Sermon Audio
Feast of St. Luke the Evangelist
Only Luke is With Me
Isaiah 52:7-10, Psalm 67, 2 Timothy 4:5-15, St. Luke 10:1-7
In times both ancient and modern, many have tried their hand at writing a life of Christ. None has succeeded more admirably than St. Luke. Some have gone so far as to call his gospel “the loveliest book in the world.”
Little wonder, for he was uncommonly qualified. He brought the eye of a scientist to bear on his subject matter and simultaneously trained on it the eye of an artist. One tradition holds that he was a skilled painter.
Even today a cathedral in Spain holds a portrait of Mary attributed to him.
So as we celebrate St. Luke we note first in what ways we are not commemorating him . . . not as St. Luke the Physician or St. Luke the Historian but as St. Luke the Evangelist, the author of the third euangellion, or evangel or, more familiarly, gospel.
What’s more, it’s fitting that we see his literary contribution to the Scriptures, as many scholars do, as parts 1 and 2 of the same work. In Luke he gives us an account of the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth, Messiah and God the Son.
In Acts he records the Holy Spirit’s work in disseminating the good news of what Christ has done and the life-changing, live-saving effect of the Lord’s resurrection and ascension.
The only gentile among the biblical authors, he has left us more than a quarter of the New Testament . . . more than the deposit of Paul’s letters, more than John’s gospel, letters and Revelation, more than any other New Testament writer.
How does a gentile intrude so emphatically on the Jewish cartel of writers of the Holy Writ? Quite naturally, when we consider that the New Testament describes the spilling out of the gospel upon the nations. No longer are God’s covenant people confined within an ethnic group. His saving power reaches into every nook and cranny of the creation.
We are typically unaware of how much the thought patterns encoded in our language affect our way of interpreting the world around us. Because you and I think in English we speak and write in a way different from that of a French speaker and far different from that of an Arabic speaker or a Swahili speaker.
Many of the conflicts in our contemporary world stem from differences in the ways various peoples interpret history. Others issue from variations in how our language shapes our perception. Some wise fellow has said that 90 percent of a culture is encoded in its language.
Luke, reared in the Syrian city of Antioch, thought in Greek, and so was better suited to framing the gospel for the gentile context than the native Hebrew speakers who wrote the balance of the New Testament.
Matthew produced the most Jewish of gospels. Mark’s is most closely associated with the preaching of Peter, the apostle to the Jews. And Luke, the church has held for centuries, wrote what Paul, apostle to the gentiles, preached.
Studying his approach in Acts, we see that Luke traveled with Paul for significant stretches. Luke sometimes uses the third-person to describe where Paul went and what he did and said based on his research and sometimes the first-person plural to deliver eyewitness testimony to what took place.
We know from the final chapter of Acts that Luke was with Paul in Rome toward the end of his life (28:16). Paul wrote to Timothy during this period, “Only Luke is with me” (2 Timothy 4:11).
If we view the dissemination of the message as spontaneous we miss the divine hand that guided it. Nothing in God’s world develops by chance, and least of all the sharing of the good news of the redemption of mankind.
Luke was God’s man for God’s plan in God’s time.
We know from Paul’s writings that Luke was a doctor (Colossians 4:14) and from Luke’s own writings that he was educated. He may have been a slave, as it was common for wealthy families to have one such trained as their physician.
Luke addresses his works to “most excellent Theophilus” – literally, “lover of God” – who is thought based on this form of address to be a high-ranking Roman official. He was presumably one we might call today a “seeker,” interested in learning more about the claims that this Jesus was in fact God.
Until the critical scholarship of recent times, Luke enjoyed an unchallenged reputation as a careful historian who left us an accurate historiography – “history” is what happened, “historiography” the record of what happened – of the life and times of Jesus and of the founding of the church.
Consider the care he takes in establishing the timing of the ministry of John the Baptist in Luke 3(:1-2):
“Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, while Annas and Caiaphas were high priests, the word of God came to John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness.”
This use of the tenures of the Roman emperor and imperial officials as markers is one indication of his special interest in gentiles. There are others.
Luke is not concerned, as is Matthew in particular, with demonstrating that Jesus came as the fulfillment of Jewish prophecy. He refers less to the Old Testament and he favors Greek translation of Hebrew words. For “the place of a skull” he uses not Golgotha but Kranion. He avoids “Rabbi” as a title for Jesus, using instead a Greek word translated “Master.” He traces Jesus’ ancestry back not to Abraham, father of the Jewish race, but to Adam, father of the human race.
It’s certainly true that in ancient times the practice of attaching famous names to books written by others was common and accepted . . . but this is no argument against Lukan authorship of the third gospel. It is, rather, an argument in favor, for “Luke” was not a famous name. He was not an apostle who walked with the Lord nor had he experienced a Damascus Road encounter as did Paul.
He became noteworthy because of his authorship and only after his works began to circulate. The modern doubters have generated nothing substantive to cast serious doubt on the authenticity of his accounts.
Some say a minister sees men at their best, a lawyer at their worst and a doctor as they truly are. If that’s so, the many flaws and blemishes of the human race did nothing to undermine the physician’s love for his fellows.
Like his colleagues among the evangelists, he writes to proclaim the divinity of Jesus. Each takes a different approach, of course. Each has a symbol, used down through the centuries in stained-glass windows to represent him, that speaks to how the church has perceived him.
For John, it’s the eagle. John is the theologian and his gospel flies high above the earth, using the lofty thoughts of God to interpret what he sees. Among the synoptics, Mark has left us the most straightforward account. It is the nearest thing to a news story, reporting the Lord’s movements, actions and words. Mark’s symbol is the man, a realist.
Matthew’s symbol is the lion. He was a Jew writing to convince his compatriots that Jesus was the Messiah promised to Israel, the lion of the tribe of Judah the prophets had foretold.
The ox pictures Luke’s gospel. For the third evangelist, the emphasis falls on the Lord’s sacrifice, and the ox is the sacrificial animal. Luke shows us a Jesus who offers Himself as the oblation that takes away the sins of the world – of Jew and gentile, saint and sinner, man and woman, slave and free man.
But like Jesus, the ox was at the same time a towering figure, a symbol throughout the ancient world of power and wealth. It was important enough to show up in the Ten Commandments: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s ox . .”
In Proverbs (14:4), this beast is a necessity for gathering and threshing grain, the source of life: “Where no oxen are, the crib is clean; but much increase is by the strength of the ox.”
Some other features of Luke’s gospel are noteworthy. One often remarked is his treatment of women. In the first-century Jewish culture, their position was low. We find a Jewish man at prayer thanking God that he was not created “a gentile, a slave or a woman.”
Luke, in contrast, relates the narrative of Jesus’ birth from Mary’s viewpoint. He tells the stories of Elizabeth, Anna, the widow at Nain, the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet in the house of Simon the Pharisee. He draws the sharpest pictures of the sisters Mary and Martha and of Mary Magdalene.
We find in these pages the gospel of prayer. At the decisive moments in His life, we see Jesus praying – at His baptism (3:21), in preparation for His first confrontation with the Pharisees (5:16), before He chose the 12 (6:12), before He questioned His disciples on who they believed Him to be, before His first prediction of his own death (9:18), at the Transfiguration (9:29) and upon the cross (23:46).
Only in Luke do we read of Jesus’ prayer for Peter in his hour of testing (22:32). Only here do we find the parables of the Friend at Midnight (11:5-13) and the Unjust Judge (18:1-8).
Luke’s is the gospel of praise. The phrase “praising God” appears here more often than in the entire balance of the New Testament. We derive from this gospel the three great hymns the church has used from its beginnings even to this day, the “Magnificat,” (1:46-55), the “Benedictus” (1:68-79) and the “Nunc Dimittis” (2:29-32).
“There is a radiance in Luke’s gospel which is a lovely thing,” William Barclay writes, “as if the sheen of heaven had touched the things of earth.”
Another feature of both the gospel and of Acts is the author’s interest in recording official actions taken against Jesus and His followers despite the admission of those in charge that they found no guilt in them.
This tone comes through, of course, in Pontius Pilate’s absolution of Christ: “Then he said to them the third time, ‘Why, what evil has He done? I have found no reason for death in Him. I will therefore chastise Him and let Him go’” (Luke 23:22).
This episode echoes in Acts 3(:13) as Peter tells the Jews assembled in Solomon’s Porch: "The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified His Servant Jesus, whom you delivered up and denied in the presence of Pilate, when he was determined to let Him go.”
Paul tells the Jews at Antioch in chapter 13(:28): "And though they (the citizens of Jerusalem and their leaders) found no cause for death in Him, they asked Pilate that He should be put to death.”
There are remarkable similarities as well in the case of Christ’s followers. Paul tells the Jews of Rome in Acts 28 (17-18): "Men and brethren, though I have done nothing against our people or the customs of our fathers, yet I was delivered as a prisoner from Jerusalem into the hands of the Romans, who, when they had examined me, wanted to let me go, because there was no cause for putting me to death.”
We could multiply examples, but these should suffice. Luke appears to be using these cases to establish a record that can be set forth as a precedent: Both Jews and Romans have abused their authority in their dealings with Christ and His disciples. Take care that you do not follow in their errors.
But for the single most compelling takeaway from Luke’s writings we must return to the theme of Jesus Christ as Lord of all. He is no respecter of persons.
He welcomes into His kingdom those neighbors of Israel most despised by the Jews, the Samaritans (Luke 9:51-56). Only Luke offers the parable of the Good Samaritan (10:30-37). Jesus heals 10 lepers but only one gives thanks, and that one is a Samaritan (17:11-19).
In Luke, Jesus speaks approvingly of gentiles the “good Jews” treated with contempt. Jesus treats the widow of Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian as good examples (4:25-27). The Roman centurion (7:9) is a man of surpassing faith. Jesus says in chapter 13(:29): “"They will come from the east and the west, from the north and the south, and sit down in the kingdom of God.”
In Luke, the poor occupy a special place in Jesus’ heart. Mary brings as her offering for purification the offering of the poor (2:24). Speaking to the emissaries John the Baptist has sent, the Lord concludes His list of credentials with, “the poor have the gospel preached to them” (7:22).
Only Luke records the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, the poor beggar (16:19-31). In Matthew (5:3) beatitude falls on the “poor in spirit” but in Luke (6:20) simply on “the poor.” Luke has given us the “gospel of the underdog.”
And in this gospel, more so than in the others, Jesus is the friend of sinners and outcasts. Only Luke tells of Zacchaeus the penitent tax-collector (19:1-10), the penitent thief (23:43) and the prodigal son, along with his arrogant brother and loving father (15:11-32).
Each of the four evangelists quotes Isaiah 40 regarding the mission of John the Baptist: “Prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” Only Luke follows with the triumphant conclusion: “And all flesh shall see the salvation of God” (Isaiah 40:3-5).
Luke will place no limits on the love of our Lord. Perhaps Frederick William Faber had his work in mind when he wrote those words we have just sung:
There’s a wideness in God’s mercy,
Like the wideness of the sea;
There’s a kindness in his justice,
Which is more than liberty.
For the love of God is broader
Than the measures of man’s mind;
And the heart of the Eternal
Is most wonderfully kind.
Beloved, we hear much today about inclusivity. It is man’s inclusivity and not God’s. Men would have us assign equal worth to all values and ways of being, to reckon indiscriminately everyone’s ideas equally valid. Here is the way of death.
It leads to a place where Jesus is not “the way, the truth and the life” but one god among many. In God’s inclusivity, all may approach His throne of grace and find peace there . . . as long as they come on God’s terms, seeking Him and not their reflection in a mirror.
This is the message of St. Luke: Come, one and all, rich and poor, man and woman, slave and free, educated and unlearned, overlord and oppressed . . . come and bow down before the throne of King Jesus, and find peace. Amen.
Only Luke is With Me
Isaiah 52:7-10, Psalm 67, 2 Timothy 4:5-15, St. Luke 10:1-7
In times both ancient and modern, many have tried their hand at writing a life of Christ. None has succeeded more admirably than St. Luke. Some have gone so far as to call his gospel “the loveliest book in the world.”
Little wonder, for he was uncommonly qualified. He brought the eye of a scientist to bear on his subject matter and simultaneously trained on it the eye of an artist. One tradition holds that he was a skilled painter.
Even today a cathedral in Spain holds a portrait of Mary attributed to him.
So as we celebrate St. Luke we note first in what ways we are not commemorating him . . . not as St. Luke the Physician or St. Luke the Historian but as St. Luke the Evangelist, the author of the third euangellion, or evangel or, more familiarly, gospel.
What’s more, it’s fitting that we see his literary contribution to the Scriptures, as many scholars do, as parts 1 and 2 of the same work. In Luke he gives us an account of the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth, Messiah and God the Son.
In Acts he records the Holy Spirit’s work in disseminating the good news of what Christ has done and the life-changing, live-saving effect of the Lord’s resurrection and ascension.
The only gentile among the biblical authors, he has left us more than a quarter of the New Testament . . . more than the deposit of Paul’s letters, more than John’s gospel, letters and Revelation, more than any other New Testament writer.
How does a gentile intrude so emphatically on the Jewish cartel of writers of the Holy Writ? Quite naturally, when we consider that the New Testament describes the spilling out of the gospel upon the nations. No longer are God’s covenant people confined within an ethnic group. His saving power reaches into every nook and cranny of the creation.
We are typically unaware of how much the thought patterns encoded in our language affect our way of interpreting the world around us. Because you and I think in English we speak and write in a way different from that of a French speaker and far different from that of an Arabic speaker or a Swahili speaker.
Many of the conflicts in our contemporary world stem from differences in the ways various peoples interpret history. Others issue from variations in how our language shapes our perception. Some wise fellow has said that 90 percent of a culture is encoded in its language.
Luke, reared in the Syrian city of Antioch, thought in Greek, and so was better suited to framing the gospel for the gentile context than the native Hebrew speakers who wrote the balance of the New Testament.
Matthew produced the most Jewish of gospels. Mark’s is most closely associated with the preaching of Peter, the apostle to the Jews. And Luke, the church has held for centuries, wrote what Paul, apostle to the gentiles, preached.
Studying his approach in Acts, we see that Luke traveled with Paul for significant stretches. Luke sometimes uses the third-person to describe where Paul went and what he did and said based on his research and sometimes the first-person plural to deliver eyewitness testimony to what took place.
We know from the final chapter of Acts that Luke was with Paul in Rome toward the end of his life (28:16). Paul wrote to Timothy during this period, “Only Luke is with me” (2 Timothy 4:11).
If we view the dissemination of the message as spontaneous we miss the divine hand that guided it. Nothing in God’s world develops by chance, and least of all the sharing of the good news of the redemption of mankind.
Luke was God’s man for God’s plan in God’s time.
We know from Paul’s writings that Luke was a doctor (Colossians 4:14) and from Luke’s own writings that he was educated. He may have been a slave, as it was common for wealthy families to have one such trained as their physician.
Luke addresses his works to “most excellent Theophilus” – literally, “lover of God” – who is thought based on this form of address to be a high-ranking Roman official. He was presumably one we might call today a “seeker,” interested in learning more about the claims that this Jesus was in fact God.
Until the critical scholarship of recent times, Luke enjoyed an unchallenged reputation as a careful historian who left us an accurate historiography – “history” is what happened, “historiography” the record of what happened – of the life and times of Jesus and of the founding of the church.
Consider the care he takes in establishing the timing of the ministry of John the Baptist in Luke 3(:1-2):
“Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, while Annas and Caiaphas were high priests, the word of God came to John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness.”
This use of the tenures of the Roman emperor and imperial officials as markers is one indication of his special interest in gentiles. There are others.
Luke is not concerned, as is Matthew in particular, with demonstrating that Jesus came as the fulfillment of Jewish prophecy. He refers less to the Old Testament and he favors Greek translation of Hebrew words. For “the place of a skull” he uses not Golgotha but Kranion. He avoids “Rabbi” as a title for Jesus, using instead a Greek word translated “Master.” He traces Jesus’ ancestry back not to Abraham, father of the Jewish race, but to Adam, father of the human race.
It’s certainly true that in ancient times the practice of attaching famous names to books written by others was common and accepted . . . but this is no argument against Lukan authorship of the third gospel. It is, rather, an argument in favor, for “Luke” was not a famous name. He was not an apostle who walked with the Lord nor had he experienced a Damascus Road encounter as did Paul.
He became noteworthy because of his authorship and only after his works began to circulate. The modern doubters have generated nothing substantive to cast serious doubt on the authenticity of his accounts.
Some say a minister sees men at their best, a lawyer at their worst and a doctor as they truly are. If that’s so, the many flaws and blemishes of the human race did nothing to undermine the physician’s love for his fellows.
Like his colleagues among the evangelists, he writes to proclaim the divinity of Jesus. Each takes a different approach, of course. Each has a symbol, used down through the centuries in stained-glass windows to represent him, that speaks to how the church has perceived him.
For John, it’s the eagle. John is the theologian and his gospel flies high above the earth, using the lofty thoughts of God to interpret what he sees. Among the synoptics, Mark has left us the most straightforward account. It is the nearest thing to a news story, reporting the Lord’s movements, actions and words. Mark’s symbol is the man, a realist.
Matthew’s symbol is the lion. He was a Jew writing to convince his compatriots that Jesus was the Messiah promised to Israel, the lion of the tribe of Judah the prophets had foretold.
The ox pictures Luke’s gospel. For the third evangelist, the emphasis falls on the Lord’s sacrifice, and the ox is the sacrificial animal. Luke shows us a Jesus who offers Himself as the oblation that takes away the sins of the world – of Jew and gentile, saint and sinner, man and woman, slave and free man.
But like Jesus, the ox was at the same time a towering figure, a symbol throughout the ancient world of power and wealth. It was important enough to show up in the Ten Commandments: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s ox . .”
In Proverbs (14:4), this beast is a necessity for gathering and threshing grain, the source of life: “Where no oxen are, the crib is clean; but much increase is by the strength of the ox.”
Some other features of Luke’s gospel are noteworthy. One often remarked is his treatment of women. In the first-century Jewish culture, their position was low. We find a Jewish man at prayer thanking God that he was not created “a gentile, a slave or a woman.”
Luke, in contrast, relates the narrative of Jesus’ birth from Mary’s viewpoint. He tells the stories of Elizabeth, Anna, the widow at Nain, the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet in the house of Simon the Pharisee. He draws the sharpest pictures of the sisters Mary and Martha and of Mary Magdalene.
We find in these pages the gospel of prayer. At the decisive moments in His life, we see Jesus praying – at His baptism (3:21), in preparation for His first confrontation with the Pharisees (5:16), before He chose the 12 (6:12), before He questioned His disciples on who they believed Him to be, before His first prediction of his own death (9:18), at the Transfiguration (9:29) and upon the cross (23:46).
Only in Luke do we read of Jesus’ prayer for Peter in his hour of testing (22:32). Only here do we find the parables of the Friend at Midnight (11:5-13) and the Unjust Judge (18:1-8).
Luke’s is the gospel of praise. The phrase “praising God” appears here more often than in the entire balance of the New Testament. We derive from this gospel the three great hymns the church has used from its beginnings even to this day, the “Magnificat,” (1:46-55), the “Benedictus” (1:68-79) and the “Nunc Dimittis” (2:29-32).
“There is a radiance in Luke’s gospel which is a lovely thing,” William Barclay writes, “as if the sheen of heaven had touched the things of earth.”
Another feature of both the gospel and of Acts is the author’s interest in recording official actions taken against Jesus and His followers despite the admission of those in charge that they found no guilt in them.
This tone comes through, of course, in Pontius Pilate’s absolution of Christ: “Then he said to them the third time, ‘Why, what evil has He done? I have found no reason for death in Him. I will therefore chastise Him and let Him go’” (Luke 23:22).
This episode echoes in Acts 3(:13) as Peter tells the Jews assembled in Solomon’s Porch: "The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified His Servant Jesus, whom you delivered up and denied in the presence of Pilate, when he was determined to let Him go.”
Paul tells the Jews at Antioch in chapter 13(:28): "And though they (the citizens of Jerusalem and their leaders) found no cause for death in Him, they asked Pilate that He should be put to death.”
There are remarkable similarities as well in the case of Christ’s followers. Paul tells the Jews of Rome in Acts 28 (17-18): "Men and brethren, though I have done nothing against our people or the customs of our fathers, yet I was delivered as a prisoner from Jerusalem into the hands of the Romans, who, when they had examined me, wanted to let me go, because there was no cause for putting me to death.”
We could multiply examples, but these should suffice. Luke appears to be using these cases to establish a record that can be set forth as a precedent: Both Jews and Romans have abused their authority in their dealings with Christ and His disciples. Take care that you do not follow in their errors.
But for the single most compelling takeaway from Luke’s writings we must return to the theme of Jesus Christ as Lord of all. He is no respecter of persons.
He welcomes into His kingdom those neighbors of Israel most despised by the Jews, the Samaritans (Luke 9:51-56). Only Luke offers the parable of the Good Samaritan (10:30-37). Jesus heals 10 lepers but only one gives thanks, and that one is a Samaritan (17:11-19).
In Luke, Jesus speaks approvingly of gentiles the “good Jews” treated with contempt. Jesus treats the widow of Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian as good examples (4:25-27). The Roman centurion (7:9) is a man of surpassing faith. Jesus says in chapter 13(:29): “"They will come from the east and the west, from the north and the south, and sit down in the kingdom of God.”
In Luke, the poor occupy a special place in Jesus’ heart. Mary brings as her offering for purification the offering of the poor (2:24). Speaking to the emissaries John the Baptist has sent, the Lord concludes His list of credentials with, “the poor have the gospel preached to them” (7:22).
Only Luke records the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, the poor beggar (16:19-31). In Matthew (5:3) beatitude falls on the “poor in spirit” but in Luke (6:20) simply on “the poor.” Luke has given us the “gospel of the underdog.”
And in this gospel, more so than in the others, Jesus is the friend of sinners and outcasts. Only Luke tells of Zacchaeus the penitent tax-collector (19:1-10), the penitent thief (23:43) and the prodigal son, along with his arrogant brother and loving father (15:11-32).
Each of the four evangelists quotes Isaiah 40 regarding the mission of John the Baptist: “Prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” Only Luke follows with the triumphant conclusion: “And all flesh shall see the salvation of God” (Isaiah 40:3-5).
Luke will place no limits on the love of our Lord. Perhaps Frederick William Faber had his work in mind when he wrote those words we have just sung:
There’s a wideness in God’s mercy,
Like the wideness of the sea;
There’s a kindness in his justice,
Which is more than liberty.
For the love of God is broader
Than the measures of man’s mind;
And the heart of the Eternal
Is most wonderfully kind.
Beloved, we hear much today about inclusivity. It is man’s inclusivity and not God’s. Men would have us assign equal worth to all values and ways of being, to reckon indiscriminately everyone’s ideas equally valid. Here is the way of death.
It leads to a place where Jesus is not “the way, the truth and the life” but one god among many. In God’s inclusivity, all may approach His throne of grace and find peace there . . . as long as they come on God’s terms, seeking Him and not their reflection in a mirror.
This is the message of St. Luke: Come, one and all, rich and poor, man and woman, slave and free, educated and unlearned, overlord and oppressed . . . come and bow down before the throne of King Jesus, and find peace. Amen.