Monday, October 19, 2020

St. Luke, Evangelist


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Here is the sermon I preached later in the day at Trinity, Grangeville:

The Feast of St. Luke, Evangelist

Trinity Lutheran Church, Grangeville, Idaho

October 18, 2020

Text: Luke 10:1-9

            The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.  Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest” (Luke 10:2; ESV).  Our Lord gives us this admonition to pray for the sending of preachers even as He answers the prayer in the sending of the seventy-two.  They are to go ahead of Him, two by two (like animals sent out from the ark to populate the earth), into every town and place where He Himself was about to go.  They are to go out as lambs in the midst of wolves, as Christians in the midst of hostile unbelievers, as preachers in the midst of a bloodthirsty, unbelieving world, hell-bent on killing them for the preaching.  And they are to trust.  No moneybag or knapsack or sandals covering their beautiful Gospel-carrying feet.  This is not an indication that you don’t have to pay the pastor.  It is rather an indication to the preacher that he is not to be concerned about money or provisions.  He is to live by faith, trusting in the Lord, and relying on the generosity of those who, by God’s grace alone, by the work of the Holy Spirit, hear and believe the preaching.  Keep that in mind, dear calling congregation of God.  When you receive a pastor, as we pray you will very soon, it is your duty before God and your glorious privilege to generously supply his needs and those of his family.  And it doesn’t work like it does in other jobs.  You don’t pay him for services rendered.  You pay him so that he can render service.  It is totally upside down by any worldly standard, as so many things are in the Kingdom of God. 

            The preacher is to enter the house… your house,

 your Church… and say, “Peace be to this house!” (v. 5).  That is, he is to announce the Gospel of forgiveness of sins and reconciliation with God in the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus.  And if there is a son of peace there… if the people receive the preacher and his preaching… that peace will rest in that place.  And if they do not, that peace will return to the preacher and the place will lose that preaching.  This is the warning for us all in these times when the Gospel is so despised.  God doesn’t have to rain the preaching down on us forever.  Luther said the Gospel is like a passing rain shower.  It pours down abundantly to the flourishing of faith and the salvation of many souls.  But when it is taken for granted or received ungratefully, it will move on to other places, as we are seeing in Europe’s empty churches, and now in our own beloved America. 

            But that is to be no concern of the preacher.  He is to preach.  Whether the people receive the preaching, or reject it and so persecute the preacher, that is for God to worry about.  The preacher is to preach, and he is to remain in the house, eating and drinking what is set before him, receiving his wages, not looking for a better deal or a more comfortable situation.  He is to remain until Jesus sends him somewhere else.  And he is to open his mouth and proclaim: “The Kingdom of God has come near to you” (v. 9), the Kingdom has arrived in the Person of the King, in the flesh of Jesus Christ.  For you see, even as the workers go out into the harvest field and the Gospel is preached, Jesus comes in the preaching.  Where the preacher goes, Jesus goes.  Where the Gospel is, Jesus is.  This isn’t just a historical, back-then-and-there reality.  It is now.  Here.  Today.  In this very moment.  In this very place.  As the Gospel is preached to you, Jesus is with you in the flesh, doing His saving work.  The proof of it is in your ears as He forgives your sins and delivers the Gospel preaching.  And it is on the altar from which you will receive His healing touch, His true Body, His true Blood, given and shed for you, for your forgiveness, life, and salvation. 

            Well, all of that is a long preamble to what may be said very simply: Today is the Feast Day of St. Luke the Evangelist, who recorded the words of our Holy Gospel this morning.  St. Luke was not one of the seventy-two sent out that day, but he was an answer to the prayer our Lord puts on our lips to send out workers into His harvest.  St. Luke was a preacher.  Born in Antioch in Syria, he joined the Apostle for much of his missionary activity.  St. Luke is the writer of the Gospel that bears his name, as well as the Acts of the Apostles.  He wrote the Gospel to serve as a catechism for the Gentiles, and so we see how his work as an Evangelist (that is, a Gospel writer) complements the preaching of Paul, who was the Apostle to the Gentiles.  A careful historian, Luke looked into the facts our Lord’s life and ministry.  He interviewed the eye-witnesses, the Apostles, the major players.  And undoubtedly St. Mary, for it is from Luke that we get the most intimate details of the beloved Christmas story, the Angel Gabriel appearing to the Virgin, the Visitation of Mary and Elizabeth when St. John the Baptist leaps in his mother’s womb at the presence of the embryonic Lord Jesus, the manger, the shepherds, all heaven singing the Gloria in Excelsis.  And St. Mary pondering these things and treasuring them in her heart.  How could Luke have known what Mary treasured in her heart unless she had told him?

            Luke was St. Paul’s faithful assistant to the end.  Shipwrecked with him on the island of Malta (Acts 27-28), accompanying the Apostle in his captivity to Rome, Luke alone stood with Paul in his trials as everyone else deserted him (2 Tim. 4:10-11).  And it is from St. Paul that we learn one of our favorite details about Luke: Paul greets the Colossians on behalf of “Luke the beloved physician” (Col. 4:14).  Does this mean Luke was an ancient medical doctor?  Quite possibly.  It certainly would explain Luke’s fascination, even above that of the other Gospel writers, with Jesus’ healing miracles, and our Lord’s continued work of healing through His Apostles in the book of Acts.  We can see how this would be particularly valuable in his work with St. Paul, Luke perhaps caring for the Apostle and tending his wounds after the beatings and lashings and stonings and imprisonments, and whatever the affliction that affected the Apostle’s eyes (Cf. Gal. 4:13-15).

            But above all, St. Luke is a physician of souls.  Which is to say, a pastor.  And here we learn what we should look for and expect from a pastor.  He is to be our Seelsorger, our curate, our confessor who applies the medicine of God’s Word to us in our sin and wretchedness, the surgical wounds of God’s Law, the healing balm of God’s Gospel.  Remember, the preachers in our text weren’t just to proclaim the arrival of the Kingdom in every town.  They were to heal the sick (Luke 10:9)…  There Luke goes again with the healing!  Now, it is true, as I mentioned, that in the Apostolic Church, while the Apostles were still alive and active in their missionary journeys, they, and some of the Christians they appointed, were given the gift of extraordinary miraculous healings.  By and large, that gift is no longer manifest in the Church.  And that should not disturb us.  God never promised to give the same gifts in the same measure to His Church in every time and place.  Healings, as well as the other extraordinary gifts, like tongues-speaking and prophesy, were given to the infant Church to confirm the preaching and show Jesus’ continued presence with His Church in that preaching.  Now the Church is well-established, and more importantly, we have a gift the infant Church did not have: The New Testament Scriptures, or, as St. Peter calls them, “the prophetic word more fully confirmed” (2 Peter 1:19).  So while miraculous healings can still happen, it is unlikely, and unreasonable for you to expect, that your pastor will make the lame to walk or cure your cancer here in the Service. 

            Though I will say, we enlightened moderns are rather blind to the miracle that takes place every time we recover from a sickness.  So it happens through medicines and doctors.  You know what St. Luke the Physician would say about the medicines and technology we have available to us today?  “Wow!  Miraculous!  Praise be to Christ, who continues to heal the sick!”  But we think it is all a result of our great intelligence and ingenuity.  Christ have mercy on us.

            And also, by the way, dear Christian, never discount what happens, and what is hidden from your eyes, at the healing command of Jesus in the preaching of His Word, and the healing touch of His Body and Blood at the Supper.  Now, I’m not advocating some sort of superstitious use of the Lord’s Supper, as though we won’t get sick if we take Communion, or even that we won’t get sick here at  Church.  What I’m advocating is that you believe what  you’ve learned from the Holy Scriptures about the nature of this gift and what it is you receive… our Lord’s true Body and Blood!  Luther says in his Large Catechism that the Lord’s Supper “will cure you and give you life both in soul and body.”[1]  That is a marvelous phrase we so often miss.  After all, it is the same Body with which Jesus cured lepers, made the lame to walk, the deaf to hear, and the blind to see, the same Body that was crucified for your sins and is risen from the dead, that you now eat under the bread; the same Blood that was shed on the cross for your forgiveness which now courses through the veins of the risen and ascended Lord, that you now drink under the wine.  How many times have you recovered because of that healing touch?  How many sicknesses did you not get because Jesus gave Himself to you in the Sacrament?  These days we are told we should run away from the Church and the altar in a time of pandemic.  Now, certainly, we should take wise precautions, and some people should take more than others.  But Jesus is just the medicine we need, and this is precisely where we need to be.  Jesus is the Great Physician of body and soul.

            The pastor, as physician of souls, is to administer Him.  In preaching and in Sacrament.  And oh, how we need Him!  St. Ambrose said, “Because I always sin, I always need the medicine.”  Why do you need a pastor?  Why are you calling one?  Because you need someone like St. Luke to go with you on the journey, whose job is to tend your wounds, cleanse you from the infection of your sins, bind you up in your brokenness, help your eyes to see, and administer the medicine that gives you life.  Not with his own gifts.  But with Jesus.  By applying the death and resurrection of Jesus in the Means of Grace, the Word and the Sacraments.  It is our Lord’s answer to your prayer: “Oh, Lord of the Harvest, send out workers to Your harvest field.  Send us a faithful pastor, a physician for our souls.”  That is what He will do.  Because He loves you.  And through the hands and mouth of whatever imperfect and sinful man he sends you… and he will be a sinner, by the way, and he will sin against you, and you will have to bear with him in patience and forgive him his trespasses against you, even as you care for him and his family and provide for their needs… nevertheless, through his hands and mouth, Jesus Himself will tend you.  He will heal you.  Which is to say, He will forgive your sins and raise you from the dead.  It is as sure as the Gospel you’ve heard this morning, and the Body and Blood you’re about to receive.  The Kingdom of God has arrived.  Jesus is here.  Peace be to this house!  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.              

 

 



[1] LC V:68 (McCain, p. 438).

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