Fall 2024 · Vol. 53 No. 2 · pp. 205–206
Book Review
Luke
Mary Schertz. Believers Church Bible Commentary. Harrisonburg, VA: Herald, 2023. 469 pages.
Having had the opportunity to endorse a pre-publication edition of this book, I am grateful for the space of a longer review to consider Mary Schertz’s commentary on the gospel of Luke, one of the recent additions to the Believers Church Bible Commentary series published by Herald Press. As professor emerita of New Testament at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Schertz brings a distinguished career of service in the church and academy to her work in this volume. Indeed, this commentary draws upon biblical scholarship from the academy while translating that research into the language of the church in a way that manages to be simultaneously informative and poetic.
This commentary follows Luke in order, offering relevant comments on the text itself as well as connections between Luke’s text and the Hebrew Bible. In doing this, Schertz traces the presence of the motifs of holy war and the suffering servant both in the Hebrew Bible and in Luke’s account of Jesus’s ministry (see especially 364–69). Anabaptist readers of the commentary will appreciate the ways in which Schertz observes how Jesus demonstrates knowledge of the former while gravitating toward the latter, both in his teaching and in his actions that prioritize disempowered and marginalized populations.
Schertz’s observation of Jesus’ enactment of a peaceful suffering servant contributes not only to New Testament scholarship but also to larger peace church theology that draws inspiration from the biblical text. That is, beyond simply making a contribution to the narrower academic discipline of Lukan studies (already replete with a vast collection of commentaries on that Gospel), Schertz’s volume offers a valuable gift to p. 206 a wide range of disciplines and audiences that might be seeking biblical resources for considering issues of peace and nonviolence.
Although the commentary attends in part to relevant issues of socio-historical significance, its greatest strength emerges in its close attention to literary details, including details of narrative structure. For example, in her discussion of Jesus’s early days of ministry narrated in Luke 4:16-20, Schertz observes how Luke’s chiastic structure in this section aids in highlighting the type of ministry that Jesus will be exemplifying throughout the remainder of Luke (106). As she attends to Luke’s narrative artistry, Schertz likewise demonstrates an artistry of her own as she skillfully connects the ancient words of Scripture to contemporary life, grappling even with issues of women in ministry and the challenge of how to approach the work of John Howard Yoder, given his history of perpetuating sexual violence (194–96). Unlike more narrowly academic-focused commentaries (such as that of François Bovon, upon whose work Schertz nevertheless relies), Schertz skillfully weaves together the ancient and the modern, illuminating the relevance of Luke’s message for contemporary life.
The volume closes with a collection of short essays that explore larger themes, motifs, and issues in interpreting Luke (e.g., “Atonement: Luke’s Theology,” “Luke’s Relationship to Acts,” “Peace and Justice in Luke”). These essays offer a helpful extension to the conversations that Schertz began in the commentary portion of the volume. For lay or student readers who might be wishing for a broader view on these topics than what can be offered in the first part of the volume, with its pericope-by-pericope commentary on the whole of Luke’s gospel, these essays offer rich discussions of important theological themes.
As I observed in my endorsement for the book, this volume offers important contributions to both the academy and church. By distilling the work of several scholars, Schertz presents key findings from recent Lukan scholarship. However, Schertz is not content to allow these scholarly conversations to be limited to the purview of the academy alone. Rather, she expertly translates many of these findings into the language, theology, and practice of the church. This work of translation makes this volume an important asset to a wide array of audiences.
