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An image of St Luke in the C6th Augustine Gospels,
held in the Parker Library at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge |
An address given at Templederry Church on Saturday 18th October 2025, the Feast Day of Luke the Evangelist, and at St Mary's Nenagh the following Sunday 19th October 2025
Today we are
celebrating the feast of St Luke the Evangelist.
‘Evangelist’ is the
title the church gives to the four Gospel writers, of which Luke is one of
course.
When I first sat down
to write this sermon, I decided to explore who this man Luke was, and who he
wasn’t. I looked up scholarly resources, and many less reliable resources, such
as Google. And I began to write a sermon filled with references and quotes. I
realised I was just showing off my own less than scholarly erudition. Those of
you in this family service who are older would have found it dry as dust, and
those who are younger, dull as ditch water.
So I started again,
trying to paint a vivid picture of Luke as a vibrant and interesting person,
who lived a truly exciting life in the service of his God, of Jesus who rose
from the dead, and of the rapidly developing and growing fellowship of
believers of which he was a part.
So here goes…
Luke grew up in a
Greek-speaking family, probably in the city of Antioch in ancient Syria.
Antioch was a big and
important city, the capital of the Roman province of Syria, which grew rich on
the spice trade with the East. Before then it had been the capital of the Seleucid
Empire, founded by Seleucus, one of Alexander the Great’s generals, for some
300 years.
Antioch must have been
an exciting place to grow up in. As a Greek-speaking capital city, it was full
of arenas and theatres, schools and libraries. And it was a multi-cultural melting pot, the streets
filled with visiting traders in foreign clothes, speaking strange languages. A
bit like London, or New York today, perhaps.
In Luke’s time, Antioch
was a centre for Greek-speaking Jews of the Diaspora. We do not know for sure
whether he was a Jew or a gentile, but we do know Luke was highly educated. No
doubt he attended one of the many schools, where he learned to write excellent
Greek, better than the other Gospel writers. His books show he was familiar
with Greek literary texts. We also believe he studied to be a medical doctor,
because St Paul calls him ‘Luke, the beloved
physician’.
Luke wrote two
books of our New Testament, his Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles.
We know this because
the language used in both, and the underlying theology, are so similar that
they must have come from the same hand. Both are addressed to the same person,
perhaps his patron, Theophilus, meaning lover of God. And all the early church writers
agree Luke wrote both.
These books are works
of history, in the style of the time, and Luke was no mean historian. There is
little reason to believe he was ever an eyewitness to Jesus’s life. But in his
Gospel he carefully collected and set down the story of Jesus’s life, drawing on
different sources, including the earlier Gospel of Mark, a lost collection of the sayings of Jesus
shared with the Gospel of Matthew, and some other eyewitness accounts unique to
himself.
The Acts of the
Apostles traces the story of how the primitive church grew and developed after
Jesus’s resurrection up to the time of Paul’s imprisonment in Rome. The first
part deals with the life of the church in Jerusalem, and the second part with
St Paul’s ministry journeys. It reads like an exciting, adventure story, as the
new church rapidly spreads, starting from a small group of frightened disciples
in an upper room in Jerusalem, right across the Roman empire, to Rome itself.
Do take down your bible at home and read it from start to finish to experience
that excitement.
In Acts, Luke draws on
many sources of evidence for his story, but for some of it, Luke himself is clearly an
eyewitness.
Luke travelled with
St Paul on some of his missionary journeys.
We know this because
some of the later parts of Acts are written in the 3rd person plural
as ‘We’. For instance, Luke
writes, ‘After Paul had seen the vision, we
got ready at once to leave for Macedonia’, and ‘We put out to sea and sailed straight for
Samothrace’.
So it is not
surprising, that Paul refers to Luke by name in some of his epistles. In
Philemon (1:24), Paul describes Luke as ‘a
fellow worker’. In 2 Timothy (4:11), as we heard in today’s 1st
reading, Paul, awaiting death in prison in Rome, says, ‘Only Luke is with me’. In Colossians (4:14),
Paul speaks of ‘Luke, the beloved physician’.
Here a word of caution
is due - many modern scholars believe 2 Timothy and Colossians were not written
by Paul himself, though Philemon is universally recognised as Paul’s.
Today’s 2nd
reading, from Luke’s Gospel, tells the story of 70 disciples Jesus sent ahead
of him in pairs to prepare his way in places he planned to visit.
It is the pious belief
of the Eastern Orthodox Church that Luke was one of these 70 disciples, all of
whom they name. They celebrate Luke not just as an Evangelist, but also as an
Apostle of the Seventy.
Epiphanius, bishop of
Salamis in Cyprus in the late 4th century, is the first recorded to
say he was. I am doubtful. If Luke really was one of the 70, why does he not
signal his presence, as he does in the Acts of the Apostles? But the fact is,
we really don’t know one way or the other. We should be slow to criticise the
pious beliefs of other brothers and sisters in Christ.
We know little else
for sure about Luke’s life.
A much later 8th
century tradition maintains that Luke was the first person to paint icons. This
is doubtful, but Luke is widely recognised as the patron saint of artists. He
is said to have painted a picture of the Virgin Mary and child, known as the
Madonna of Constantinople. Although it is now lost, many copies exist and are
venerated by the Orthodox churches. The art critic A I Uspensky says that other icons attributed to Luke
himself display a Byzantine style not seen before the 5-6th
centuries, so could not have been painted by him.
What did Luke do after
his time in Rome with St Paul? We know nothing at all about it.
However, a later
tradition says that he died aged 84 in Boeotia in Greece, crucified by pagans on
an olive tree. We may make of that what we will.
What an exciting
life Luke had!
He played a prominent
role in the rapidly growing Jesus movement, the primitive church spreading like
wildfire across the Roman Empire. We do well to celebrate him on his feast day!
I finish in prayer
with a Collect from the Episcopal Church.
Almighty God, who inspired your servant Luke the physician
to set forth in his Gospel the love and healing power of your Son:
Graciously continue in your Church this love and power to heal,
to the praise and glory of your Name;
through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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