Online Sermons
Feast of St. Luke (transfered): October 11, Barbara Schlachter
Welcome to our website. You are here: The Word --> Online SermonsHappy St. Luke’s Day. It is not very often that this day falls on a Sunday. And when it does, it is supposed to be transferred to the next day. In other words, we are never to hear these lessons on a Sunday. Shhh…Don’t tell!
St. Luke is remembered as the beloved author of the Gospel of Luke, which is where the Gospel reading is from. Luke chose the passage from Isaiah that Jesus read in the synagogue in his home town as the cornerstone of his Gospel. This is the Good News, the Gospel, that Jesus was sent to proclaim.
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, which is the Jubilee year.
And in Jesus Luke saw that these words, written much earlier in Israel’s history, were fulfilled.
Jesus was sent to do this wonderful healing work and in the hearing of these beloved ancient words, we are told, the healing was accomplished. Jesus said, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” of it!
How amazing! Luke gives us such a sense of Jesus’ compassion for all who suffer, of his message of hope for all in their particular area of need. His stories of healing in the Gospel have led to the tradition that Luke must have been a physician, a doctor who was called to heal people in their illnesses, and that in Jesus he saw the ultimate healer, or as one prayer about Luke puts it, he saw Jesus as the Great Medicine of Life.
It is Luke we thank for the infancy story we hear on Christmas Eve, for the realization that early family life is one of the most important parts of all people’s lives and that Jesus had a story of having been a beloved cared for child in spite of poverty and displacement.
It is Luke we thank for the understanding of the importance of the Holy Spirit, both in Jesus’ life and in the life of the early church, described so fully in the Acts of the Apostles, the second of Luke’s books. It describes how the healing that began in Jesus’ lifetime was to continue in the life of the community that gathered around Jesus, the community that eventually became known as the church, even when the people who first knew Jesus in his earthly life were no longer living.
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Luke is mentioned as a companion of Paul in the letter to 2nd Timothy, the only one with him in his ending time, and the first person account in the Acts of the Apostles is assumed to be Luke’s narrative of his journeys with Paul.We do not know how much of the story is factual, but we know it is all true. Luke was an evangelist who believed Jesus to be a healer and who believed the community that called itself by his name was to be involved with healing in all ways—
If you look at the Gospel again, you can see the inclusiveness of the healing—not just our bodies, but everything—societal healing, freedom from things that imprison us, whether we are actually in jail or constricted in our thinking and living, our need to develop a vision, whether we are blind literally or just unable to see beyond surface reality, need for justice as a healing in society. Luke starts with the poor receiving good news and ends with the reminder that we are to practice Jubilee, which is economic, redistributive, justice.
Healing is meant to be the heart of our life together, what we are here for every Sunday. We are here to be saved, salved, salvaged, put back together so we can go back out into the fray and like the words attributed to Paul in our epistle this morning: to fight the good fight, to finish the race, to keep the faith.
The lessons are read to remind us that God loves us and offers us healing, that we are to remember this at all times—remember in the sense of being re-membered, being put back together again, to claim our wholeness as God’s beloved, to let the wounds of the past go, to let the worries of the future be assured of God’s presence and love. We do not go forward without the grace of God. We go forward with Christ’s presence, the Spirit’s indwelling and God’s blessing.
And we celebrate this wonderful Good News of our Healing in the Eucharist, which we call a celebration, the Great Thanksgiving, which is what Eucharist means in Greek. How wonderful. How blessed we are.
And today we have something that helps us recall that this is the purpose of every worship service, and that is the special emphasis on healing. Healing. Who does not need healing? And this healing is offered to everyone of us in all the ways we know we need it and in all the ways we aren’t even aware we need it.
Whatever you have brought with you today that feels frayed, broken, unfinished and worrisome, angering, those aches and pains of the psyche as well as the aches and pains of the body is offered healing. Luke reminds us that healing is for each of us in whatever way our body-soul needs it. Healing is for the memories of our own childhoods that continue to haunt us in behaviors we know are counterproductive. Healing is for the resentments and hurts of all our yesterdays so they can be transformed into compassion that we can offer to others. Healing is for the aches and pains in our relationships with others, be they family, friends, co-workers, neighbors. Healing is for our communities, the church, the places where we live, the nation we live in, the community of nations upon the earth and even for our poor beleaguered planet itself. Did I leave anything out? Healing is for all, because we are all one, all One, all part of the Holy, Mysterious One. No matter how out of sorts and broken we might think ourselves or others to be, the reality is we are all right, we are all One. We just need to do the work of reconciliation and healing and recover this innate gift from God: our wholeness, our holiness.
I hope you can go home with this gift today. I hope you can feel and know that gift right now. Now—Now. That’s the secret of wholeness. To stay present in the moment. If we are present in the moment, it means we are not dwelling on the past with its hurts, frustrations and resentments, and if we are present in the moment, we are not dwelling on our fears and worries about what will happen next.
Worship is a place and time to be present in the moment and to realize that in every breath we take, we are filled with the breath of life, the spirit of God. In a little while we will sing, Breathe on me Breath of God. It might be better worded to sing Breathe in me Breath of God. Just staying with our breath will help us realize that we are God’s beloved and we are whole and loved and nothing else matters at that moment.
This is a transformative moment. It is a moment of practicing God rather than thinking about God. I woke up on Thursday, the morning I was to write my sermon, filled with hurt and pain. Several conversations had not gone well on Wed. and then in a Christian formation meeting I found myself in an ego contest about whether it was ruder to leave a Christian ed class early or come late. What I really wanted to say was I am just glad when people come at all—come when they can and leave when they have to. But that’s not what I said.
And then I thought, I have to write a sermon on healing, when I feel so broken. So I did what I always do, take the dog for a walk and then pray. The readings spoke to my hurt, not only the scripture readings but the other daily books as I call them. Let go, let go, let go, these authors whispered, just be present. Just breathe, look at the candle reminding you of Christ’s healing presence, pay attention to your breath as the Spirit’s indwelling presence. Breathe, breathe, breathe, and it was all lifted. And I journaled, and I laughed even. And I thanked God for Christ Church and for this laboratory of love that welcomes us in every Sunday, lets us look at our warts, lets us realize that we are loved and whole inspite of them, and that God can even use our warts as part of the healing God wants to accomplish in the world.
So I want to thank each of you for getting out of bed this morning, of doing what took energy to do—get yourself and perhaps another person or two motivated to come and present yourselves as a living offering to God. This took infinitely more work than staying in bed or continuing to drink coffee and read the paper. And hopefully you feel that it is infinitely more worth your while. That you are being offered and that you are able to receive the gift of your healing, your wholeness, your holiness, and that you can join with me in thanking St. Luke for the wonderful stories of Jesus’ compassionate love and the powerful reminder of the Spirit’s presence in the community of the church.
I know I have quoted this anonymous medieval cleric before, but it seems appropriate to do it right now. The Church is like Noah’s ark. One could hardly stand the stench within if it were not for the storm without. So here we can step on each other’s psyche’s and toes, and be given not only forgiveness, but the healing hugs and the laying on of hands for healing that we need.
How could we live without it? How could we live without our weekly, our daily, reminders of God’s healing, forgiving, transforming love for us? Thanks be to God!