Lectionary Readings for Proper 24C & The Feast of St. Luke
O God, in your abundant grace you sent your Son to
be the light of the world: Grant that we may come and see the difference that
Christ makes in each of us as we seek to become your beloved community; and as
we gather in intentional worship, may we ever be reminded of your
transformative love which is the foundation of our faith; through Jesus Christ
our Lord, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Today, we mark the Feast of St. Luke and as we remember this saint who wrote both Luke and Acts, we also celebrate this particular beloved community that bears his name. It was 8 years and a month ago that I was called to serve as the Rector of St. Luke’s and there’s not a day I don’t give God thanks for this call. This is such a fantastic parish – we have a gorgeous building, we have dedicated members, we have become known as a church of beloved community, the Foundation and mission committee help us in spreading the love of Jesus beyond our walls, our liturgies are vehicles for God’s grace and peace to be communicated to all, and, in all serious, this is pretty much a drama-free congregation. Truly, this is a special place and it is a blessing to be a part of it.
Of
course, we do have challenges ahead of us. Across the board, religious affiliation
and church attendance are on the decline. Current generations, often burdened
with debt in ways that previous generations were not, simply are not giving financially
as their parents and grandparents did. The period called Christendom, when knowledge
of the Christian story and respect for religious institutions could be taken
for granted, is ending. Because of an overemphasis on science and reason, there
simply is no room for the divine in our daily lives. To be sure, these are real
challenges and I have no idea what St. Luke’s is going to look like in another
20 years.
And
though we may not know what the future holds, we pray that this continues to be
a place where people will continue to come and see the difference Christ makes,
that new believers will still be Baptized at that font, that the faithful will still
be fed from the riches of God’s love at that Altar. Though I don’t know the
future, I am absolutely confident that the future is secure because St. Luke’s
does not belong to any of us, rather it belongs to God. Our hope for the future
is not that our stewardship campaign goes well or that we will find the right
programming to attract new members. No; our hope is in Jesus Christ.
This
means that our concerns for the future can be lessened because the future
belongs to God, and what better place to entrust our hope than to God? It also
means that we can be more humble in our successes. The good things that we do
come as a result of the Holy Spirit’s guiding and empowering. And so it’s okay
to be proud of our parish, so long as what we’re saying in that pride is “Look
at God” and not “Look at us.” This also means that things that might strike us
as failures are not signs that we are bad or have done something wrong, it just
means that the Spirit wasn’t blowing in that particular time and place. It all
comes down to trusting that we are not responsible for the script of our lives
playing out in the way that we might want. Even if we had total control of our
own lives, I’m not at all convinced that I would know what is best. Instead,
faith allows us to trust that we are a part of God’s story, and because it is
God’s story, we know that all shall be well.
And
if we’re not white-knuckling our faith and the future of the Church, we can experience
these things as the gifts of God that they are. When it comes to St. Luke’s, we
are inheritors and stewards. Today’s passage from Second Timothy helps us to
explore this. We heard that we are to continue in what we have learned and firmly
believed, knowing from whom we learned it. One of the things that I love about
being in a parish with history is that none of us can claim to be the founding
members. We all have come along mid-stream. And I love that the names of the saints
of yesterday are with us in stained glass windows and plaques. Around our
campus there are dozens and dozens of names, reminding us that we have
inherited the gift of faith. None of us chose to follow Jesus because it was
our idea. Us being a Christian was God’s idea long before it was ours. None of
us came up with the concept of Baptism or Eucharist. None of us taught
ourselves about Jesus – either someone told us about God’s love for us, or we felt
it in a hymn written by someone else, or we knew it in the way someone cared
for us, or we read about it in the stories told by someone named St. Luke.
Take
some time this week and consider from whom it was that you learned the faith.
Who first invited you to St. Luke’s? When you arrived, who welcomed you in?
With those people in our hearts and minds, we give thanks to God for the inheritance
of faith that we have received.
And
what is it that we have learned about the faith? Scholars generally refer to
the passage we heard in Luke this morning as Jesus’ inaugural message – it is
the tone of his entire ministry. Quoting Isaiah, Jesus says that he is the fulfillment
of the Lord’s message of good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight
to the blind, freedom to the oppressed, and the Lord’s favor to us all. We
heard in Second Timothy that “All Scripture is inspired by God and useful” for
many purposes. That phrase “inspired by God” is literally “God-breathed,” and
we know that anything that breathes is alive. Scripture is alive and is pointing
us to the truth that Jesus sets us free from all that holds us back from the
love of God.
Not
that we necessarily want to reduce our faith down to just a few words, but if
we had to, we could say that faith in Jesus is about being saved from anything
that separates us from being loved. To be sure, there’s a lot more to say about
Christianity, but if that kernel of truth is ever overlooked or forgotten, then
what we end up with is something less than the Good News that Jesus came to
fulfill and that Luke wrote about.
We
are not a perfect church, but one of the things that I so value about our
community at St. Luke’s is our awareness of God’s love. Some probably don’t
like the incense that we use on feast days like today. We have different opinions
on politics, different preferences when it comes to art, different perspectives
on life. But we trust that the love of God is truer and stronger than any of
these differences. This message of the liberating and life-giving love of Jesus
is what we have inherited, and with that love at our foundation, God is able to
do and is doing infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.
So
then it is a question of what we do with this inheritance. In the love of God
and through this parish, we have been given a tremendous gift of which we are
stewards. As I’ve said, this parish does not belong to us, but it has been
entrusted to us for a period of time. We are to care for the faith by inviting
others into it and ensuring that future generations will know the love of God
through this parish in the same we that we have.
We
heard St. Paul exhort us to “proclaim the message; be persistent whether the
time is favorable or unfavorable.” These days, it might seem like the time is
unfavorable to proclaim the message. As recent survey data has shown, the
majority of people do not have a positive view of Christians or the Church.
Clergy are consistently rated lower than 50% when it comes to trustworthiness.
Sure, we can bemoan this, or we can realize that whether the time is favorable
or not, we are stewards of the faith and have been given the task of
proclaiming the message of God’s love.
As
much as we might think that “love” is an easy message, it is actually quite
challenging. The message of God’s love means that, as the Baptismal Covenant
puts it, all people are worthy of dignity and respect. And so when we see
people being treated in an undignified way, love means being a steward of our
voice and action. Love means not being content in a society in which some have
too much and too many have not enough. Love means forgiving those who have
wronged us, love means choosing generosity over keeping for ourselves, love
means becoming vulnerable for the sake of others, love means taking risks
instead of playing it safe. The fullest depiction of love is Jesus on the Cross
– that is our message and that is our proclamation. That sort of love is the
only thing that can save the world, but no one is ever going to claim that the
way of the cross, even if it is the way of life, is easy.
The
passage concludes with the encouragement to do the work of an evangelist,
carrying our ministry fully. It is as that old hymn puts it – this is our
story, this our song: the love of God which makes all things well. As stewards
of St. Luke’s and the faith, telling the story is our ministry. We tell this
story by inviting people to come and see. We tell the story by giving generously
to support this parish so that we can continue to thrive in ministry. We tell the
story by coming not just to worship, but to social and mission events to build
community and serve in love. We tell the story not by being perfect people, or
even trying to be, but by being persistent in love, even when we fall short.
Part of telling the story of faith is telling of how our failures are met by
God’s mercy.
I
know that evangelism is a word that a lot of people struggle with, but we are
told that is how we are stewards of the inheritance that we have been given – we
do the work of an evangelist. The word “evangelism” simply means “Good News.”
Evangelism isn’t giving someone a five-point argument for the existence of God,
it’s not citing Bible passages, it’s not even inviting anyone to church – though
those all can be a part of it. Doing the work of an evangelist is testifying to
the love that created all things, the love that led the Hebrew people out of
slavery in Egypt into the Promised Land, the love that was born of Mary, the
love that healed the sick and fed the hungry, the love that went so far as to
die on a Cross, the love that could not be held by death but rose on the third
day, the love that dwells within us all in the Holy Spirit, the love that is
not only the source of all things, but also the purpose and destination of all
things.
Through
this wonderful parish and the saints who have come before, we are the inheritors
of this story of belovedness. We have been entrusted with the message of love,
a message that both we and our society deeply need. The future is secure in
God, yes, but that does not mean that we have nothing to do. As we thank God
for the evangelism of our patron, St. Luke, and for this wonderful parish, we
also pray for the grace to faithfully steward the Good News of God’s love.
