethsemane to the Grave; A Commentary on the Passion Narratives in the Four Gospels, 2 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1994), 2:1165, explains that a verse from Wisdom provides the bridge between the two descriptions: “If the righteous one is the son of God, God will help him” (Wis 2:18).
35. References to the †suffering servant of Isa 53 thus frame Luke’s account of the events of Jesus’ passion and death (Luke 22:37; 23:47). See Acts 3:1
3–14; 8:32–35.
36. The town is Jewish, perhaps meaning “of the Judeans,” thus distinguishing it from towns with the same name in other regions.
37. For a recent discussion of the possibility that this linen cloth is the well-known Shroud of Turin, see Robert J. Spitzer, God So Loved the World (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2016), 343–91.
38. According to Jewish burial custom (for those who could afford a tomb), once the flesh of the deceased decomposed, the bones would be placed in a smaller ossuary, and the larger tomb reused.
39. Like the individuals in the infancy narrative—Zechariah and Elizabeth (Luke 1:6), Mary and Joseph (2:22–24, 27, 39)—the women are exemplary in fulfilling the commandments of the law.
Fulfillment in Jesus’ Resurrection
Luke 24:1–53
Faith in Jesus is possible because of his resurrection. Without it, faith would be worthless (1 Cor 15:17). Therefore, so that readers may know that the event of Jesus’ resurrection is true (Luke 1:4), Luke, like the other evangelists, first testifies to the fact of the empty tomb and then recounts a selection of appearances of the risen Jesus. Moreover, he emphasizes that Jesus’ resurrection was necessary in order to bring to fulfillment God’s plan in the Scriptures (24:7, 26, 44). Luke’s Gospel then concludes with Jesus’ ascension (24:51), which looks forward to the sequel in the Acts of the Apostles. Strengthened by the Holy Spirit (24:49), the disciples will carry out their mission to all the nations (24:47), knowing that Jesus is still among them “in the breaking of the bread” (24:35).
The Gospel of Luke Page 53