Luke clearly structures his Sermon on the Plain in a way that challenges what people may have thought about what it means to be a servant of God.   He begins the sermon with a very provocative statement, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh…” (Luke 6:20-21). Even after I read this statement I found myself feeling very confused, and I cant imagine how crazy these words would have sound to the likely hundreds of people that were listening to him. However, Luke’s narrative is unique in comparison to Matthew’s because his, “Sermon on the Mount/Plain” is much shorter than Matthew. However, he structures his following passage in a way that reinforces a lot of the ideas presented in the very dense sermon. In particular, the story of the woman anointing Jesus found in Mark 14:3-9 is expanded and re-worked by Luke to really emphasize what it means to be a servant of God.

First, I want to point out some of the obvious differences in the stories comparatively between Mark and Luke’s account, then sum up how Luke has used this story to really emphasize some of the main themes in the Sermon on the Plain. The first thing I notice is that Luke has changed the scene of the actual anointing. What I mean by that is, he really tries to paint a picture for the audience of what the scene would have looked like. He really brings emotion into the story by emphasizing in Luke 7:38 the tears, love, and passion the woman had when she was washing his feet. There was no mention of this emotion in Marks narrative. Next we see two different reactions in Marks opposing forces and the opposing forces in Luke. The people in Mark were angry because she had wasted an expensive perfume, while the Pharisees were mad because she was a sinner and they essentially didn’t approve of the woman’s lifestyle.  Each of these differences have a huge affect on the overall theme the passage seems to be conveying.

After reading Mark’s story of the anointing the central theme appears to emphasize sacrifice and the temporary presence of Jesus on earth. We see that Luke’s reworking of the initial story really twists the entire theme. First of all, I think that the added emotion to the scene is suppose to reflect the opening of the Sermon on the Mount, which states, “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh…” (Luke 6:21). This scene not only draws the reader into the story, but it helps emphasizes the dual chronological pattern of the sermon and this story.   See that the reaction of the Pharisees in Luke’s anointing story portrays the next verse in the Sermon on the Plain, “Blessed are you when people hate you, excluded you, revile you, and deframe you….” (Luke 6:22). It seems so obvious that this woman is the one being excluded from being around Jesus and people don’t want to welcome her into his presence.  Already, even before the versus that Luke added to the story we see that the story now seems to be completely reworked to make Sermon on the Plain into a narrative.

Luke 7:40-50 is of course the piece of the story that was added by the author. However, we see that this just continues to emphasize the Sermon on the Plain in a chronological order. In Luke 7:40-43 Jesus tells a parable to essentially emphasize that people who have more sin in their life are even more grateful for the forgiveness that they receive. This seems to be based off of the verses in Luke 6:37-38 where it essentially talks about the importance of forgiveness and acceptance. We see that Luke has cleverly added this portion of the story to reflect the importance of acceptance by using the women who has committed such sins. Finally, the concluding versus in the story of the anointing of Jesus is all about condemning the priest and people standing around the scene because she was the only one who showed what discipleship looks like. She was the only one that showed him honor when he came into the house. Put another way, she was the only one who took action in the presence of Jesus. This story seems to directly parallel the concluding statements of the Sermon on the Plain, “But the one who hears and does not act is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation” (Luke 6:49). Thus, we have seen that Luke has really reworked this story to parallel a lot of the key themes found in the Sermon on the Plain.

The idea of what it means to be a servant of God is really emphasized throughout the Gospel of Luke. I definitely have seen the idea of action really being emphasized in this Gospel. He almost always adds his own twist or completely new story to emphasize the idea of practicing what you preach. This was blaringly obvious in my essay on the Good Samaritan. This seems to be a common theme for what Luke believes it means to be a disciple of God or a follower of God. I wonder since the Gospel predominantly is focused on the Greco-Roman world if one of the big questions was, “what does it mean to follow Jesus.” Since there weren’t many people who had a first hand account of seeing Jesus or even being around the Jesus saying stories.