Sermon for the Feast of St. Luke 10/24/2010, offered by Nathan Ferrell for Trinity Episcopal Shared Ministry
Texts: 2 Timothy 4:5-11; Psalm 147:1-12; Luke 4:14-21
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.”
Today, my friends, we are gathered together to remember our beloved ancestor in the faith, blessed and holy Luke. We do not know much about him, of course. Tradition tells us that he was a companion of St. Paul in his travels. It seems clear that he was a well-educated Greek, and thus he became one who wrote down what he heard and saw. Luke has left us with two well-written books: his eponymous Gospel and its sequel, the Acts of the Apostles.
Both of these books contain Luke’s unique perspective on the ministry of Christ in the world. Our reading today from Luke’s Gospel was given to us as Jesus’ mission statement. It is Luke’s clear and concise statement for Jesus’ mission in the world.
If we wished to summarize this mission, we could say that the work of Jesus, the work that God had sent him into the world to do, was to preach, to teach and to heal.
His task was to preach: to proclaim to all who would listen the good news of a different and better way to live in connection with God.
His purpose was to teach: to reveal the errors of typical human ways of thinking and to show and explain the way that we can obtain this new and better life.
But the work of Christ was also to heal: to make God’s desire for wholeness and completeness a visible reality among us human beings.
These three – preaching, teaching and healing – are the essential components of Christ’s ministry. And do you know what that means for us? That means that these are also the essential components of our work as well.
As the church, our entire reason for existence is simply to carry on the work that Jesus began! Let this then be our lens by which we view and evaluate all that we do in the church. In every decision, and every activity, you can ask yourself these questions:
- Does this project help to proclaim the possibility that all people can find new life in Christ?
- Does this activity help to teach people how to practically live the abundant and full life that God desires for us?
- Does this meeting provide a way for people to experience God’s healing touch within their lives?
If you can answer yes to any of these, then you can feel confident that this project is indeed faithful to Jesus, and inspired by the Spirit.
But if you evaluate any activity within the church and you find that you cannot answer in the affirmative to any of these questions, then we shouldn’t be doing it.
It may be a nice activity, but it belongs somewhere else. As the church, we have too much to do to carry on this bold mission of Jesus in our world today. We have too much to do, and we cannot afford to be distracted in this way.
In particular, we have much to do to carry forward the healing ministry of Christ, this work which we remember today in honor of St. Luke the Physician. This is not something with which most of us here are very familiar. When we consider the healing work of Jesus, many of us today can find it difficult to understand this work.
How does God heal people? And what kind of healing are we talking about after all? Most of us have seen really bad healing preachers on TV, right?! Those who use manipulation to achieve fantastic displays. This helps them to raise lots of money and buy big houses in southern California!
Well, forget all about those false images. What we are talking about is true healing from God, the real work of healing in many different ways, and on many different levels. It is not something to be predicted, not something we can control.
Tony Campolo tells a story of a healing that God accomplished through his willing hands.
Tony is a Baptist from Philadelphia, a long-time Professor of Sociology at Eastern University. He is not one who regularly experiences works of healing, but, when he is invited to preach, Tony often asks whether there are any who would like to receive the laying on of hands, like we will do here shortly.
Once, when Tony was preaching at a church out in Oregon, he did exactly this. He spent nearly an hour talking with each person and praying for them. Nothing obvious happened at that time, but four days later Tony received a phone call. The woman on the other end said, “Tony, on Sunday you prayed for my husband. He had cancer.”
When he heard the word “had”, Tony perked up. “
Had cancer?” he asked. “Well,” she said, “he’s dead now.”
Oh great, thought Tony. She’s probably calling to rip me, to complain about my total lack of healing ability! But she went on and said, “You don’t understand. When my husband and I walked into that church on Sunday, he was angry with God. He had cancer and he knew he was going to be dead soon, and he hated God for letting it happen. He wanted to see his grandchildren grow up more than anything. At night, he would lie in bed and curse God. It was horrible. And the angrier he got toward God, the meaner he was to everyone around him. It was unbearable to be in the same room with him. His nastiness just kept getting worse and worse. But then you laid hands on him on Sunday morning and you prayed for him. When he walked out of church, I knew there was something different. I could feel it. He was a different person. The last four days of our lives have been the best four days we’ve ever had together. We talked and laughed. We even sang hymns with each other. It was a good, good time.”
She paused, then added something very profound. She said, “Tony, my husband wasn’t cured, but he was healed.” (Let Me Tell You a Story, p. 34-36)
My sisters and brothers, let us be assured that God desires and intends for us to be healed. After all, this is the ministry of Christ, which Luke has recorded for us with suck skill. This healing work is still made effective today by the Holy Spirit, but only when we ask and when we put ourselves in a position to receive this healing grace.
We can’t control it; we can’t predict it, but this healing grace is at work today, and we all have access to it today because of Jesus our Savior. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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