Healing, Liberation & Salvation NOW

The Rev. Sara Warfield

Feast Day of St. Luke the Physician

Scripture: Luke 4:14-21

Today is the Feast Day of our community’s patron saint, St. Luke the Physician. Well, actually it was yesterday, but it is what is called a moveable feast in our tradition, so we moved it to today so that we could celebrate our dear Dr. Luke together.

Now we don’t really know a lot about the historical Luke except from what we can infer from his writings—his gospel and the Acts of the Apostles—and from what the apostle Paul, his companion, wrote about him.

He seems to have been born around 17 years before Jesus, the son of freed slaves in Antioch in Syria, then a very Hellenized—or Greek—city. Luke spoke Greek, he wrote in Greek, he was culturally Greek. Given the quality of his writing and his familiarity with different literary tools, he was clearly highly educated. He may have even attended rabbinical school, given his knowledge of the Law and Prophets—though it’s strange: scholars don’t really know whether he was a Jew or a Gentile, because his writing speaks so authentically and clearly to and about both groups.

There’s a chance that Luke first met Saul who would later become Paul when he was getting his medical education in Tarsus, now in southern Turkey, Paul’s hometown. Yes, Luke really was a physician. When he likely had a more profound encounter with Paul was later in life, after Jesus died, likely in his hometown of Antioch where Paul was then preaching the Good News of Christ. That seems to be when Luke converted and started traveling with Paul to build up this new movement and to write down all that he learned about Jesus and all that happened to the disciples after his death.

Luke’s experience as a doctor is most certainly reflected in the way he thought and wrote about Jesus. In fact, I might say that his experience as a doctor is the foundation of Luke’s hermeneutic—you remember that fancy seminary word. It means the lens through which we see our faith. We all interpret and experience our faith a bit differently depending on where our lives have taken us. A combat soldier might have a very different approach to faith than a stay-at-home parent—their lives ask different things of their faith.

It’s clear that Dr. Luke’s hermeneutic, his lens for his faith in Jesus, was deeply rooted in what healing means.

Now Luke and Matthew used the same sources, Mark and Q, to write their gospels, so these three gospels tell a lot of the same stories, which helps us to recognize the differences in their hermeneutics, their lenses.

Where Mark describes a “man with an unclean spirit who came out of the tombs,” Luke simply describes someone “who had for a long time worn no clothes, or lived in any house.” He gives his observations rather than making a judgment about the man’s spiritual condition.

Where Matthew says “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” Luke simply says, “blessed are the poor.” It’s about the people’s actual wellbeing in this world, not just their spiritual wellbeing.

Where Mark says about the woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years, “she had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse,” Luke says: “though she had spent all she had on physicians, no one could cure her.”

Luke was not going to let his colleagues and profession be thrown under the bus! But more than that, for Luke, salvation meant healing. Not just physical and spiritual healing but economic and social healing.

This is in contrast to what salvation looks like in Matthew: Jesus says in that gospel, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” This has been the dominant idea of salvation throughout the history of our faith. Convert people, make sure they believe the right thing so they don’t go to hell.

But Luke was concerned for the salvation of people in this life, in their present circumstances. His gospel hinges on what we heard today, Jesus going into the temple in Nazareth and quoting the prophet Isaiah:

“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.”

“Today,” he said, “this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

What Jesus didn’t say is, I’ve been sent here to make sure you don’t go to hell. Now don’t get me wrong, Jesus certainly says in Luke that judgment awaits those who don’t live in line with his teachings. In chapter 12 he says, “'I have come to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” But even in that verse, he says bring fire to the earth—meaning he wants cleansing now, he wants repentance now, he wants a change of heart now.

Good news for the poor now.

Release to the captives now.

Recovery of sight to the blind now.

Freedom for the oppressed now.

He doesn’t tell people that they need to endure suffering in this life so that they can enjoy eternal painlessness and comfort in some abstract afterlife. Jesus says he is called to alleviate their suffering, their pain right now. And if we claim to be his followers, that’s what we’re called to do.

Now let me be clear, I don’t think salvation is mutually exclusive to either healing now in this life or making disciples of all the nations. I think healing lends itself to making disciples. It’s what we distinguish in theological circles as salvation by persuasion versus salvation by attraction.

Salvation by persuasion looks like what comes to your mind when you hear the word proselytize. The people who go door to door and ask about your relationship with Jesus, the people who hand out tracts at public events that detail what hell looks like, the sweet folks standing outside of hospitals or on busy corners with booklets about their particular church.

But salvation by attraction looks like Christians going out and creating good news for the poor. Christians calling for the release of the captives. Christians healing blindness, in all its different meanings. Christians demanding freedom for the oppressed. Now. Out loud. In this life.

Salvation by attraction is doing these things, and when people ask why we’re doing these things to say, “because that’s what Jesus teaches me to do.” That’s what people need to see from Christians right now. That’s what people need to hear from Christians right now. To take action and then to boldly proclaim that you’re taking that action because that’s what your faith calls you to.

When we do that, people see that Christianity is about liberation—not fear, not judgment, not condemnation. After all, it is Luke who also wrote, “Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.”

That’s what Luke the physician saw in Jesus. That’s what inspired him about Jesus. That’s what he wrote in his gospel.

And that is the legacy and call of this parish, St. Luke the Physician. To go out. To proclaim liberation, and in all we do to work for liberation—for the poor, the captives, the oppressed. And when we do, to say: Jesus sent me.

Amen.