The text of a sermon preached at St Bartholomew’s Church, Warleggan and St Neot, Cornwall for the Feast of St Luke, 18th October 2026.
The set readings were, Isaiah 353-6 2 Timothy 45-17 Luke 101-9
Today we celebrate the life and witness of St Luke – the author of the gospel that bears his name and of the Acts of the Apostles. St Luke is the patron saint of doctors, artists, bachelors, surgeons and butchers. Having said all that there is little that we know about his life.
Luke, we know, was a companion of St Paul – Paul writes in Colossians (414) of Luke, the beloved physician, and also mentions his presence with him in 2 Timothy (411) and in the letter to Philemon (25). In the book of Acts, there are five sections which, because of the use of the pronoun we, suggest that the author of Acts was present with Paul towards the end of his travels and on his journey to Rome.
That’s about the totality of our knowledge but there are, of course, legends about Luke. He is said to have been an artist, and painted many icons of Jesus and Mary. He is said to have been the first to paint the Madonna and child. Some accounts say that he was martyred by hanging from an olive tree, others that he lived a long life dying in Boetia, in what is now central Greece, at the age of 84.
There is little if any of this about which we can be sure. Even that the author of the gospel and Acts is the same Luke of whom Paul speaks is less than certain – but it hardly matters.
We have in his writings plenty to tell us who Luke really was – and it is in his gospel and in the Acts of the Apostles that we shall find the real Luke.
Luke’s gospel is one of the Synoptic Gospels, together with Matthew and Mark, which share a general shape and a great deal of common material.
But Luke is quite different in many ways from the others. He is widely believed to have been a Gentile convert to Christianity, and the quality of his Greek in his writings (the most refined in the New Testament) reveal an educated man. If he was a gentile he is the only non-Jewish author in the New Testament.
His gospel opens with a detailed account – not of Jesus’ birth – but of John the Baptist’s. And woven within that birth narrative is the account of the annunciation to Mary and her visit to her cousin Elizabeth.
This highlights immediately one of the features of Luke’s gospel. He often uses the experiences of women to tell his story. Mary receives the call to motherhood through the angel; Elizabeth affirms Mary as blessed to be the mother of my Lord. Mary is given a song of praise in the Magnificat (more of this in a moment); and Elizabeth is the one who insists that John is to be called John (rather than Zechariah) – although they do have to check with Zechariah that that is OK.
In Matthew, the only other account of Jesus’ birth, the whole story is told almost exclusively from Joseph’s perspective.
Other stories giving women a key role are sprinkled through the gospel. Anna, the prophetess welcomes Jesus in the Temple; the healings of Peter’s mother-in-law, the woman with the haemorrhage, Jairus’s daughter; the son of the widow of Nain is raised to life; the woman sinner who anoints Jesus’ feet; the list of the the women who followed Jesus; the widow’s mite. And, it is the women who, watching Jesus die on the cross, then prepare spices to anoint his body and return to the tomb on the day of the resurrection and finding the stone rolled away, hear the good news from the angels.
I said we’d return to the Magnificat. This song is, to use a phrase from the sixties, a protest song. Mary sings of the. justice we can expect from God. He is a God who looks on the lowliness of his servant, he is a God who scatters the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He is a God who brings down princes from their thrones and raises up the lowly. He is a God who fills the hungry with good things and sends the rich away empty.
The Magnificat reveals a God who favours the poor, the hungry, the needy and the powerless over the rich and powerful. And in turn we realise that this is the God that Luke believes in and wants his readers to believe in too.
There are other examples. Where Matthew’s beatitudes (5) speak of the poor in spirit and those who hunger and thirst for righteousness Luke, in his beatitudes (620-23) speaks of the poor being blessed and the hungry being fed.
In the story of the widow’s mite (Luke 211-4) we learn that the offering of the poor, small though it be, is more pleasing to God than the large gifts of the wealthy.
Forgiveness and generosity are themes in Luke’s gospel too. Think of the parable of the Prodigal son and the Good Samaritan – parables that only Luke records. Think too of the thieves crucified with Jesus and how forgiveness is made available even in that extreme moment to the penitent thief.
The Acts of the Apostles is very different. This is not now the story of Jesus – at least not directly. It is rather the story of the earliest days of the Church and the work of the Holy Spirit in directing and empowering it.
That story is told principally through two characters – Peter and Paul. And, like, the gospel it tells of a God who overturns human expectations. Peter, and in turn James and the other apostles, are forced by God, through Peter’s dream and conversion of Cornelius and his household (Acts 10) to understand that the gospel is Good News not just for the Jews but for the Gentiles too.
And then again by the miraculous conversion of Saul. We see how God can use a persecutor of the Church to spread his gospel. And so we see, within a short time the gospel being spread throughout the Eastern Mediterranean and as far as Rome.
We may know few facts about Luke’s life but his writings reveals a great deal about him – and his faith. But they reveal a great deal about God and Jesus Christ too. Without Luke’s special and unique message we would be the poorer in our understanding of how God has brought salvation and hope to the world through Jesus Christ.
I end with a short poem – a sonnet – called Luke by the priest-poet Malcolm Guite. You were given a copy of it on the way in.
Luke
His gospel is itself a living creature
A ground and glory round the throne of God,
Where earth and heaven breathe through human nature
And One upon the throne sees it is good.
Luke is the living pillar of our healing,
A lowly ox, the servant of the four,
We turn his page to find his face revealing
The wonder, and the welcome of the poor.
He breathes good news to all who bear a burden
Good news to all who turn and try again,
The meek rejoice and prodigals find pardon,
A lost thief reaches paradise through pain,
The voiceless find their voice in every word
And, with Our Lady, magnify Our Lord.
By Malcolm Guite
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