Sharing the Mission

PROPERS:          FEAST OF ST. LUKE  

TEXT:                2 TIMOTHY 4:5-13; LUKE 4:14-21

PREACHED AT ST. LUKE’S, MOBILE, ON SUNDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2021.

 

Preached at the conclusion of a New Consecration Sunday program.

 

ONE SENTENCE:        That which connects us to the experiences and moments so far away in time and space is the call of God to give of ourselves.

 

            It is interesting to contemplate time and distance – how far we are from a place in miles, and how much time has elapsed in the interim.

 

            And I wonder about what unites us with that place and that time. The different dimensions of the experience – what others experienced, and what we experience – can actually unite us, if we are able, as St. Paul says, to see face-to-face.

 

            We are gathered here today on Azalea Road in Mobile, Alabama.  The date is October 17, the Year of Our Lord 2021.

 

            Even more explicitly, in terms of place, we are gathered at 30 degrees, 64.715 minutes North, and 88 degrees, 14.0586 minutes West.  In the 450 year-old Gregorian calendar, we are still here, on the same date.

 

            So, why are we here?

 

            It is because of something we recollect today.  Something that happened in a small, hilly village 32 degrees, 70.217 minutes North, and 35 degrees, 29.793 minutes East.  The time: Roughly 2100 years ago. The fog of those millennia has obscured the specific date.

 

            It was the synagogue in Nazareth.  The same place where Jesus announced the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy.

 

            The passage we read this morning is from the Gospel according to Luke – the eponymous gospel of the saint we commemorate today. The passage tells us of Jesus announcing the good news, literally the gospel:

 

“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.”

 

            Other than reading those words, what is it that unites us to that place, that event so long ago?

 

            Luke, the Evangelist, continues to recount that story – a story he had been told by those who were there.  And later he wrote a detailed account of the early church, in the book we know as The Acts of the Apostles.

  

He was so moved… so touched… so transformed… by that story of God’s movement among us that he became part of the story, going on missionary journeys, and telling of those moments.  He was faithful to the end and was among the last to be with St. Paul in Rome.  We know that from the second lesson today.

 

Luke had heard the account of the announcement of the Good News… of the inbreaking of God into human affairs… and his life was forever changed.  He knew he had been blessed by his connection to the story… and he gave all that he could.

 

Now, half-a-world away and 2100 years later we hear the same words.  What is our response?  Are we bound to that moment of good news… of transformation?  Whether we know it or not, we are inheritors of the same blessing… the same story.

 

In early Christian history, Tertullian asked a question:  What has Athens to do with Jerusalem? A similar question fits here: What has Mobile to do with Nazareth?

 

It is an invitation to express the gratitude we have come to know.  To acknowledge our blessings.  To join ourselves with the ancient story of God’s movement in the world… a story told by St. Luke so many years ago, and so far away.

            Though we occupy far distant point on the globe… though we are separated by more than two millennia… we are part of the same story. We dedicate ourselves as St. Luke did. We are invited to give of ourselves – generously – as St. Luke did.