The bull of St Luke

The Gospel of Luke

Chapter 12: Overview

In 12,1, we are told that the crowds gather. This begins a new scene, coming after Jesus' dinner with the Pharisees in chapter 11. The next new beginning can be found in 13,10 where there is a change of place and time: Jesus is now teaching in a synagogue on the sabbath. We are therefore considering 12,1-13,9 as a unit and throughout Jesus is the speaker. These verses can be seen as a speech by Jesus ranging over a number of topics.

Whilst the crowd is already present in 12,1, Jesus there specifically speaks first to the disciples.
The crowd is not directly addressed by Jesus until 12,54 so that the second half of Jesus' speech is 12,54-13,9. It's best therefore to link 12,54-59 with 13,1-9 as the first part of the next chapter.

Thus the first half of the speech is 12,1-53 which We can hear as a speech by Jesus to his disciples though with the crowd in the background. The disciples are specifically mentioned in verses 1 and 22 though in verse 15 the evangelist just says "them". This would point back to 12,1 so in verse 15 Jesus is continuing to speak to the disciples.

The main markers through this speech are the interruptions:
In 12,1 we are told the crowd coming together but Jesus speaks to his disciples.
In 12,13, one of the crowd interrupts
In 12,22, Jesus speaks to the disciples
In 12,54, Jesus speaks to the crowd (which we will be reading with chapter 13).

Peter's question in 12,41 is different as we will see because it provides a focus within the teaching about "master" and "servant" which is the theme of 12,35-48.

There is a key word in 12,13-34 where "treasure" occurs in verses 21 and 34. verse 34 is a saying from Jesus which is a typical ending of a Gospel teaching.
Verse 35 with its command then opens the next part.

Putting this together, we can now see that Jesus' speech to his disciples in chapter 12 has three parts: conveniently, each part can be described with a word beginning with P.
12,1-12: persecution
12,13-34: possessions
12,35-53: preparation

However, both 12,32-48 and 12,49-53 are read as a Sunday Gospel, as we will note on the main page. It's best therefore to read 12,49-53 on its own page. This is not ideal because these verses form a conclusion to the preceeding teaching of Jesus as we will see.
As a result of all this, we will be reading the speech over four pages.

With our reading mapped out, we are ready to return to the main page and move on to read the first part of the chapter.