2026-10-18 Commemoration of St. Luke
Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen!
The commemoration of St. Luke the Evangelist. Today we remember a man who is only mentioned three times in the entire New Testament - all in the letters of St. Paul. But as a writer, St. Luke gave us more of the New Testament by volume than any other single author. If you do the math, Luke’s Gospel and the Book of Acts are around 37,900 words. If you tally up St. Paul, he wrote roughly 32,400 words. Even if you include the book of Hebrews as written by St. Paul, it adds up to about 23% of the New Testament. St. Luke, by contrast, gives us 27%.
It’s really quite something when you think about it. St. Luke was the guy who carefully researched and ordered the story of Christ Jesus our Lord and the history of the early Christian church, writing more than the great Apostle to the Gentiles who was his close friend and mentor.
But who was St. Luke? We know that he was a physician, a doctor and Gentile convert, from Antioch in Syria - which is modern day Türkiye. So he wasn’t one of the original 12 disciples. He didn’t walk with Jesus during the years of His earthly ministry. There is no dramatic Damascus-road type encounter recording how Luke came to faith. There is no ‘mountain top’ spiritual experience like St. Paul received. Instead, we find a careful investigation as to who Jesus Christ is in the beginning of his Gospel. He researched the eyewitness accounts and compiled an orderly and chronological account so that a certain Theophilus might have certainty about the life of Christ.
This is no hearsay fairy tale! St. Luke wrote as a proper historian and clinician. He chronicled the humdrum every day events as well as the extraordinary acts of God working through His people. From the Prison doors miraculously opening to the descent of the Holy Spirit as tongues of fire, to the disputes over Gentile inclusion in the early church to the lonely and final days of the Apostle Paul under house arrest in Rome. The miraculous and the mundane were all captured by the Evangelist.
We know from the Scriptures that he was also St. Paul’s traveling companion and personal physician. In the “we” sections in the book of Acts we hear his voice as he journeys with Paul. Near the end of Paul’s life, in 2 Timothy 4:11, as we heard this morning, the apostle writes the heavy words: “Only Luke is with me.” It was a massive blessing that God sent Luke to be with Paul because he got beat up and bloodied … a lot! The physician who had patched up the apostle after beatings and shipwrecks remained with him to the end. Luke’s ministry was not only that of the pen and parchment; it was the quiet, faithful presence of a friend and healer.
As an Evangelist, Luke shows us a Savior who is especially attentive to those on the margins. His Gospel alone gives us the Magnificat, in which Mary the Mother of our Lord sings of the hungry being filled with good things and the rich sent away empty. He gives us the detailed nativity with the shepherds, the presentation of infant Jesus in the temple, and later on, young lad Jesus impressing the teachers in the temple. Some of these events have even become foundations of our liturgy, especially the Nunc Dimittis that we sing pretty much every Sunday.
St. Luke alone records the parables of the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, and the Rich Man and Lazarus. He highlights the women who traveled with Jesus and supported His ministry, and he is careful to show Jesus elevating these women and addressing them with dignity and compassion. As a Gentile himself, Luke underscores the inclusion of those outside the nation of Israel: the Roman centurion, Zacchaeus the tax collector, the Samaritans.
And of course, as a Doctor, he records many healings, one of which we heard last Sunday with Jesus and the Thanksgiving Turkeys! Yet he understands that the deepest healing we need in this life is the healing salvation that makes us whole. St. Luke points us to the Great Physician who heals not merely by restoring physical sight or cleansing lepers, but by dying on a Roman Cross, forgiving sins and writing our names in heaven.
Church tradition also remembers St. Luke as an artist. Whether or not he literally painted the first icon of the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus, his Gospel is itself a carefully composed portrait. He paints scenes for us with such vivid detail that artists for two thousand years have returned to his words for their depictions of the Raising of the widow’s son at Nain, the penitent thief on the cross and the appearance of Christ on the Emmaus road. In Christian artwork, St. Luke’s symbol is the winged ox-a sacrificial animal—because his Gospel begins with the temple and the priest Zechariah, and because he portrays Jesus as the sacrifice for the healing of the world.
So what then are our takeaways on the commemoration of St. Luke? Firstly, what sticks out to me is that coming to faith in Jesus doesn’t have to be some wild and crazy experience like being struck blind on the road to Damascus. By contrast, St. Luke illustrates for us that careful listening, investigation, and study of the facts pave the way for the Gospel. This is indeed how the bulk of us came to faith. The preaching of the Word of God, studying the Scriptures, conversations with other Christians, Baptism and the Sacramental life of the church. Luke’s orderly account exists so that we might know the certainty of these things.
Second, we see that there is room in the Church for many kinds of service. Luke was a physician, a companion, a historian, an Evangelist, and by way of tradition, an artist. He checked several of the boxes in the list of gifts in Ephesians 4. His life reminds us that our ordinary everyday vocations—medicine, teaching, writing, art, friendship, quiet presence—can all be offered and utilized in the Kingdom of God.
Third, the Gospel itself is a word of healing and an invitation for all people. St. Luke records our Lord Jesus seeking the lost, eating with sinners, healing the broken, and sending the Seventy out with the message that “the kingdom of God has come near to you” (Luke 10:9). The same Spirit who carried along St. Luke continues to enlighten the Church to proclaim the victory that Christ our Lord gives to the world by faith.
Finally, St. Luke points beyond himself. He didn’t write an autobiography about how amazing he was as a person. Rather, he chronicled the story of Christ: the Great Physician, the Savior of the poor and the rich, the Redeemer of the lost, the Lord of both Jew and Gentile, the Messiah Who has written our names in the book of life and who will one day make all things new.
So we give thanks to God for St. Luke. We give thanks for the two volumes he left us—the lion’s share of the New Testament—and for the careful, compassionate, Spirit-filled portrait of Jesus and the early Church they contain. And we pray that, like him, we may investigate, record, and live out the certainty of the Gospel, so that others may know the healing and the warm welcome of Christ our Great Physician. In His Name, Amen!
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