Reading Bible stories from right to left

The Rev. Dr. Eric Barreto leads a Synod of the Covenant webinar on reading Luke backward

October 28, 2024

Photo by Tim Wildsmith via Unsplash

In an approach that presents any number of spoiler alert challenges, the Rev. Dr. Eric Barreto nonetheless recommends that preachers read Luke backward.

Barreto, the Frederick and Margaret L. Weyerhaeuser Associate Professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary, was the Rev. Dr. Chip Hardwick’s recent guest on the Synod of the Covenant’s monthly “Equipping Preachers” webinar. Listen to his 88-minute presentation here.

Barreto told the story of working on a Lenten series with the Rev. Dr. Dave Davis, the senior pastor at Nassau Presbyterian Church in Princeton, which Barreto attends and where he teaches adult education. Throughout that Lenten season, Davis preached on Lenten biblical passages while Barreto taught them, beginning with the cross and ending with the unusual Palm Sunday scene of baby Jesus in Mary’s arms.

Starting at the end of Luke’s gospel can be disorienting, but “sometimes disorienting us helps us see texts in a new light. I thought it was helpful to think about Mary in the Lenten season,” Barreto said. “It’s about revisiting an old story we have heard a million times before, only to be delighted and surprised there is so much to be learned.”

The cross of Jesus “is strange, good news,” Barreto said. “It is news of the defeat of death with death, as the empire takes another innocent life. It is forgiveness shared at a place devoid of mercy. The cross is perhaps the strangest of good news.”

Barreto took a brief look at Luke’s prologue to uncover four keys to the third gospel: others wrote stories like Luke did, Luke was interested in presenting an orderly account of what had gone on, Luke’s intended readers are people who “already belong in the gospel,” and he intends to tell old stories again.

The Rev. Dr. Eric Barreto

Then Barreto went straight to the crucifixion account in Luke 23. He said that Rome saw the two other men put to death alongside Jesus as terrorists, “like Jesus, seen as a threat to the order of the empire. It was a signal to the community not to mess with us,” Barreto said, for “if you do, this will be your destiny as well.”

“This is what power looks like,” Barreto said. “Grief and empire are all over the text.”

Why, Barreto wondered, does Luke quote the centurion saying, “Certainly, this man was innocent”?

“Is Jesus special? I want to say on the one hand, in the eyes of the centurion and maybe in our eyes, Jesus is not special,” Barreto said. “He’s not the first or the last innocent person killed by empire to keep order. I wonder if the centurion sees how remarkably ordinary his execution is.”

The United States had its own history of public executions, of course. “Not that long ago, white folks would go to lynchings in their Sunday best and take home souvenirs of what they’d seen. They came to see a spectacle, to be delighted,” Barreto said. “The spectacle of empire says, ‘We can use the weight of violence to keep you safe. Just don’t mess with us.’”

But members of the crowd witnessing Jesus’ execution go home beating their breasts “because they have seen something they should not have seen,” Barreto said. “The cross for Luke is just a blunt instrument of tragedy, a moment of deep trauma — cruelty and death and violence all wrapped up into one. Some say the cross is a mirror held up to us. What we are confronted with is our own love of violence, inflicted on others to keep us safe.”

Barreto said the goal of reading a biblical account backward is “to attune ourselves to these stories with the possibility we will notice something different we haven’t noticed before.”

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Today’s Focus: Rev. Dr. Eric Barreto leads a Synod of the Covenant webinar

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Becky Trinkle, Project Manager, Administration, Communications Ministry, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) 
Mel Tubb, Mission Coordinator I, Advocacy Support, Executive Director’s Office, Presbyterian Mission Agency 

Let us pray

Lord, today we give thanks for our long life and continued opportunities to serve Christ. We thank your faithful as they witness to you under difficult and trying conditions. Amen.