Today is the Feast of St. Luke and every October 18th the Church celebrates the grace and mercy of God in redeeming sinners, redeeming, healing, restoring men and women who stand in great need of the great physician, our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, who is presented in St. Luke’s Gospel is the Incarnate Son of God. He is the fullness of the Godhead humbled by becoming part of his creation through the Incarnation. He and he alone can heal both body and soul - a matter of particular interest to St. Luke, the Physician and one of the authors, from a human perspective, of one of our Gospels - the one that bears his name. This is an ancient feast of the Church - having been on the Church’s calendar since the late 5th century.
As is common for every feast day, the Church has a collect or prayer appointed. The collect in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer acknowledges the linkages between the eye of the physician and the healing power of Jesus Christ. We pray “ ALMIGHTY God, who didst inspire thy servant Saint Luke the Physician, to set forth in the Gospel the love and healing power of thy Son; Manifest in thy Church the like power and love, to the healing of our bodies and our souls; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
We know very little of St. Luke from the New Testament record. He is mentioned by St. Paul at the end of the Epistle to the Colossians, where the Apostle writes, “Luke, the beloved Physician, and Demas, greet you.” He appears in St. Paul’s brief epistle to Philemon, where he is acknowledged to be a co-laborer with Paul in his imprisonment and the source of comfort for St. Paul in the Epistle appointed for today - II Timothy 4:11 - where Paul voices the sadness of his isolation and the joy of St. Luke’s presence, when the Apostle says, “only Luke is with me.” Very little is written about him as a person, but St. Luke is the source of one of our Four Gospels - he was the author of the Gospel that bears his name and its direct sequel - the Acts of the Apostles, or what we could call the Acts of the Holy Spirit. In terms of word count in the New Testament, St. Luke was inspired by the Holy Spirit to write over ¼ of the New Testament canon.
The early Church traditions are more descriptive of St. Luke’s life and work. St. Luke’s name in Greek Loukas is a shortened form of Lucius, from the Latin lux, which means light; he is the light bearer or “of the light.” Tradition holds that he was born at Antioch and was educated in their fine schools. He trained as a physician and was an early convert to Christianity through the ministry of St. Paul. He became one of St. Paul’s travel companions and traveled with the Apostle extensively. St. Luke is also the patron saint of painters. As early as the 10th century, tradition holds that he was a painter.
One can see the eye of a physician in St. Luke’s style and emphasis in His Gospel. For instance, St. Luke uses the technical name for the fever of St. Peter’s mother-in-law, labelling it a “great fever” to distinguish it from the lesser fevers understood by the medical community at that time. St. Luke is the only Gospel writer to describe our Lord’s blood sweat at Gethsemane - a condition familiar to doctors at that time as a sign of great anguish. He is the only one to record the one surgical healing in the Gospels - with Christ's healing of the high priest’s servant’s ear when St. Peter had cut it off with a sword. Moreover, St. Luke’s Gospel is the only one to mention the proverb “Physician, heal thyself”, which Jesus applies to himself. We should also notice in the Gospel for today from Luke 14 - the sending out of the 70, that only his version gives the command of these men to “heal the sick” alongside the preaching of the Coming of the Kingdom.
The point here is that all the Gospel writers were men who had particular sensitivities to events around them, and God used their personalities and emphases to communicate the truth of Jesus Christ. The fact that no one else mentions a certain event doesn’t compromise the legitimacy of the story, rather it brings into plain view the background of the writer and their particular lens on the world.
Our Gospel appointed is the sending out of the 70 to proclaim the coming of the Kingdom of God. Here, Jesus, rather than inviting them to continue with him as he had invited the apostles, commissions them to announce that the Messiah has come, to prepare the cities and towns to receive Him when He comes. Indeed, they are to show forth Our Lord’s earthly ministry by preaching and healing the sick. They are to receive hospitality from those who are willing to have them as guests and not spend too much energy on those who are not interested.
Shaking off the dust of their sandals when they are not welcomed and moving on to the places where their preaching is received. Messiah is careful to send them out two by two - for mutual encouragement. The pattern remains a common help to church planters, where it is a practice to send them out two at a time. The Celtic model actually embraced a larger number of 12 priests going out to form a new community in the midst of a pagan context.
The ministry of proclaiming the coming of the Kingdom is to be undergirded with prayer. The problem is never with spiritual opportunity. Perhaps we need to be reminded of that as we see the decay of Western civilization, with public Christianity being maligned and marginalized in a secularist age. The true scarcity is with workers, in their various types. Primarily, this is the work of ordained ministry, those who proclaim, who preach about Christ’s coming and its relevance for the present. Workers can also be laity. We are told, the harvest is plentiful, but the workers - ordained and otherwise - are few.
Jesus tells them to pray - Pray to the Lord of the harvest - the Lord of all mankind, who draws men to himself; pray for him to send workers out into the harvest. The prayers of the 70, perhaps the prayers of those who heard Jesus tell the 70 to pray, are answered, in part, by the ministry of St. Luke. The 70 went out to Israel; the 3000 at Pentecost, the converted Gentiles took the Gospel to the ends of the world. St. Luke was part of the answer to that prayer.
I want us to look more closely at the Epistle because it gives us an insight into one important trait of St. Luke- his faithfulness. St. Paul is nearing the end of his work - he writes to St. Timothy in his second epistle. St. Timothy is St. Paul’s son in the faith. Commentators have called this St. Paul’s final charge to Timothy. As he concludes his ministry, as St. Paul anticipates his martyrdom, he gives practical instructions to Timothy to be mindful, to be willing to suffer for the truth, to call people to repent and believe the Gospel.
In doing these things, St. Timothy will confirm his call and prove the sincerity of his faith. St. Paul here pivots to discuss his faithfulness, that he is ready to be offered up as a sacrifice - notice the language of constancy - Timothy fought the good fight, he finished the race, and he kept the faith.
Yet, in the midst of all this, St. Paul expresses a longing for community, a longing for his fellow worker. St. Paul tells Timothy that he is feeling isolated in his circumstances. Some have departed the faith altogether - Demas, for instance, because he loved the world more than the Gospel. Others have left St. Paul to expand the ministry. Crescens and Titus were sent out to new missions. Yet, St. Paul has not been left without encouragement. He tells Timothy, “only Luke is with me.” St. Luke is present in St. Paul’s affliction and, therefore, present in encouragement. Only Luke was there. He was there.
In fact, “Luke had been with him in his first Roman imprisonment [in Collosae] and now in his last Roman imprisonment.” It is probable here that St. Luke is acting as secretary, transcribing this letter on behalf of St. Paul. But the point really is his presence; St. Luke is with the Apostle as he is imprisoned, as St. Paul anticipates his martyrdom.
What is the power of presence? What can we take away from this example? Faithfulness is more important in the Kingdom of God than giftedness. A quiet presence is often more valuable than profound words. We received encouragement this morning in that everyone one of us can be faithful, steadfast, dependable. All of us can be present and can give the great gift of comfort through being with people in the midst of their suffering. Sometimes we feel we wish we had better words, more perfect expressions of comfort.
Yet, consistent presence is often what people need. It is often what we ourselves are comforted by. Faithfulness and presence are so very powerful, but we often question the value of both. Do you feel powerless to help the people God places in your life? Do you find it unfulfilling to be present, to endure the tension of not knowing what to say? Maybe you need to hear that God is pleased when we do the basic things of the faith. He delights in the little obediences. The character to do the next right thing when it goes unnoticed and may be personally unsatisfying. Let us follow the example of St. Luke in our Epistle, by giving to others the gift of encouragement through our presence. Abiding with them in good times and bad. Let it be said of us - even if all others forsake the faithful - that we - corporately and individually - were with them.
Also, as we consider our Gospel, where Jesus instructs them to pray to the Lord of the harvest that he would send laborers out into the harvest, for the harvest is indeed plentiful, but the workers are few. We should always remember that we NEVER GO WRONG PRAYING WHAT JESUS TELLS US TO PRAY FOR. Whether in the Lord’s Prayer as we seek to honor God’s purposes and rely on Him to meet our daily needs, or in this circumstance, when He tells us to pray to the Father, the Lord of the harvest, for laborers. Can we look around us and see with the eyes of faith, the fields ready to be harvested? Do we see Alpine, this area, as one bursting with opportunity? Let us have faith that Jesus knows what he is talking about. Moreover, let us pray with that firm conviction, for people to go out to gather what the Lord has prepared. Pray for workers, lay and ordained, for the harvest. There is always more opportunity than we realize; let us pray for resources to reap the harvest. As we pray for workers, we need to ask ourselves what our role is in this work. Maybe it is prayer; we should always begin and end in prayer.. Maybe it is using our gifts to teach, to encourage, to evangelize.
Let us pray for laborers for the harvest, realizing that there is a distinct possibility that you may be the answer to the prayer that you are praying. Be open and ask God to show you.
Returning to the theme of today’s feast, Luke was not only with St. Paul in life; he shared with all the apostles who walked the path of martyrdom. They died at different times and different places but were united in the love of Jesus that made constancy in ministry and in martyrdom - a shared reality. Tradition holds that Luke took the Gospel to the pagans of Thebes in modern-day Greece. He continued to evangelize and teach in that region until he was 84 years old, when he was crucified on an olive tree by the local pagans who were distressed by his witness. The tradition of his death was so widely acknowledged that it made its way into the medieval collect for this feast day. Where the faithful memorialized his martyrdom, by praying St. Luke, “who in his own body constantly endured the mortification of the cross for the honour of thy Name.”
Beloved, this feast of St. Luke, let us remember our duty to constancy - to serve and be present with God’s faithful in service to the kingdom. Moreover, let us take Jesus' commandment to pray seriously - praying that his will be done, that he would send laborers into the harvest. Finally, let us be willing to suffer for the Gospel that St. Luke was constant to bear witness to - either at the side of St. Paul or on the cross of Christ’s suffering.
Let us pray. Almighty God, who didst inspire thy servant Saint Luke the Physician, to set forth in the Gospel the love and healing power of thy Son; Manifest in thy Church the like power and love, to the healing of our bodies and our souls; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
