The Great Physician (Luke 10:1-9)

Grace to you in peace from God the Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Very early on, the church recognized what a gift it was that we have four Gospels.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John overlap a great deal, and if you read the first three back to back, you'll feel as though you're covering the same ground over and over again.

But each evangelist shows us the life, teaching, and saving work of our Lord from his own angles.

And today, the festival of Saint Luke, we give thanks for Saint Luke and the particular angle he gives us.

What do we know about Luke?

Well, Luke was a well-educated man.

He writes some of the finest Greek in the New Testament, steeped in the language of the Greek translation of the Old Testament.

In all likelihood, he was the only Gentile among the four evangelists, and so he cared deeply about telling the story of Jesus to people like himself.

Luke was also a faithful friend.

In the book of Acts, which Luke wrote, Paul's journeys are told in the third person.

Then at Troaz, just as Paul is called across the sea into Macedonia, they suddenly become we.

Luke never tells us how he came to be there.

He simply was there and he stayed.

In our reading from 2 Timothy, Paul writes from prison deserted by nearly everyone and says, Luke alone is with me.

Elsewhere, Paul calls him the physician, the beloved physician.

And no doubt Luke ministered to Paul's body as well as to his spirit.

At the beginning of Luke's gospel, Luke tells us he set out to write an orderly account.

And like a careful historian, he interviewed eyewitnesses.

One of them, it seems, was the mother of our Lord.

Luke alone tells us things only Mary could have known.

And twice he tells us that she treasured up these things in her heart.

Luke's way of saying she remembered and she told me.

What I'd like us to consider today, on this St.

Luke's day, is how Luke the physician presents to us Jesus as the physician of the world.

In our gospel reading, Jesus sends out the 72 with these words, heal the sick and say to them, the kingdom of God has come near to you.

Healing and the kingdom of God go together.

Few verses later, Luke alone records the parable of the good Samaritan.

We know it well.

A man is beaten, stripped, and left half dead in a ditch.

Priest and Levite pass by.

Then a Samaritan, the last person anyone would expect, stops.

He binds up the man's wounds, pours on oil and wine, sets the man on his own animal, brings him to an inn, and pays the innkeeper to care for him, promising to cover whatever more it costs.

And that parable certainly teaches us how to love our neighbor, but at its root, it shows us what Jesus Himself came to do, to heal us.

And that raises the question: what does it mean to be healed?

When someone is sick or injured, at what point do we say he's healed?

When the bleeding stops, when the bone is set, those urgent needs come first, but we all know from experience that the end of the emergency is not yet the fullness of healing.

I carry a small reminder of this in my right pinky finger.

When I was about four, my dad was tossing me up in the air in the living room.

I loved it.

One time he threw me just a little too high, and I met the glass ceiling fixture.

The bleeding stopped soon enough, but the scar is still there.

50 years later.

And every so often I notice it, my children notice it.

And I suspect many of you, you carry something similar in your own bodies, the mark of an old injury or an illness that left you not quite as you were before.

I'm regretting telling that story because everyone came out of the 8 o'clock service telling me about their scars.

But to be fully healed is more than to be no longer sick.

It's to be restored to strength.

That's why when the cast comes off, there's physical therapy.

The bone has knit, but the muscles are weak from the weeks of disuse.

They have to be built back up, often with sweat and a few tears.

And that's the picture you ought to have in mind whenever you hear the word salvation.

In the New Testament, the Greek word can mean both to save and to heal.

Jesus came to take away the sins of the world, but he also came to restore to the world the life that sin had stolen.

When he found us lying in the ditch, he did more than stitch us up and wish us luck.

He lifted us up, carried us to the end, and paid the whole bill himself with his own blood.

And he stays with us until the healing's complete.

Some of the early church fathers put it this way: Jesus became like us so that we might become like him.

What are we like?

Sinful, weak, mortal.

And so Jesus took our sins on himself, shared our weakness, died in our place.

What is he like?

Holy, righteous, glorious, immortal, the beloved Son with whom the Father is well pleased.

That's what he came to make of us.

As St.

Paul says, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

So which are you now?

The true answer is that you are somewhere in between.

You are no longer what you were.

Your sin does not define you.

You're standing before God, and Christ does.

In his sight, you are fully forgiven, fully righteous, fully his.

And nothing remains to be added to that.

But you are not yet what you will be.

The rehabilitation goes on.

And that's why Scripture calls us both to rest in our salvation, but also to work it out with fear and trembling.

Rest because Jesus has done everything needed to make you right with God.

But then get to work.

Putting to use the new strength the Holy Spirit gives you: righteousness and holiness, obedience and joy, willing service and genuine love.

Even these are his gifts.

And where does the physician do this work?

Well, we prayed it in the collect earlier.

We prayed that the healing medicine of the gospel and the sacraments would put to flight the diseases of our soul.

The church is the inn.

Here, Christ has washed you in baptism.

Here he speaks his forgiveness into your ears.

Here he feeds you with his word.

And at his altar, he feeds you with the body and blood of his son, the medicine of immortality.

And Luke even shows us what this healing looks like.

It often turns the world upside down.

What the world counts great turns out to be small.

And what it counts as small turns out to be great.

Think of Zacchaeus, despised and short of stature, a grown man scrambling up a tree just to see Jesus.

Jesus calls him down, goes to his home, and says, Today salvation has come to this house.

The little man is made great.

And right away things start to be mended.

He gives half his goods to the poor, repays fourfold those he had cheated.

And this healing reaches into our relationships too.

Gentiles, lepers, tax collectors, sinners, they're all welcomed into the kingdom.

And Luke, more than any other evangelist, shows us the women around Jesus.

Elizabeth and Mary, Anna, Mary and Martha, the women who were first at the empty tomb.

In a world where Aristotle could describe a woman as a defective man, Jesus received women as daughters of God, created in his image, redeemed by his blood, and sent to tell the good news.

The blame and the rivalry that sin brought into the world and Eden, Christ came to heal.

In our Old Testament reading, Isaiah described the day when the physician's work is complete.

We read, Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped.

Then shall the lame man leap like a deer.

A highway shall be there, and it shall be called the way of holiness.

The unclean shall not pass over it.

Well, thanks be to God, Jesus has taken away your uncleanness, and he has set your feet on that road.

There's one more thing Luke tells us.

On Easter evening, the risen Jesus stands among his frightened disciples and says, See my hands and my feet.

He still bears his scars.

My little scar reminds me of a day I flew a little too high.

His scars tell us something far better.

The price is paid, the wound is healed, and the physician will never let go of his patience.

And so may God give us his grace to be good, patients, trusting our physician, letting the Holy Spirit strengthen us day by day to be like Jesus in meekness and humility and love for others and knowledge of God's word, in obedience to the Father, and in entrusting ourselves to the one who will deliver us.

And may He guide us along the way of holiness until His creation is complete and we see Him face to face in the new heavens and the new earth.

Happy St.

Luke's Day.

Amen.

Please stand.

The peace that passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus until life everlasting.

Amen.