Sermon for the 15th of October - Feast of Saint Luke (St John's Notting Hill)

Lectionary Readings for the Sunday Observing St. Luke

Isaiah 35: 3 – 6

Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who are of a fearful heart, ‘Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense. He will come and save you.’ Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert.

II Timothy 4: 5 – 17
As for you, always be sober, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, carry out your ministry fully. As for me, I am already being poured out as a libation, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. From now on there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have longed for his appearing. Do your best to come to me soon, for Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica; Crescens has gone to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia. Only Luke is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is useful in my ministry. I have sent Tychicus to Ephesus. When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, also the books, and above all the parchments. Alexander the coppersmith did me great harm; the Lord will pay him back for his deeds. You also must beware of
him, for he strongly opposed our message. At my first defence no one came to my support, but all deserted me. May it not be counted against them! But the Lord stood by me and gave me strength, so that through me the  message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. So I was rescued from the lion’s mouth.

Luke 10: 1 – 9

After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. He said to them, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest. Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say, “Peace to this house!” And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the labourer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there, and say to them, “The kingdom of God has come near to you.”

Homily for the Sunday Observing St. Luke

God sends us out into a dark world to shine as bright lights! We are sent to pierce that darkness with the light of faith, a light that cannot, ever, be put out, a light that will, in the end, overcome that darkness. This is the message of our texts today.

What can I say about the dark news of this past week? On Saturday, just a week ago, yet another terrible cycle of violence began. Terrorists killed innocent people in the ancient, holy, land of Israel. Just yesterday, as I was walking in central London, I stood in Trafalgar Square and watched a long, long procession of people passing, Palestinian and others, protesting the missiles launched against Gaza by Israel, killing their intended target, presumably, but also many, many innocent people there. The marchers sang and chanted and walked together,  some wrapped in the Palestinian flag. Standing there, watching the procession, I felt a great, great sadness. With this news, this new reality, I have felt as if a dark, dark cloud has hung over me. Along with many others, I cannot see a way through this dark cloud of tragedy, because now a way forward, to fairness to both peoples, and to peace, seems even more remote. How can justice and peace come to a land now even more deeply scarred by such a terrible spiral of violence?

How can we, as Christians, witness to the goodness and glory of God in a world where such darkness seems to overpower all the good acts that so many throw up against it? So many have been working so hard for so long for reconciliation in the Middle East, and in so many other places in this world we have been given! This is the single burning question that our readings deal with today: how to proclaim the peace of the Gospel in a dark world that does not know it.

Jesus came to bring peace. He came to heal a world that was being torn apart by oppression and injustice in that very land where two thousand years later it is being torn apart again on a scale even more violent and despairing.

But Jesus's message was set squarely against despair. The light he brought into this world we have made was one of great hope, of ultimate hope, of hope against all the odds. Let us remind ourselves of this charge from Jesus himself: never let go of hope!

We celebrate the figure of the evangelist Luke today. I love the way the Church of England holds up the lives of individual saints on certain days for us, to remind us of their example of hope. Reading about these lives inspires us by their example---how they witnessed before us, to hope over against the darkness. We don't know much about the details of Luke's life. Just as with Jesus, we don't know what Luke looked like---was he tall or short, fat or thin, with a beard or not, and did he have a wife and children? What things in his days moved him to laughter or to tears? What was the quality of his voice?

But what is remarkable is that he wrote, and that we have his words. His voice comes through to us through his words. And condensed into these relatively few words is so much that speaks to us now: the living tradition of hope brought to a dark world. These are bold words that he records Jesus as saying: The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest. Here we are: we are those instruments of God's kingdom breaking in.

Even to this darkness, this seemingly intractable, impenetrable darkness of violence that human beings inflict upon one another. We are those willing labourers whom Jesus is even now commissioning, not alone, but in community, to be bearers of hope. And I was struck by how much in this Gospel reading of two thousand years ago that is relevant to us now in our work to help bring God's Kingdom in: Jesus sent them on in pairs, not alone.

Embrace this community of faith. Be strong in this fellowship. We strengthen one another. We are sent into the midst of danger, like lambs among wolves. We are not to be naive, not to be the prey of others, but wise as serpents and harmless as doves. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals. We are to travel light. Don't be bogged down by the distractions of shopping, the small things that would hold you back.

Wherever you go, bring peace. First say: Peace be to this house! I like this thought, that we actually speak peace. I love that greeting and that leave-taking: Peace be with you. And remember that as you even say the simple word, good-bye, it means God be with you! Speak peace, model peace. Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there, and say to them, “The kingdom of God has come near to you.”

Accept what is set before you. I like this thought, that we are to embrace our given reality, whatever that may be for each of us, and respond to that with love and peace. Healing comes with the presence of those who bring love and peace. We are not promised that the living of the Christian life will be easy.

As the letter to Timothy says, we are to endure suffering. To be human is to suffer, but this is also what binds us to every other human being. As Christians, we infuse this suffering with the transcendent quality of loving hope. How we bear what we are given in life can help to bring in the Kingdom of God: with patience and kindness, dignity and grace. We show forth the fruits of the Spirit as we bear, in this way, our own aging, infirmity, and loss. And we bear one another up and give one another strength. As we do this, we are already shining forth the Kingdom of God.

One of the lives that has most inspired my own life is that of the American novelist and Presbyterian minister Frederick Buechner, who died a little over a year ago. Altogether, he wrote thirty-nine books, many of which were recognised by various prizes---you can read about him. Frederick Buechner was a rare creature: both a minister of the Gospel and a writer of novels and narratives of great beauty and power and depth. Buechner's father committed suicide when Frederick was ten. His father had moved the family from place to place, seeking work. It was out of a gesture of despair that he ended his life, considering that that life had been a failure. His death never left the mind and heart of Frederick, but out of its apparent darkness he created one of the brightest and most light-filled lives of faith that I know.

Here is one of the many memorable passages from his writing: The love for equals is a human thing--of friend for friend, brother for brother. It is to love what is loving and lovely. The world smiles. The love for the less fortunate is a beautiful thing--the love for those who suffer, for those who are poor, the sick, the failures, the unlovely. This is compassion, and it touches the heart of the world. The love for the more fortunate is a rare thing--to love those who succeed where we fail, to rejoice without envy with those who rejoice, the love of the poor for the rich, of the black man for the white man. The world is always bewildered by its saints. And then there is the love for the enemy--love for the one who does not love you but mocks, threatens, and inflicts pain. The tortured's love for the torturer. This is God's love. It conquers the world. (this is from his book titled The Magnificent Defeat)

In the end, it is God's love that will bring God's peace to this dark world. We can shine forth that love; we can be bearers of that peace. As we try to live out the Christian life, that life that brings the spark of hope and the light of love to those who have not yet seen it, we do not give up, we do not despair. 

God will see us through. Go on your way, Jesus said. Go on your way. With courage, and resolution, and, above all, with undying hope, let us be on our way, together.

May peace come to this world.
Amen