Writing about the Bible in his commentary
on saints’ days, Sam Portaro says, We tend to think of the authors
of scripture as religious professionals…that this was the central focus
and the singular work of their lives. Their attachment to the person of Jesus
gets fleshed out in our minds as their having been the ancient counterparts
of the present-day clerical order. However, that’s not the way it
was; neither is it the way counseled by the New Testament writers themselves.
In his second letter to Timothy, the elderly Paul addresses a younger member,
or maybe a whole community of youthful Christians to “keep calm and sane
at all times” so that you can “Face the challenges, the hardship”
of working to “spread the Gospel, as well as to do all the duties of your
calling.” The New English Bible translation here brings the two-pronged
point home better than our NRSV text which says “do the work of an evangelist,
carry out your ministry fully,” which makes it sound like it’s one
life occupation—the ministry of evangelism. The New English Bible, though,
gets it better: spread the Gospel and also be about whatever your talents and
circumstances and position have you doing/being: such as parent, teacher, lawyer,
plumber, and retiree. Paul’s point: the work of spreading the Gospel
is not set apart for an elite or specialized group… Evangelism, is not
a distinct calling, but is the accompaniment to every calling. This does seem
to have been the case for Luke the Physician. His vocation was to medicine and
healing; he was trained as a doctor (Brightest and Best 184-85).
What else do we know about Luke? According to David Veal in Saints
Galore, Luke was probably a slave, since most physicians were in those days.
He was a frequent companion of Paul; he was likely Paul’s doctor. He was
a physician with a keen sense of history. Luke did not know Jesus; he never
heard Jesus speak. He was not an eyewitness to anything Jesus did. But he tried
and succeeded in presenting an orderly account of Jesus ministry and the birth
and rise of the early Church in his gospel account and The Acts of the Apostles,
respectively.
Luke didn’t know Jesus, he wasn’t Jewish; he was a Gentile who wrote
in Greek so that Gentiles might learn about the Lord and the course of history,
salvation history (124)—the future of history, the new creation in
Christ. It sounds a bit like Paul, that part. So doctor and patient probably
talked a lot.
Whatever one might say about Luke, you have to include that Advent and Christmas
would be a different story without his contribution: the familiar stories
of Angel Gabriel coming to the girl Mary, pregnant Mary going to visit Elizabeth,
the child Jesus born in a manger, the angelic host appearing to shepherds—not
to mention six miracles and eighteen parables not mentioned in the other Gospels
(Lesser Feasts and Fasts 368). Yep, that’s our patron: a slave with medical
skills and a gift for storytelling. According to tradition, Luke lived to
a ripe old age—84; and unlike so many of the leaders of the early church,
he seems to have died of natural causes and quite peacefully in Greece
(Saints Galore 124). However, sometime in the fourth century his earthly bed
was disturbed, for it seems the Emperor Constantius ordered the relics of
Luke removed from an obscure countryside in Greece and transported to Constantinople,
modern day Istanbul, which was even way back then a major commercial crossroads
and a much better place for setting up a shrine for pilgrims (Lesser Feasts
and Fasts 368)... ca-ching!
Luke would not have been so hot on having been turned into a tourist stop. For,
as his gospel account illustrates, he was not at all into celebrity, let alone
veneration. Frederick Buechner in Peculiar Treasures gives us three crisp points
to make this clear. First, what kind of people populate Luke’s stories?
The Prodigal Son is about a wayward guy, a substance abuser who comes home
blatto and dead broke, yet his father is glad to see him because he is sorry.
The painted woman who washes Jesus feet, who overdoes the perfume and works
for any man who will pay her, gets Jesus’ love because he recognizes in
her a lot of the love that is the gospel of love
.
The crook on the cross who talks to Jesus rather than cursing him or the crowd,
who says “hey, remember me when you get where you are going,” gets
promised a room on the same floor as Christ. So yes, it seems Luke had a soft
spot for Jesus who had a soft spot in his heart for the scum of the earth,
to the point you’d think Jesus thought of them as the salt of the earth.
Yes, Luke’s storytelling history of the time yet to come gets out there
ahead of us to remind us that salvation history—God’s acts—has
a lot of fair play turnabout to come.
Second, Luke’s quick to point out that you don’t have to travel
to a shrine to pray, and pray pray pray is what Jesus did and taught. Luke’s
gospel account includes Jesus praying when he is baptized, after he heals the
leper, on the night before he calls the twelve disciples, and what no other
gospel includes—that Jesus’ last words on the cross were a prayer:
”Father into thy hand I commend my spirit. Also, thanks to Luke, we’ve
got a scripture record of Jesus the joke teller, even about prayer: the one
about the man who keeps knocking on the door, and the one about the widow who
keeps bugging the crooked judge. Yes, it seems Luke wanted to make
‘em laugh if it meant they’d remember to pray and not give up—Go
ahead, Jesus says it’s ok to knock on God; bug the divine, make a holy
nuisance of yourself.
Third and last (and now remember Luke the doctor is not a gleaming
chariot driving, but humble slave walking, physician) his gospel writing
constantly makes the point that Jesus was always stewing about the terrible
needs of poor people. What’s Luke say Jesus read when he went to the synagogue
in Nazareth? “I am hear to tell you I am appointed to bring good news
to the poor, recovery of sight, restoration of the broken-hearted.” And
whereas Matthew says the first beatitude on Jesus’ lips is “Blessed
are the poor in spirit,” how does Luke edit it? “Blessed are the
poor”…period! And Luke’s the one with parables such as rich
man – beggar man which comes right out and says if the “haves”
do not help the “have nots” there will be hell to pay. And he’s
the only one to quote Mary’s song which includes the line “he has
filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away”
(Buechner, Peculiar Treasures 94-5). For that matter, Luke is consciously showcasing
otherwise marginalized persons such as the girl Mary. On her lips are pretty
radical words about the gospel, about God and the God’s son she bears.
Yes, Luke’s gospel account is elegant, striking and sweeping; universal,
but not in any way esoteric. It is rather a quite practical remedy for what
ails ya. Luke wrote a very basic prescription. First: Show up! Jesus wants you
the way you are. Don’t mask your symptoms. Second: Breathe. Jesus wants
you to pray. You cannot pray your way into heaven; but if you keep praying,
you’ll open up your body’s passage ways; you’ll open up to
heaven. Third: Exercise. No, you can’t work your way into heaven, yet
you must work heaven into other people’s lives, by giving them assistance
with basic sustenance. You’ve got to feed the hungry food, you’ve
got to provide medication for the sick, and you must give the weary comfort
so they can get a good sleep and recover their health and wholeness.
Sounds like fairly basic stuff about Christ, from Luke the Physician—the
primary care physician; or better yet, Luke the Pediatrician to the children
of God.
Amen.
©Thomas F. Reese, 18 October 2009
[Please note, italicized print is quotation, paraphrase or elaboration of an
idea from the source cited:
Buechner, Frederick. Peculiar Treasures: A Biblical Who’s Who.
San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1979.
Portaro, Sam. Brightest and Best: A Companion to the Lesser Feasts and
Fasts. Boston: Cowley Publications, 1998.
Veal, David L. Saints Galore: Calendar Sketches for the New Calendar of
Saints. Cincinnati: Forward Movement Publications, 1972.
Lesser Feasts and Fasts 1991 together with The Fixed Holy Days.
New York: The Church Hymnal Corporation, 1991.]