Sermon: Luke the Beloved - and Faithful - Physician

 

Sermon. St Michael and All Angels, Little Ilford. 18.10.20

Feast of St Luke, Apostle and Evangelist

 

Luke 10.1-9

 

If, as in the parable, so in life, some people are given one talent, some two, and some five talents, then surely St Luke, whom we celebrate today, is a five talent man. He was talented. Even hard-bitten secular historians might agree with this, with one proviso – providing, that is, that it is allowed that the writer of the Gospel of Luke and the Book of the Acts of the Apostles was Luke, or providing we allow ourselves to call him “Luke” (whatever his name).

 

Whoever wrote the two-volume work Luke-Acts was a talented person. The Greek of this work is fluent, fluid and eloquent. You might say: Well, of course it is; this is the Bible we are talking about; only the best is good enough. But if you thought that, you’d be wrong. The Greek of the New Testament varies greatly. Mark’s Greek, for example, is rough to the point of crude. Not so Luke, elegant, eloquent Luke.

 

What’s more, those hard-bitten secular historians will also agree that Luke – or “Luke” is - by New Testament writers’ standards, prolific. Who are, in terms of quantity, the great authors of the New Testament? There is no contest: it is Paul and it is Luke; each wrote over a quarter of the New Testament. Of no one else can that be said.

 

And what’s more still, those same historians will agree that Luke is one who sets out to write a detailed account, to attend to detail. How he ranks as a historian by modern standards is much disputed. But by ancient standards, he is surely a worthy contender. This is clearly his intention. I give you his first sentence (brace yourselves) [Luke 1.1-4]:

 

Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed. Full stop!

 

Some associate this will to attend to detail and get it right the disposition of the doctor, the medic. And indeed, he is detailed about the healings he records, and some of his terminology seems to come from medical expertise.[1] This has long been one of the reasons to link him to “Luke, the beloved physician” who sends greetings in the Letter to the Colossians [4.14 Loukas ho iatros ho agapetos].

 

Here, though, we are beginning to stray from secular history into the territory of tradition. Nothing wrong with that, I think we are likely to think. Well, by ancient tradition, Luke was not only a skilled physician, but he was also a gifted… artist. By tradition, Luke was the first iconographer, the first painter, or rather (to use the preferred term) the first writer of icons. The originals of some ancient icons of Mary and the child Jesus are – believe it or not – attributed to Luke. Why the connection?

 

Well, attention to detail again, sure. Every brush stroke with exquisite care. But it is also surely plausible to say that Luke knew, or at least at some point met, Mary. Think about it. It is through Luke, and Luke alone, that we have

·        the story of the birth of Jesus from Mary’s perspective;

·        the Annunciation,

·        the Visitation;

·        the Magnificat;

·        the Circumcision;

·        the Presentation;

·        the child Jesus’s visit to the Temple;

·        and not least the refrain: “but Mary pondered all these things in her heart”

All of this we owe to no one other than Luke.

 

By tradition, Luke was one of the seventy apostles sent out by Jesus, which is why we have today’s gospel. One of the Seventy, note, not one of the Twelve. But this is difficult (I don’t say impossible), if Luke is also held to be a gentile. There’s another tradition which (I’ll be honest) rather appeals to me, both rationally and emotionally. It is that Luke was the one accompanying Cleopas on the road to Emmaus (too humble to name himself). This is why he is able to tell that particular Easter story (which I know many of us love) so vividly.

 

·        Luke, writer (writer at length and in depth);

·        Luke, historian (pioneer Church historian);

·        Luke, physician;

·        Luke, artist.

If you’re anything like me, if you are not careful, you will have to work at not disliking Luke at this point. Too talented for his own good, we might find ourselves thinking. The perfect perfectionist! Certainly, of no earthly use to me. Not someone I can relate to.

 

Well, take heart, brothers and sisters! It is not that simple. It can be said that, even if Luke intended to be a meticulous and perfectly accurate historian, he may not always manage it. Some examples.

 

·        Most historians say that Luke got Christmas wrong! He tells us that the Emperor Augustus ordered a census, which was the first while Quirinius was governor of Syria, which meant that all went to their ancestral towns for reasons unspecified [2.1-3]. It’s very hard to bring all this together historically, and Quirinius was not governor, anyway (he was legate).

·        Luke tells us that Mary and Joseph went to present Jesus to the Lord in the Temple, as if that were required by the law of Moses. But there’s no reference to the presentation of new-borns in the Temple (or Tabernacle) in the Torah of Moses.

·        Again, in Luke’s account of the lowering of the paralysed man through the roof for healing [5.18-26], Luke has his friends pulling away tiles from a full-blown roof - as we would understand a roof. But that’s unlikely. It would be a major operation, and it’s also not what roofs were in 1^st century Palestine. Roofs were loose affairs, fabric, or slats held together by mud.

 

So, Luke, ever diligent, never perfect. Perhaps we can relate after all.

 

If we had a chance to ask Luke what was good about him, what do you think he would say? We don’t know. I know we don’t know. I am not suggesting we know. But answer this as an imaginative exercise. If Luke were asked what was good about him, what would he say?

 

I have a suggestion, which works, if (even if just for now) we take the biblical record as it is, in the round. You’ve heard it, today. In the account of Paul’s sustained sufferings in 2 Timothy, the writer says: “Only Luke is with me” [Loukas estin monos met’emou 4.11]. Only Luke has been faithful, faithful in the time of trial. Luke got stuck in, and stayed stuck in, and stuck it out.

 

To be blunt, I cannot tell you if that was the historical situation. I can tell you, that if we think of the biblical hero, Luke, as the Bible presents him, this was what was most obviously good and what was best about Luke.

 

It’s also the case that this is something we can take on, we can do. Whether we consider ourselves to be a five-talented, a two-talented, or a one-talented person (and by the way we often underestimate ourselves on precisely that point), wherever we stand in whatever order of success or acclaim, we can be faithful.

·        I cannot tell you if our plans for our own church community will work out. We can be faithful.

·        I cannot tell you what hardships are ahead in this country. We can be faithful.

·        I cannot tell you if civilisation can survive all the crises it is unquestionably facing. We can be faithful.  

 

Think of your name. Think of your name now. Think of your name when I say “Name” now.

·        Only [Name] is with me.

·        [Name] is with me.

·        [Name] is faithful.

·        With [Name] with me, I can bear all that I have to bear.

Welcome to your vocation of faithfulness.

Amen.     

---

[1] https://www.ministrymagazine.org/archive/1977/05/medical-terminology-in-luke                                

Sermon. "I Believe in God!" How?

 

Sermon, St Michael and All Angels, Little Ilford, 30 August 2020

Trinity 12 (Year A)

 

Matthew 16.21-28: Get behind me, Satan!

 

Last week Simon Son of Jonah named Jesus “the Messiah, the Christ”,and Jesus named Simon “Peter”. And we reflected on the meaning of names.I knew then that this week we would hear how Jesus gives Peter yet another label or name. It’s not a name that stuck. It is not hard to see why.

The name is “Satan”.

We know the story well, I suspect: Jesus says that he will suffer and be killed; Peter objects; Jesus says “Get behind me, Satan; this is all Gd’s will.” How it is Gd’s will is a big question, but all the gospels are clear that somehow Jesus’ suffering and being-killed is Gd’s will.

“Get behind me, Satan.”

Jesus’ language strikes us as so extreme that it may well be worth reflecting on what might be going on. It’s not straightforward. I’ll make three points, in growing order of importance.

 

We Christians think of Satan as being another title or name for the devil. There is, after all, a verse in Revelation [20.2] which speaks of the dragon, who is the serpent, who is the devil, who is Satan. All one.

But in fact they may have been thought of as different characters at one point.

Think of the Book of Job. Job begins with a character called ha-shatan, the satan, in dialogue. What may surprise you is that he is dialogue with Gd, and the dialogue is respectful. The satan does not speak from the bowels of hell; he seems to be part of the heavenly court. He is something like a prosecuting lawyer, taking a sceptical view on the virtues of Job. The satan in Job is a title, not a name, and just means “accuser”. We can say he is negative, cynical and hyper-critical. We can say he is bad news. But it’s much harder to say he is, in Job, the embodiment of all evil. It is just possible that Jesus’ use of the term “Satan” here means something like that.   

 

You may not be convinced by that. To be honest, neither am I. I just wanted to give you the full picture. You may say that for anyone to call anyone “Satan” must be about the harshest thing that can be said. But! But, another point: we have to understand how people argued in the ancient world. It was in fact quite rhetorically acceptable to say that your opponent was possessed by the devil and such like, when you wanted to disagree with them. It did not sting in the way it would for us. It was, frankly, quite normal. We do have a flavour of this in the New Testament. Remember in John (7.2) when Jesus says people will attack him, they respond: “You have a demon! No one is trying to kill you”. There - and I think we do sense this - “you have a demon” just means “you’re being very foolish”.   

 

Again, you may not be wholly convinced. But! Another point: we can take comfort in this. Calling  Peter “Satan” did not stick and was never intended to stick. Even as Jesus calls Peter “Satan”, he gives him a way out:

 

“Get behind me”.

 

We may think this means ”disappear”, but surely it is more likely to mean “get behind me” in the sense of “change your way of thinking and get in line; follow me again; be a true follower of mine, and stick close. Yes, your understanding of the ways of Gd has been faulty, and I have called you out in colourful language, but I still want you close by me”. So Jesus is as far from giving up on Peter – sending him away, as if he were Satan – as can be.

 

“Get behind me, Satan!”

 

We are, it is true to say, not a church that speaks a lot about Satan. I will tell you bluntly that I think that is a good thing. We are right not to.

 

True story. Back in the day, I studied Theology in Germany for a semester. I had some famous lecturers. And not only were they scholars, they were also typically ministers. One – Jurgen Moltmann, if you know your German theologians – said that any parish interviewing a minister is certain to ask them, among all their questions: “Do you believe in the devil?”. He said he always gave the same reply: “No, I believe in Gd”. It is not too hard to understand his point: it is important to keep your attention focused in the right place, on Gd. Whatever we may think about the reality and dangers of the devil/Satan, the answer lies in Gd. So keep your focus on Gd.

 

“I believe in Gd”.

 

 

We say it so often. We say it repetitively, within this very service. We may – will – find that we say it rote, without thinking about it, at least from time to time. We need not beat ourselves up for this. It is bound to happen whenever with have rituals and set forms. But it is actually a powerful thing to say. “I believe in Gd”.

 

We’ll misunderstand it, if we think it means the same as “I have worked out - come to the conclusion – discovered the fact - that Gd exists”. It isn’t about an objective fact out there. I will go so far as to say it doesn’t describe a state of affairs at all. Because it is so much closer to: “I place my trust in Gd”.

 

“I believe, trust in Gd.”

 

Some say that the English word “belief” is related to the word “beloved”. So it might almost be like saying: “I declare my love for Gd”. And they say much the same about the Latin word for belief. You will actually know the Latin for “I believe”, because it’s “credo”, which gives us our word “creed”. And there is the school of thought that says “credo” ultimately comes from “cor” and “do”. Cor – heart; do – I give. “I give my heart to.” Something similar can be said about the Greek and the Hebrew: to believe in Gd is to trust in Gd, and to act accordingly.

 

So here is an invitation to take the creed seriously, perhaps more seriously than we have done, but/and/but not as a set of propositions, a set of facts we think we have stumbled upon. We can think of the threefold pattern of the creed as saying:

“We place our trust in the Father, whose story is this…”;

“We place our trust in the Son, whose story is this…”;

“We place our trust in the Holy Spirit, whose story is this…”.

 

I am not suggesting this is easy. What it means to trust in Gd – what we actually do – is a big question. And, let’s be honest, whether we are right to trust Gd is going to be a live question for all of us at times. Believers no less than unbelievers can see the world as godforsaken, can really struggle to believe Gd is in charge of it all.

 

But what I am really saying is, all of that notwithstanding, we can come to the creed, week by week, and indeed in just a moment, seeing it each time as an invitation to consciously place our trust in Gd, in whatever ways are right for us, and, if we can hear it, even a chance to celebrate our trust in Gd. I say to myself as well as to you: consider yourself invited.

 

We believe in Gd.   

Sermon: Knowing Gd (At The) Well

Sermon. St Michael and All Angels. 15 March 2020.  

Lent 3

John 4.5-42 

Jesus meets the Samaritan woman by the well. Much could be said – much no doubt is being said at precisely this moment up and down the country– about what the Jews of Jesus’ day thought of non-Jews in general and Samaritans in particular. Much could be said – and not doubt is being said at precisely this moment – about the attitude of men in Jesus’ day towards women. And at least as much can be said as to whether the woman here, with her history of husbands, was a great sinner, or more likely to have had a huge dose of bad luck, or of abuse. These are all good themes. For another time.  

What I want to bring today is that the well is a character in its own right. The Holy Land is desert country, with a thin strip of fertile ground. Water is always precious (we too are a little more aware of this than normal). Wells are always extra precious. So vital – literally life-giving – is water, and so rare are wells, that wells might be seen as both the banks and the market-places of the rural Holy Land of Jesus’ day. Everyone in the area would know where Jacob’s well was.  By the way, we still do.  

But more than that, everyone would know the stories attached to wells, sometimes of war, sometimes of love. It was at a well that Abraham’s servant met Rebecca, who gave him water, and who, through that encounter, goes on to become the wife of Isaac.  So wells are not just water-delivery devices, not just as important as banks and as oft-used as market-places, they are also places were intimacy is possible. Where one person can speak to another, over a drink of water. Indeed, where courtship might take place.  

So this is indeed a set-up. I mean the story is set up for us to expect an intimate encounter. Here it is not courtship, and no wedding follows. But I want to suggest that, though not sexual, it is no less intimate than courtship. I say this because this is clearly how the woman experienced it. “He told me everything I had ever done.” Jesus saw her, saw her life. And note: saw her without any shaming. Neither part speaks of shame. The woman’s shame is something we may read into the story. She was fully seen as she truly was. She was fully known. To be fully known is intimacy. This intimacy is promised for us, too.

   

* 

Jesus also says: “We [Jews] worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.” Here too the theme is intimacy. This is, I admit, a little harder to explain. I know this may sound like it’s just an expression of superiority or even exclusiveness, but it need not be anything of the sort.  

People standing in the Jewish tradition truly know Gd, Jesus says. And to know Gd in the Bible does not mean to understand Gd. It does not mean to have the right thoughts about Gd, the right definition and terms. It means to be acquainted with Gd. To be with Gd. And, even, yes, surely, to have intimacy with Gd. Some of you will remember from the older translations that “to know” in the Bible can sometimes even mean “to have sexual relations with”. So if Jewish people know Gd, it means they have all they need for all good proper life-giving intimacy with Gd. Indeed, surely we need to speak of the miracle of intimacy with Gd. It is a gift Gd gives.  

There still seems to be something harsh about Jesus’ words here. Jews have intimacy with Gd as Gd wills it; Samaritans do not. Why does Jesus say this?  

Different answers are possible. Let us look at one thing: what separated the Jews and the Samaritans when it comes to revelation. We know this. Again, we know this because it applies to this day. Samaritans believed and believe that revelation is found only in the five books of Moses, from Genesis to Deuteronomy, which I have often called “Torah”. Jews believed and believe that revelation is also found – if differently found - in the writings of the Prophets and the Psalms and other later texts.  

That, by the way, is the reason the Samaritans insist that the Holy Mountain is Mount Gerizim and not Mount Zion in Jerusalem. Gerizim is mentioned in Torah; Jerusalem isn’t.  

There is more: in Jesus’ day it may well not have been settled quite which books made up the third section of the Jewish Bible, the Writings.  

So simply put: Jews believed that revelation goes on. It is not closed. It is not all settled. We both know Gd and we go on getting to know Gd.  

We both know Gd, and we go on getting to know Gd. This is the promise that we Christians share with Jews. Of course, John’s Gospel insists strongly that the new story of our going on to get to know Gd is intimately bound up with Jesus himself. For us, this story itself comes out of the middle of revelation. But the core point is one, for Jews and Christians alike: we both know Gd and we go on getting to know Gd.  

Brothers and sisters, we are going to need to hold on to this truth.  

For a matter of months (at least) our worship here will be different (at least). I can tell you: I find it weird. It is not a minor adjustment, being forbidden to touch. And we know that ahead we may not be able to gather. It is a near-certainty that we will not be able to take the sacrament to some people in their homes, at least not without a great rigmarole. Principal pastoral care will probably be by phone. And these are but the direct consequences of the virus Covid19. Dare we even name the indirect consequences? The people with other medical needs which cannot be met. The companies which will collapse. The things we will have to do without.  

We will be called upon to pray for our nation facing a clear and physical crisis, and it will be harder to pray together as we should wish. This is painful.  

So, here, together, today, let us take stock.  

Even now, Gd goes on being Gd.  

The promise of intimacy with Gd is unchanged.  

Today and soon, we may well feel that we have to come to know Gd away from our usual practices and comforts.  

We may feel we are starting from scratch.  

But Gd knows us fully and sees our lives in full.  

And our salvation is from the Jews.  

This means: our salvation is from those who first believed that the revelation, the intimacy, goes on.  

We are called, as yesterday so today, as today so tomorrow,  

both to know Gd and to go on getting to know Gd.  

Amen.