It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been instructed.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Winston Churchill is widely believed to have said, “History is written by the victors.” There is a certain amount of truth in this–particularly in the chronicling of wars and political conflicts. But Professor Daniel Sims of the University of Northern British Columbia counters that history is written by the people who actually take the time to write it down. That’s what Saint Luke did for us–and does for us.
Luke is known to have written more than a quarter of the New Testament contributing to the canon of scripture both the Gospel that bears his name and the book called the Acts of the Apostles. And yet he is mentioned only three times in the Bible, all in the letters of his mentor, Saint Paul.
Luke and Paul spent a great deal of time together which is fitting because Luke was a doctor and Paul got beat up a lot. A match, as it were, made in Heaven.
It seems striking to me that these two men, Paul and Luke, who were not among the original twelve disciples, did not travel with Jesus during His earthly ministry, had such an experience with the risen Lord that they together wrote half of the New Testament and two thousand years later are speaking to you and me today.
There are, it seems to me, two kinds of spiritual experience: the sudden, miraculous, “mountaintop” kind; and the more gradual, educational, kind. We see a miraculous experience in the conversion of saint Paul on the damascus road, when Our Lord appeared to him in resurrected glory. But Luke, the man who writes about Paul’s experience in the Acts of the Apostles, acquired his own faith through study and research, and claimed to be nothing more than a historian. Here’s the prologue to his Gospel in contemporary English:
I have investigated all the reports in close detail, starting from the story’s beginning [and] I decided to write it all out for you, most honorable Theophilus, so you can know beyond the shadow of a doubt the reliability of what you were taught.
Luke was a physician, a scientist, and he approached his faith from a scientist’s perspective. Researching, investigating, and finally writing a prescription for the best medicine. Thank Heaven his writing is more legible than most written prescriptions–I think doctors’ notoriously poor penmanship is the reason most prescriptions are electronic these days.
Nowhere in Luke’s writings do we get the sense that he views himself as inferior to Paul because of his lack of a mountaintop experience. That’s one of the things we ought to take away from our study of Luke: that we don’t have to be struck blind like Saint Paul on the Damascus road. We don’t have to be struck dumb like Zacharias, whose mouth was shut by the angel who announced the impending birth of his son, John the Baptist. We can respect these miraculous occurrences when they happen to other people and rejoice with them and still know that’s not the only way to become a believer.
A lot of people long for these miraculous events and become disappointed when God doesn’t provide one. Some even fall away from the Church–doubting their own discipleship.
On the other hand there are some who have miraculous experiences and then quit the Church when they find they’re not sustainable. Many of us have been around people who had what they believed was a genuine supernatural religious experience. They couldn’t wait to tell everybody about it. They got a lot of attention at church. And then one day they just quit showing up.
A mountaintop experience, even if it’s legitimate, has to be followed up with more educational and less exciting pursuits: prayer, study, regular interaction with other believers. All of the things we know we ought to be doing as Christians.
That’s clearly what Paul did, and one of the most important things he taught his student saint Luke is that we can pass the message on without having a miraculous experience.
Luke addresses both his Gospel and Acts–which some scholars believe were originally combined in one book–to a believer he named Theophilus. This is a Greek work which means “beloved by God–” the one whom God loves. This was a common name in the Greek speaking world and also an honorary title for learned Romans and Jews of the era. And in that sense, he’s writing directly to you and me–the learned friends of God of our era.
There may be a fourth mention of Luke in Paul’s letters which may give us some more insight. In the eighth chapter of second Corinthians, Paul says he’s sending Titus to Corinth to see if Titus can help the continually backsliding Corinthians and Paul goes on to say:
We have sent with him the brother, whose praise is in the gospel throughout all the churches; and not that only, but who was also chosen of the churches to travel with us.
Does he refer to Luke? I’m sending you my traveling companion who has become a rockstar preacher. If so, that has all the earmarks of a modern tent revival, doesn’t it. What if Bishop Hansen came here for an episcopal visit and brought with him whoever is the living equivalent of Billy Graham in your mind?
Isn’t that something? That this fellow who did not know Jesus during His earthly ministry–just like you and me. Who became a Christian through prayer and study–just like you and me. Is being sent out on the speaker circuit by the great Saint Paul because Paul sees something in Luke that he doesn’t see in Titus the troubleshooter. Maybe something Paul doesn’t even see in himself.
In Luke’s Gospel and in the Acts of the Apostles we see how the Church starts to become the modern entity it is today–the instrument of God’s redemption on Earth in the interim period between the Ascension and the Second Coming whenever that might be.
And in Luke’s ministry we see how one person can have many different roles, affecting the lives of other believers. Patching up poor old Paul as his traveling companion and personal physician, chronicling the story of Jesus and the early history of the Church as an historian, going to visit other churches as a traveling preacher.
It is also widely believed that Luke was an artist, that he not only knew the Virgin Mary, but he painted her portrait in what has been copied and re-copied as an icon called the Hodegetria, the blessed Virgin holding the child Jesus and pointing to Him as the Salvation of mankind. We have a copy of this icon that usually hangs in the chapel. [Place somewhere]
It’s as if Luke looked at that list Paul gave us in the fourth chapter of Ephesians: “He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers.” And said - well how many of those boxes can I check?
We owe a great debt of gratitude to Saint Luke. He gave us a great deal in his writing and in his ministry. But the greatest thing he gave us is a question: “Who is Theophilus.”
Who is the beloved child of God in my life–or in yours? Who can we influence? Who can we minister to? Who can we bring into the Church, the instrument of God’s redemption? To whom can we tell the story of the redeeming love of God and of His Son?
That’s what we learn from Luke. That no matter who we are, no matter what we do for a living, no matter how long we’ve been in the Church or how we became members, there’s a ministry for each and every one of us. And often more than one.
This is summed up in a great old prayer that I use fairly regularly:
Direct us, O Lord, in all our doings with Thy most gracious favor; and further us with Thy continual help; that in all our work, begun, continued, and ended in Thee we may glorify Thy Name and finally by Thy mercy obtain everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
