A Prayer for the Feast Day of St. Luke the Evangelist

Almighty God, who inspired your servant Luke the physician to set forth in the Gospel the love and healing power of your Son: Graciously continue in your Church this love and power to heal, to the praise and glory of your Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

About St. Luke

From here:

Almost all that we know about Luke comes from the New Testament. He was a physician (Col 4:14), a companion of Paul on some of his missionary journeys (Acts 16:10ff; 20:5ff; 27-28). Material found in his Gospel and not elsewhere includes much of the account of Our Lord’s birth and infancy and boyhood, some of the most moving parables, such as that of the Good Samaritan and that of the Prodigal Son, and three of the sayings of Christ on the Cross: “Father, forgive them,” “Thou shalt be with me in Paradise,” and “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.”

In Luke’s account of the Gospel, we find an emphasis on the human love of Christ, on His compassion for sinners and for suffering and unhappy persons, for outcasts such as the Samaritans, tax collectors, lepers, shepherds (not a respected profession), and for the poor. The role of women in Christ’s ministry is more emphasized in Luke than in the other Gospel writings.

In the book of Acts, we find the early Christian community poised from the start to carry out its commission, confident and aware of Divine guidance. We see how the early Christians at first preached only to Jews, then to Samaritans (a borderline case), then to outright Gentiles like Cornelius, and finally explicitly recognized that Gentiles and Jews are called on equal terms to the service and fellowship of Christ.

Read it all.

From the Morning Scriptures

As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. And he sent messengers on ahead, who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; but the people there did not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem. When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, “Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?” But Jesus turned and rebuked them. Then he and his disciples went to another village.

–Luke 9:51-56 (TNIV)

Yesterday I preached a sermon on persevering in prayer. I asserted that how and what we think about God will determine whether we pray to God at all, let alone persevere in prayer. I then offered a litany of biblical characterizations of God, spanning from Genesis to Revelation, that paints a compelling picture of God and which should make most of us want to persist in our prayers to him, even when we do not fully understand his purposes for us.

In today’s passage, we see another example of one of God’s essential characteristics–mercy. The Jews and Samaritans of Jesus’ day were like oil and water. They just didn’t mix. In today’s story Luke tells us implicitly what James and John were nicknamed “the sons of thunder.” The Samaritans ticked them off and they wanted to return tit-for-tat. How much like the world’s values!

It is also fascinating to wonder how these two thought they had the power to destroy the village in the first place. Did they think they could do so because they followed Jesus? If so, they were badly mistaken. Judgment there will be, but the cross is the symbol of God’s judgment, not fire, for those who believe.

But Jesus would have none of James’ and John’s nonsense. He scolded them and told them to move on. Notice carefully that he refrained from condemning the Samaritan village. He simply moved on. He does likewise with us because he loves us and true love never imposes itself on anyone.

We therefore have a choice to make. Will we invite Jesus to stay with us for awhile or will we refuse him a place to stay, thus forcing him to move on?

John Wesley: This Week’s Featured Anglican Writer and Theologian

I grew up in the Methodist Church and was a Methodist for the first 50 years of my life. I became an Anglican because I did not want to stray too far from the church that produced Wesley and he remains at the top of my list in terms of favorite theologians. The following about Wesley comes from Richard Schmidt.

Graduating from Oxford in 1724 and ordained the next year, Wesley served briefly as his father’s curate in Epworth, then returned to Oxford, where he lectured in Greek and joined a small club which included his brother Charles, called the “Holy Club” and soon tagged with the derisive nickname “methodists” because of their rigorous discipline of study, devotion, and good works.

In many ways Wesley was a catholic churchman. He received Holy Communion regularly and to the end of his life urged his followers to do the same. He valued order and tradition. But after Aldersgate, Wesley found himself increasingly at odds with the established church. Lacking a parish of his own, he depended on invitations to preach, and these became fewer and fewer. The leaders of the Church of England in the eighteenth century feared religious “enthusiasm.” Enthusiasts were viewed almost as insurrectionists, and John Wesley was, without question, enthusiastic.

Wesley had a passion to preach, so he preached his first outdoor sermon on April 2, 1739  “I submitted to be more vile and proclaimed in the highways the glad tidings of salvation” he wrote. Thus began a half century of preaching, three and four times a day, never repeating a sermon, in fields, highways, streets, and village squares, in churches when invited, wherever he could gather a crowd. And gather them he did, often in the thousands. Wesley preached his last open air sermon on October 7,1790. It is estimated he rode 250,000 miles throughout the British Isles, most of it on horseback, and preached upwards Of 40,000 sermons. He sometimes began preaching at 5:00 AM. In a time of massive social upheaval, with factories opening, agriculture declining, and city populations rising rapidly, vast numbers of people among the poor and laboring classes had never heard the Christian gospel and were entirely untouched by the ministry of the established church. These were the people Wesley was reaching.

What did John Wesley actually say when he preached? There was a new emphasis on the conversion of the heart and assurance, but Wesley’s thought was within the compass of British Protestant understandings. Wesley’s message is most easily grasped if thought of as a series of stages in the life of a Christian. The grace of God, God’s undeserved love and power in our lives active at each stage, is the key to his thought. Wesley gives names to the working of God’s grace at each point.

Begin with the fact of human sin. All people, because we are fallen creatures, rebel against God. This binds us and hinders us from receiving the bounty of God. Intentional acts of willfulness add to this burden, leading to guilt and a sense of being lost. Often we try to set things right ourselves through compulsive, legalistic, driven behaviors. God, meanwhile, does not sit idly by, but, even before we turn to him, moves in our souls by means of what Wesley calls “prevenient” or “preceding grace.” Though not a new idea, this is a distinctive emphasis in Wesley’s thought. Prevenient grace stirs our consciences, moves us to do good, and creates a hunger for God, eventually driving us to our knees. Finally there comes a moment of breakthrough. We know we have been set right with God through Jesus Christ; we become conscious of God’s “saving” or “justifying grace.” It has been a fact all along, but now we know it. We say, “Aha!” (or possibly, “I felt my heart strangely warmed”), and then begin to experience the love God. The emphasis on experience is another distinctive Wesley emphasis.

Wesley used several words for what comes next  sanctification, regeneration, holiness, and (a word that led to misunderstanding) perfection. By his “sanctifying grace” God not merely changes our status from guilty to acquitted, but changes our actual selves, does something not only for us, but in us. We begin to grow in Christlikeness. When Wesley calls this perfection he means a process of growth in love, not a realized state. Finally comes assurance, another distinctive Wesley note. Assured of union with God, we are filled with peace, joy, and love. Later in his life, Wesley modified his doctrine of assurance, allowing that in some cases, moments of doubt and fear may still intrude, but the dominant note for him, throughout his long life, was that Christians enjoy a “blessed assurance.” John Wesley was not only a great evangelist, but also great organizer.

The Christian life for him was not a matter between the individual believer and God, but a set of relationships. The Wesleyan movement prospered and spread around the world because Wesley organized small groups wherever he went and entrusted their leadership to lay persons who would remain behind.

Glorious Companions: Five Centuries of Anglican Spirituality 116-120

Below is an excerpt from one of Wesley’s sermons.

Men are generally lost in the hurry of life, in the business or pleasures of it, and seem to think that their regeneration, their new nature, will spring and grow up within them, with as little care and thought of their own as their bodies were conceived and have attained their full strength and stature; whereas, there is nothing more certain than that the Holy Spirit will not purify our nature, unless we carefully attend to his motions.

On Grieving the Holy Spirit

From the Methodist Hymnal

God of Love and God of Power

God of love and God of power,
Grant us in this burning hour
Grace to ask these gifts of thee,
Daring hearts and spirits free.
God of love and God of power,
Thou hast called us for this hour.

We are not the first to be
Banished by our fears from thee;
Give us courage, let us hear
Heaven’s trumpets ringing clear.
God of love and God of power,
Thou hast called us for this hour.

All our lives belong to thee,
Thou our final loyalty;
Slaves are we whene’er we share
That devotion anywhere.
God of love and God of power,
Thou hast called us for this hour.

God of love and God of power,
Make us worthy of this hour;
Offering lives if it’s thy will,
Keeping free our spirits still.
God of love and God of power,
Thou hast called us for this hour.

–Gerald H. Kennedy (578)

One of my favorite all-time hymns. Kennedy came out of North Broadway UMC in Columbus, OH and eventually became a bishop. Sadly, how different a place is that church now from how it was during Kennedy’s day.

Teresa of Avila on Humility

Oh, my sisters, how little one should think about resting, and how little one should care about honours ‘ and how far one ought to be from wishing to be esteemed in the very least if the Lord makes his special abode in the soul. For if the soul is much with him, as it is right it should be, it will very seldom think of itself; its whole thought will be concentrated upon finding ways to please him and upon showing him how it loves him. This, my daughters, is the aim of prayer: this is the purpose of the Spiritual Marriage, of which are born good works and good works alone…

Reflect carefully on this, for it is so important that I can hardly lay too much stress on it. Fix your eyes on the Crucified and nothing else will be of much importance to you. If his Majesty revealed his love to us by doing and suffering such amazing things, how can you expect to please him by words alone? Do you know when people really become spiritual? It is when they become the slaves of God and are branded with his sign, which is the sign of the Cross, in token that they have given him their freedom. Then he can sell them as slaves to the whole world, as he himself was sold, and if he does this he will be doing them no wrong but showing them no slight favour. Unless they resolve to do this, they need not expect to make great progress. For the foundation of this whole edifice, as I have said, is humility, and, if you have not true humility, the Lord will not wish it to reach any great height: in fact, it is for your own good that it should not; if it did, it would fall to the ground. Therefore, sisters, if you wish to lay good foundations, each of you must try to be the least of all, and the slave of God, and must seek a way and means to please and serve all your companions. If you do that, it will be of more value to you than to them and your foundation will be so firmly laid that your Castle will not fall.

–St. Teresa of Avila, Interior Castle

An Insult Flung in the Very Face of God

Hunger for the desperate poor, many of them small children, is an agonizing experience, an unsatisfied craving that will lead to illness and, for many, to death. For these hundreds of millions of our brothers and sisters, each of whom is Jesus in his most distressing disguise, hunger takes cruel and destructive forms. It is the shriveled limbs and swollen bellies of starving children. Each day on this beautiful planet of ours over forty thousand children, age five years and under, die of malnutrition-related illnesses. That adds up to over fourteen million lives a year. We need to come to terms with the fact that these children are not killed by a disease for which science has found no cure. No, these children are the victims of moral and political failure to see that every person has the basic necessities of life. The poverty-induced hunger rampant in our world today is, to use the words of Pope Paul VI, “an insult flung in the very face of God.”

— Mary Evelyn Jegen, SND, How You Can Be a Peacemaker