St Luke the Evangelist
18 October 2009
I got this from my vicar in Blackpool, Bill Gornall, which I’m sure he got second-hand. He said the time to worry over whether you’ve preached too long is not when the congregation start looking at their watches. It’s when they start shaking their wrists to make sure they haven’t stopped.
Another bit of guidance I gleaned from another source, and it’s one of those apocryphal stories that’s associated with the Duke of Edinburgh. He is said to have offered this guidance to more than one of the Queen’s newly appointed chaplains. Less than 15 minutes for a sermon, he suggested, might be construed as indolent, more could definitely be construed as tedious!
Well enough of that. Today is the 18th October, when the Church traditionally celebrates the Feast of St Luke the Evangelist. I’d like, then, at this time of St Luke’s-tide, to share with you something more about St Luke the Evangelist. Who was St Luke, we might ask first of all.
Virtually all we know of Luke comes from the NT, and this is by far the most reliable source for the information we have about him.
From the letters of St Paul and the Acts of the Apostles, we learn that Luke was a Greek physician, and a companion with Paul on some of his missionary journeys. From the second letter Paul wrote to Timothy, probably when Paul was being held in prison, we learn that Luke remained loyal to Paul long after the missionary travels they shared together were over. In this letter Paul urges Timothy, “Do your best to join me soon; for Demas has deserted me because his heart was set on this world; he has gone to Thessalonica, Crescens to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia. I have no one with me but Luke.”
Loyal, steadfast Luke.
For many Christians, St Luke’s Gospel is the one that gives us the loveliest, most colourful portrayals of the love of God shown through the life of Jesus, and it became inevitable that St Luke was highly venerated in early Christian tradition. Yet there is another reason too why St Luke was regarded so highly, and this is because he was considered to have known Jesus’ mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary personally.
If we reflect on the details St Luke gives us in the story of Jesus’ birth and the intimate insights he offers us about what was going on in Mary’s heart, the tradition that this part of the Gospel narrative comes directly from Mary to Luke does not seem too fanciful. Unlike St Matthew’s Gospel, which tells the story of Jesus birth from Joseph’s perspective, St Luke narrates the birth of Jesus mainly as seen through the eyes of Mary.
A few years ago I went to see a friend who lived in Belgium, and as they were really cold days in January it was good to go inside somewhere warm. The art galleries of Brussels and Bruges were a great option, and in the great cultural cities of Belgium, on display were many examples of early Flemish art. Typically, Flemish art of this kind tends to stylise people’s faces. They have something of a universal look about them, and don’t tend to emphasise individual features.
Characteristic of this kind of art from Flemish lands was one subject I saw on a number of occasions. This was none other than that of St Luke. Here St Luke is depicted by these Flemish artists in the act of painting the Blessed Virgin Mary, while she poses for Luke to complete his work. Clearly, in the idea that St Luke actually painted Mary the Mother of our Lord, we inhabit the realm of legend, but these Flemish works of art also convey the fact that Luke is traditionally the patron saint of artists.
St Luke is also the patron saint of doctors and the medical profession. The first wedding I conducted was my brother’s and in this I was able to have a bit of fun. Tim was a medical student at Leicester University. Leicester University was a very new medical school when my brother began his training there and it was the proud boast then of the Dean of Medicine that Leicester University had never produced a bad doctor. That was of course because at that time they had not produced any. No doctors had as yet qualified. A number of medical students came to my brother’s wedding and for a little bit of teasing I compared the Gospel accounts of Mark and Luke in the story of the woman with the haemorrhages who touches the hem of Jesus’ cloak and was healed. Remember that one? Mark tells us that before she met Jesus the poor woman had spent a fortune on doctors, but she grew no better. In fact, she grew only worse. It’s amusing to note that Luke who was probably following Mark’s earlier source here chooses to close ranks with his colleagues. He won’t have this implied criticism of the medical profession, so he drops the reference to the woman growing worse after she had consulted the doctors altogether. At this a cheer went up from the Leicester medics who were present!
St Luke. Evangelist, Doctor and Artist.
More than anything else though, the legacy that St Luke has given to us is his wonderful Gospel. In most written works of this kind it is inevitable that something of the stamp of a writer’s personality makes itself felt in its pages. This is probably the case with St Luke more than any of the other 3 evangelists. What elements of his personal outlook come to the fore in his Gospel then?
In St Luke’s Gospel I want to highlight 3 ideas.
First is the joy that is present in the Father’s heart when a sinner repents and finds forgiveness. Witness perhaps the loveliest of all the parables, The Prodigal Son, whose Father rushes out to embrace him while he was still a good way off. Compare the joy of the shepherd when he brings back to the fold the sheep that was lost, or in a domestic setting the woman who rejoices when she finds the coin lost in her home.
A second key emphasis in St Luke’s Gospel, and one which goes hand in hand with the first, is the concern that God in Jesus has for the outsider. In this Gospel, more obviously than any of the others, Jesus freely reaches out to touch the lives of those who live on the margins of society. Israel was a patriarchal society and as such the status of women was much lower than that which we would find acceptable today. Thus, we find that because St Luke was concerned to uphold the place of women in the Gospel narrative, women feature prominently in this Gospel. In telling the stories of Mary, Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, and the woman who was a sinner and anointed Jesus, St Luke tells his stories with sensitivity.
St Luke makes it clear that Jesus’ mission to save the lost extended to what most Jews would understand as the least promising of candidates. Nowhere, surely, is this portrayed to greater effect than in the wonderful parable of the Good Samaritan. The Royal Lancaster Infirmary, where I assisted as a hospital chaplain, displayed this engraving over the main entrance door, adjacent to the casualty department. Appropriately enough too, for here the Samaritan binds up the wounds of the badly wounded man. The crux of the parable of course is that the Samaritans were outcasts from the Jewish people. The pillars of Jewish religion, who might have been expected to help, passed by on the other side, and help came from the unlikeliest of heroes.
There was one other type of person who lived beyond the pale of Jewish society also who features in St Luke’s Gospel most obviously, and this is the figure of the tax collector. Tax collectors got a bad press in Israel in New Testament times. This was for 2 main reasons. First, because they were regarded as collaborators who collected monies for Rome, their imperial master, and second, because they were notorious for their dishonesty in siphoning off riches for themselves. They were the ones at whom the Pharisees looked down their nose because they were sinners who did not keep the law.
The story of Jesus’ encounter with Zacchaeus is, then entirely unexpected. Rabbis had nothing if possible to do with the unrighteous. The last thing they would dream of doing would be to go and receive hospitality in their house, but that is the very thing Jesus did. Zacchaeus, a new changed man, is now free and generous in using his possessions for the common good.
Who would God forgive, the Pharisee or the tax collector? 99 per cent of Jesus’ contemporaries would probably have sided with the former. Not so in Jesus’ parable. The Pharisee, whose prayer is essentially an exercise in self congratulation, is blind to his own need for forgiveness. It is by contrast the tax collector who does not dare raise his head to heaven because of his sin who is the one who is restored and forgiven.
The third emphasis in St Luke’s Gospel I would single out is the Compassion of the Saviour. No surprise to discover, therefore, that it is chiefly the compassion that Jesus has that comes to the fore in his healing miracles. The Saviour, who comes to seek and save the lost, freely wills to reach out, to touch and to heal.
Right at the beginning of his Gospel St Luke makes it clear that Jesus had come not just to be the One who would deliver Israel, but also to be the “light to lighten the Gentiles”. In the first public appearance that Jesus makes after His baptism, he takes up the scroll in the synagogue at Nazareth and reads from the prophet Isaiah, “The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me. He has sent me to announce good news to the poor, to proclaim release for prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind; to let the broken victims go free. To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”
In his ministry Jesus fulfilled this prophecy of Isaiah because the salvation he brought to people sprung from a heart of compassion. Here was the love of God Himself shown in human form. The compassion of Jesus the Saviour was a quality that remained constant up to the point of death. We see this in the assurance that Jesus gave the penitent thief who was crucified with him. In his own agony of dying he responded to the thief with the compassion that his fellow dying victim needed. “Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom”. “Today”, says Jesus, “You will be with me in Paradise.”
I’ve drawn out 3 central features of St Luke’s Gospel. First, the joy in heaven over the sinner who is forgiven and restored, second, the willingness of Jesus to reach out and embrace those who were despised and lived beyond the margins of society, and third, the compassionate heart of the Saviour that springs from the all consuming love of God Himself.
Today we give thanks to God for St Luke, Doctor and Evangelist, and for this most joyful of all the Gospels. Praise God that it inspires us to follow Jesus more faithfully, in response to the immense love that the Father has for each one of us.