a sermon for St Luke’s Day
We were playing with our 3 year old granddaughter this week.
She loves the tiny figures of Paw Patrol and Peppa Pig.
They fit the curve of her palm – so they’re a pleasure for her to hold.
Characters is what she calls them,
and this week she arranged them in a large circle of the table,
talking to them and bringing them to life.
Those of you into Toy Story know how this works.
Toys come to life when children play with them.
It reminded me of a church I knew in Sheffield,
All Saints, Darnall, with a card carrying Communist, their Vicar,
who had arranged a string of cut outs around the church
representing all the saints – well a lot of them,
characters, brought to life in the play of the church.
Today is St Luke’s Day,
Luke, one of those highlighted by the church:
patron saint of artists, bachelors, bookbinders,
brewers ,butchers and doctors,
glass makers and glaziers,
goldsmiths and lacemakers,
Germany, Italy and Bosnia Herzegovina,
whose name means “light”
known for his writing, his two volumes,
his gospel and its continuation in Acts,
and known by Paul as the one who stayed with him to the end.
Paul wrote to Timothy while he was in prison,
after all his companions had left.
He wrote to Timothy:
“Only Luke is with me”.
Only Luke is with me.
And Luke is with us too, thanks to the Church
which has treasured his writings.
Things have stayed with us
that only Luke gives us.
Like the way we tell the time,
through the seasons.
Without Luke Advent would be very different.
Without Luke,
we would lose Mary, Elizabeth, Zechariah,
and much of the story
that gives Advent its character.
It’s Mary, Elizabeth and Zechariah
who tell the time of waiting.
It’s Mary’s voice Luke raises
as she praises God
for his work of scattering the proud
and toppling the mighty,
raising the humble
and filling the hungry
with good things.
It’s ordinary working people,
shepherds, from the fields,
who give us the Christmas story,
becoming the first to Jesus’ side.
It’s two old people,
Simeon and Anna,
who have waited their whole lives
for the consolation of their people.
They give us the drama of Candlemas.
This is quite the roll call.
Luke has hardly begun writing
and he has already given us
handfuls of characters:
young girls, working men, old people,
all of them telling the gospel,
all of them populating our imagination.
Then we have the characters Jesus meets on the way.
The Good Samaritan,
who, thanks to Luke,
we have turned from despised foreigner
to the byword for true neighbourliness.
There’s little Zacchaeus up his tree,
the prodigal son, lost and found,
the woman who weeps at Jesus’s feet
– all of them challenging our ideas
about sin, goodness, belonging and grace.
And it’s Luke who remembers the criminal
who asks Jesus to remember him,
who is promised paradise,
and is remembered by Luke,
and as a result, by the Church
and has become the hope of other prisoners.
Then there are the two on the road to Emmaus,
the eunuch from Ethiopia,
the woman who was a seller of purple,
who opened her home,
so establishing the first church in Europe,
and Paul’s jailer,
and Paul himself,
and Paul himself.
Luke gives us so much about Paul,
who writing to Timothy
in the end said,
“Only Luke is with me”.
And Luke leaves us with Paul,
such a controversial figure
who sits at the intersection
of several arguments
the church is still having,
about women and authority,
about human sexuality,
about slavery,
so controversial
that there are many
who would wish him cancelled.
But Luke leaves him with us,
with all those complications.
And that is the point, isn’t it?
Luke introduces a vast array of characters,
None of them with easy lives,
all complicated.
And he leaves them in our hands,
for them to become part of our circle,
for us to become part of theirs.
His writing does the work of God,
who the Psalmist sees as
gathering the outcasts of Israel,
those overlooked, shamed
and ashamed,
healing the brokenhearted,
binding up their wounds,
lifting the poor
and scattering the proud.
His writing is Isaiah’s vision coming true:
weak hands strengthened,
feeble knees made firm,
blind eyes opened<
deaf ears unstopped,
the lame leaping.
These are the kinds of people Luke keeps bringing before us:
People who are vulnerable, diminished, excluded or restored.
It’s a crowded world
which begins to look like the world God promises to make new.
This is who Luke has gathered.
This is who God gathers.
This is our circle and communion.
God’s grace keeps drawing people together,
including ourselves.
People not at all like us,
People’re used to overlooking.
And Paul, the zealot,
who argued, struggled, offended, persuaded
and left us with so many questions.
Luke leaves him with us,
the one he journeyed alongside,
and stayed with, till the end,
warts and all,
another character
in the circle of grace,
gathered and strengthened
by the work of God.
And whose place at the table
we need to safeguard,
including people as complicated as Paul,
and people as vulnerable
as those Luke brings before us.
The circle is ours to care for.
The characters Luke puts into our hands
are ours to play with
in our imaginations,
to widen our love, to bring us hope
that God’s kingdom is now down to earth,
wrapped in lives ordinary as ours.
