St Luke’s Day
Sunday 18th October 2020
Although we have been able to resume public worship not everyone is able to attend so the service was recorded and made available online as well as being played in church for those who chose to attend. That can be found here.
St Luke’s Day
Isaiah 35.3-6
Luke 10.1-9
Revd Preb Maureen Hobbs
“Thoughts on St Luke’s Day”
Once upon a time we were told “an apple a day, keeps the doctor away!”
Well this is the time of year when there are plenty of apples about, but in today’s service we are going to consider Luke, the so-called “Beloved Physician” who was so important in the early church that he got not one book into the Bible as we know it, but two! We have the Gospel according to St Luke, and we also have the Acts of the Apostles – which is a bit like reading Boswell’s account of the travels of Samuel Johnson. Luke wrote about the travels of the apostle Paul for whom he seems to have acted as a travelling companion, scribe, personal physician and friend.
This year especially, we have often been grateful for those who work in the Health Service – so today I’d like us to think of and be thankful for not only St Luke, but all the beloved physicians, nurses, physio (and other ) therapists, ward assistants and cleaners who keep our National Health Service running and to whom we immediately turn when we are poorly or scared for our health – physical or mental …
… Luke came from Antioch – the place where Christians were first called by that name. Not only was he a doctor, but tradition also has it that he was an artist, a painter as well as a man of letters, and that he painted or (wrote) as we should properly say an icon of Mary, the Mother of Jesus. So not surprising that Luke is also the patron of Christian art. But he is a busy saint! He is also the patron saint of bachelors, bookbinders, brewers, butchers, glassworkers, goldsmiths, lacemakers, notaries, painters, physicians, sculptors, stained glass workers and surgeons! His name, Luke, means “bringer of light”, and his symbols which you will find in many churches and in copies of the gospels, is a winged ox or calf.
Perhaps for this reason, foods eaten today to honour St Luke would include some beef dish, and today is also known (or so I am told!) as Sour Cakes Day in Scotland, because baked cakes were eaten with sour cream in Rutherglen…
… Around this date we can often have some fine settled weather – and when this occurs it is called “St Luke’s Little Summer” – giving us a few golden days (or so we hope) before the cold of winter sets in.
Most of what we actually know about Luke comes from his writings in the New Testament. Like St Paul, Luke was a second-generation Christian. He never knew Jesus when he was alive – but he would have had plenty of opportunity to talk with those who had, and as he says in the introduction to his book, he deliberately sought them out. Unlike other contributors to the New Testament, he was not a Jew. He was a lay Christian, well-versed in Judaism, but an outsider, a gentile, writing for other gentiles. Gentiles like us!
He is self-evidently well-educated for his day; a professional man; widely travelled, with an international perspective. Luke ties the birth and baptism of Jesus to the dates of the Roman emperors and to world events – so timings were important to him, and he firmly believes that these events about which he writes are significant not only for the Jewish world, but for everyone – and that they deserve to thrive even within the Roman empire.
Luke is a people person – more interested in the human stories than grand theological theories and arguments. He is concerned with the outcasts; the sinners, the powerless, the sick, women and children. In his version of the Nativity, you won’t read about powerful visitors from the East, the Magi. But you will read about humble shepherds, who were generally despised and forbidden from polite society – probably because they were too smelly!
He is not so interested in Joseph the protector of his family – but you will read a lot about Mary, a vulnerable young woman. And his stories often feature both grace and forgiveness. A penitent prostitute anoints Jesus’ head; Zachaeus the tax-collector is both noticed by Jesus and brought to new life; the dying thief on the cross is forgiven and is promised a place in paradise.
Luke’s Gospel abounds with interesting little details that other writers overlook – he paints pictures with words and thanks to him, we have some of our best- loved parables; the good Samaritan, the prodigal son; the lost sheep.
Understandably, given his profession, Luke gives us plenty of detail about the healing stories around Jesus that portray his compassion, his tenderness, and Luke gives particular emphasis to the work of the Spirit and to prayer. Luke collected more about Jesus’ practice and teaching on prayer than is to be found in any other Gospel. He records seven instances of Jesus at prayer and gives us some of the best accounts of the power of prayer in the book of Acts as well as in the Gospel. …
Only in Luke do we learn of the account of when the 12 year old Jesus went missing and turned up eventually disputing with the Scribes in the Temple. It is for this sort of reason that it is thought Luke had particular access to Mary and her account of events around the Birth and upbringing of her first-born son. And the way in which Luke lays out the Nativity, the Resurrection, Pentecost and Ascension, gives us the structure for the church year which we have come to know and love so much, so that we too can move through the birth, boyhood, ministry, death, resurrection, sending of the Spirit and ascension of Jesus.
At times in the book of Acts, Luke switches from third to first person – giving us a sense of being with an eyewitness of Paul and his activities. We can catch the strong affection and respect that Luke has for his sometimes rather prickly patient! Luke’s writings demonstrate that Christianity had already permeated the whole of the known world of his time. When Paul arrives in Rome, the citadel of World Power, Luke lays down his pen and we know little of what happened next.
Tradition has it that Luke wrote his Gospel in Greece and died in Boeotia at the age of 84. But Luke has shown that the fledgling Christian church has flourished through the support of Rome. What remains for us to do is to read his account, relish it and rejoice that he left us such a compelling narrative.