Binge-Watching Luke’s Four Episode Mini-series: Luke 1-2 (and beyond)
/Streaming TV services have formed the habit of often making a particular show available all at once. You don’t have to wait for them to be aired one-by-one, you can just sit down and watch them all. The advantage of doing that is that you don’t have to wait for the next episode to come out, which formerly would be a week or longer, depending on the time of year.
We will have started Advent on Sunday, November 28th, so we’ll already be into our new church season by the time you read this. For 2022 we’ll have the gospel of Luke as our focus. You’ll be able to follow along in worship and glean more from the time together if you “binge-watch” (so to speak) Luke 1-2 outside of worship. Here’s how you can do that: pick one of the following (or feel free to do them all).
Read Luke 1-3 on your own at home. Easy peasy, we’re talking one cup of coffee or tea per chapter. First few minutes of three breakfasts or three lunches, and boom. You’re done. Another way is to take turns reading a paragraph at a time at a family meal, or having one person read the chapter to the folks while they eat.
OR
I’ll TOTALLY read the whole thing to you. Click the links below.
Luke, Chapter 1 (8 minutes)
Luke, Chapter 2 (6 minutes)
Luke, Chapter 3, genealogy not included (3 minutes)
OR
Watch this brief Summary Video of Luke 1-2 on YouTube. It only covers Luke 1-2, but it’s still very well done. The video ends at about 4 min 20 sec, the remainder is the creators letting folks know how to support their work financially. They gotta make a living, too.
Why is it important to engage with these stories inside and outside of worship? Other than just the usual personal discipleship growth reasons, we don’t really hear these stories much at all this time of year. Many of them are left out of the Revised Common Lectionary we read from on Sundays (Zechariah and Elizabeth are almost entirely omitted), and the stories are left out of our usual cantata and Christmas pageant storytelling. Christmas Eve’s reading of Luke 2:1-20 is pretty much all we get, or perhaps all we tend to remember.
Another casualty of these stories getting left out is that we miss the SONGS! Luke 1-3 has four songs, sometimes called canticles (fancy churchy Latin word meaning “song”). These passages from Luke are frequently set to music, and there are versions of them in our hymnal. You can also find other versions and performances of them on YouTube.
Song of Mary (The Magnificat), Luke 1:46-55
Song of Zechariah (The Benedictus), Luke 1:67-79
Song of Simeon (The Nunc Dimittis), Luke 2:29-32
Song of the Angels (The Gloria, a.k.a. Gloria in Excelsis), Luke 2:14 (Think of that last one like an angelic praise chorus.)
I hope that you’ll find time to gather around this first part of the gospel of Luke in the coming weeks during the season of Advent. Doing so will greatly enrich your experience of Sunday worship, and it will be a way for you to rest beside the weary road and hear the angels sing if your schedule across the next few weeks feels very full.
Have a blessed Advent!
Jonathan Bowling
Pastor, Carolina Beach Presbyterian Church