The Gifts of the Evangelist Luke

Icon by Kh. Erin Kimmett - apicons@yahoo.com"With Sacred Songs, let us praise the holy Apostle,the Narrator of the Acts of the Apostles, and Author of the Bright Gospel of Christ, the All-Hymned Luke, Whose Fame is not conned to Christ's Church, for He is the Physician who heals men's ills, Nature's frailties, and the soul's injuries, and he prays unceasingly, for our souls."
+ Troparion of St. Luke the Evangelist, Tone 5

"The one who hears you hears Me, and the one who rejects you rejects Me, and the one who rejects Me rejects Him who sent Me." Luke 10:16–24

The Seventy returned with joy, saying, "Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name!"

And He said to them, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven." In that same hour He rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, "I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was Your gracious will. All things have been handed over to Me by my Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him."

Then turning to the disciples He said privately, "Blessed are the eyes that see what you see! For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it."
Luke 10:16-2

The name Luke has become more popular in the last 30 years, moving up to number 28 among boy's names. This may be due to the long-lasting popularity of Star Wars, and that heart-throb, Luke, who used "the Force!" Our Evangelist Luke, however, did not manipulate divine power, but rather put himself at the service of the holy and personal God. e third Gospel and Acts of the Apostles, ascribed to him very early in the tradition of the Church, are marked by careful scholarship, exquisite writing, lively imagination and remarkable forthrightness.

In these books we nd both a concern for detail, including the timely unfolding of God's plan in history, the great divine drama. Yet Luke was no bystander, no scholar in an ivory tower writing down all the stories that others relayed to him. No, he himself was a participant in the actions of the Triune God, and encourages us to be the same. One ancient tradition counts him among the Seventy who announced the coming King from town to town; another says that he met and worked with St. Paul. is is suggested in the Scriptures themselves, for the Acts relates the journeys of the Apostle in terms of "us" (Luke being the implied partner), while Colossians 4:14 mentions the doctor Luke, who accompanied St. Paul, staying with him until the very end of the Apostle's life (2 Timothy 4:11; Philippians 1:24). Because of the Evangelist's consistent and self-sacricial service, our Gospel reading for his feast day is completely appropriate! Like his emblematic symbol, the ox, he was a persistent "beast of burden," carrying Christ on the way to others in history, and so to us today. For the Evangelist is among those faithful who heard and transmitted the Gospel, and who, by his holy narratives, showed the dramatic coming of the King. rough St. Luke, the window is open so that we, too, can see God the Son and His life among us more clearly.

So let us consider this luminous passage in his Gospel:

"The one who hears you hears Me, and the one who rejects you rejects Me, and the one who rejects Me rejects Him who sent Me." The Seventy returned with joy, saying, "Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name!" And He said to them, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven." In that same hour He rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, "I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was Your gracious will. All things have been handed over to Me by my Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him."

Then turning to the disciples He said privately, "Blessed are the eyes that see what you see! For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it."
Luke 10:16-24

There is so much in this passage that is shiny, striking and enlightening. Here our Lord relates a vision – a vision of Satan falling from heaven!

You'd think that St. Luke would make much of this, giving us a blow-by-blow of the heavenly battle. After all, he is the most descriptive of all the evangelists when he depicts the great vision of the Transguration, and it is by him that we hear about the drama of Pentecost, and St. Paul's vision on the road to Damascus (which he relates three times, with increasing detail). But here he lets Jesus' startling revelation oat rather free. Is "I saw Satan fall from heaven" intended as the interpretation of what the disciples have been doing – that is, in the actions of the Seventy, Jesus has vanquished the evil one? Or is it the cause? – because of Satan's fall, they are empowered? Or is it a "one-upmanship" of wonder, as though Jesus were implying, "You are amazed because demons are cast out of human hearts? Why, that's nothing! I have seen the head of them ejected from heaven!" Each one of these interpretations is possible, and they are not mutually exclusive.

Yet to get stalled here, worrying about what precisely Jesus intends by speaking of Satan's fall, is a distraction from the real brilliance, the very center of the episode. The central light here is not the vision per se, but the One who relates it. In the verses just prior to our reading, Jesus has sent out the Seventy, saying that those who receive them will be receiving Himself, and then also the Father who sent Him. Jesus, then, is the central link in this story.

In speaking of Satan's fall, our Lord directs the attention of the disciples away from their own exultation. He pulls them away from any kind of triumphalism to a sober place: "Do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven." The joy should not come in their prowess, not even in the great downfall of the enemy, but in their being named by God. They have nothing to boast about, since they are "simple children" who will be filled through and through with the glory and knowledge that rightfully belongs to Jesus.

The shininess of this episode event is not located in Satan's dramatic fall from heaven, nor in the status and success of the Seventy, but in the One who has sent them, who reveals mysteries to them, and who speaks to them a word of blessing. They are tempted to be distracted, and we may be tempted by similar distractions, yet Jesus calls them and calls us back to true identity – a name conferred upon them and us by the Father because of the Son, who has made Himself our brother.

It is odd how privilege and humility come together here. There are very few privileged places that breed humility in us, for the privileged must battle pride or lack of concern for others. e disease of "entitlement" sets in. The disciples, however, are privileged to be in the presence of Jesus and to be part of His ministry: their true identity is found as they follow His lead, turning their eyes away from their own situation, and towards God instead. Jesus models this orientation towards God for them, of course, for, as the fourth Gospel puts it, "The Word was towards God."[1] And so our Lord, true to His character, sets His face towards heaven, rejoicing in what the Father has done and is doing: "I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was Your gracious will." It is a true privilege to be joined in name to the Son of Man who suered, who reigns from the cross, who delights to do the Father's will, who eats with those on the margin of society, who calls those who know that they need a doctor, who went not only into Jerusalem, but into the little towns in Galilee and even into Samaria, seeking sheep outside the usual fold. We find ourselves united to the One who became a zygote in the womb of a young woman, whose body He had made; who submitted to His parents at age 12, though He could teach the rabbis; who asked a woman for water at a well, though He is the giver of living water; who "learned obedience," as the author of Hebrews put it – and this is the gift that He passes to us, if we become, like the Seventy, His apprentices.

A humble character is the potent sign of true blessing that Jesus confers upon His own. Consider how much more has been given to us than was given to the Prophets and Kings of Israel! They saw through a glass darkly, but we see that mirror unveiled. rough the Scriptures, through living in the Church, through even our contemplation of the world around, we see so much more than they could, for all is now illumined by the One who sent the Seventy, who cast Satan from heaven, and who gives authority that comes from the Father.

Do we see in those around us in worship saints-in-the-making, in the process of theosis? Perhaps so, though only on occasion, because our eyes are dull, and we are, after all, only on the way in our transformation. May we truly see the character of the living God, for we all are being changed into the likeness of Jesus. We have it on the greatest authority that we are blessed, because we know the One who has changed the whole of history by being plunged deep into the elements of the world, by taking on human flesh, by dying our death: we have finally glimpsed the main character of the divine story. Nothing will ever be the same!

So let us go back to Jesus' first words: "The one who hears You hears Me, and the one who rejects You rejects Me, and the one who rejects Me rejects Him who sent Me." Perhaps they startle us in our egalitarian age, with what looks to be a chain of command – from the Almighty One, to Jesus, to the Twelve (whom He has appointed in the previous chapter) with the Seventy, to us. No doubt we have much to learn from the Scriptures about the gift of authority in the Church! Let us remember, however, that only a few chapters before our chapter, Jesus has spoken about a dierent "chain of links" to His gathered Apostles: "Whoever receives this child in my name receives Me, and whoever receives Me receives Him who sent Me. For the one who is least among you all is the one who is great" (9:48). Clearly, the Apostles and the Seventy have given great gifts to the Church, and we have need of them, but it is also the case that every humble member of Christ's body brings a gift to the leadership of the Church. Indeed, he or she brings a gift to the Church as a whole, because he or she bears the image of Christ. The gifts go from the top down, but also from the bottom up – as St. Paul reminds us, the foot and the hand need each other.

Here is the wonder of it all: Jesus assumes a radical solidarity between Himself and those who have been in His presence, whom He sends out. How remarkable! Despite our tendency to fail, we who are persons are commissioned to communicate the person Jesus, who communicates God the Father. Our faith is, from beginning to end, personal. It is not simply a body of teaching that can be deposited without remainder in a book, or a series of practices that could be learned from a manual, or a philosophy or an ethic. It is a call to communion: our communion with each other, but first with God the Son,directed towards the Father whom Jesus makes known, and in the Holy Spirit.

Perhaps those Seventy were tempted to receive the Lord's commission as a carte blanche of authority, or merely as a theological truth. They were about to learn, on the ground, that this commission was not for their benefit alone, nor was it mere theory. Rather, Jesus was drawing them into God's way of acting!

God had entrusted to them a delivery blessed above all other things, a message concerning the gift of His own self to the world in Jesus. As they continued in mission, as they saw what would happen, these missionaries would come to understand more deeply what it meant to deliver God's gift. The delivery begins by entering into homes, healing the sick, and announcing the nearness of God. It may involve rejection, and eventually, for some, the harsh enactment of it by their own martyrdom. (Remember Proto-Martyr Stephen, who was one of the Seventy!) God does not simply give information, He does not simply give a new law, He does not simply bestow authority, or simply grace, but He gives Himself.

The God-Man Jesus has come among us. God gives Himself personally to human persons, who in turn represent, as far as they are able, this holy God: "The one who hears you hears Me, and the one who hears Me hears the One who sent Me." It is this thoroughly personal aspect that separates our Christian Way from all the other ways and -isms and philosophies of the world.

When I was a young mother with three children, I would meet another young mother, a Jehovah's Witness, regularly in the playground near our home in an old neighborhood in Montreal. We agreed on many things, but not on the nature of the faith, nor on the identity of Jesus. These things were connected, I think. To her, the faith was a set of morals and doctrines to pass on to her children: "Good things in, good things out; junk in, junk out," she would say. For her, Jesus was the Teacher, above everything else. Of course, this was not entirely wrong, but she had missed the mystery: she did not see Jesus as a Person who could be known. Because of this, she also could not appreciate fully the mystery of her children's own personhood. They were more like pets to be trained than like tiny miniature images of God, with wills and hearts and minds that could be reached only by the Holy Spirit.

When people encounter us, we want to be transparent enough and vibrant enough that, with all our faults, they can see through us to the living Christ. For this is the light that the Evangelist Luke shines into our lives: he directs us to the person Jesus.

Perhaps I can draw a mental diagram of the action in this story, complete with arrows. In the center is Jesus: an arrow from Jesus has sent out the Seventy into the villages to bring light and healing. As the disciples return to their center, they are tempted to dwell on something less worthy, and Jesus, by His words and prayer redirects them: here is an arrow from Jesus to the Father, inviting us to see where true glory lies. Then there is the arrow from Jesus back to the Law and the Prophets, reminding the Seventy and us to see ourselves in continuity with a story that is ful lled in Him. We have seen Him, and so are blessed! Jesus' actions and words are arrows pointing out, backwards and up. We, too, are meant to point away from ourselves, directing the gaze of others towards God's activity in our world. Yet despite this model of redirection – or perhaps because of it – in the end we find our gaze fixed on Jesus. For we know that He Himself is that great mystery: "All things have been handed over to Me by my Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him." We are blessed because it is His words that we have heard, and His face that we have seen. He speaks and shows Himself in many ways, in the written Word, in the sacraments, in the world at large, and in the brothers and sisters whom He has given to us. Thanks be to God, who has given us the Evangelist Luke, and thanks be for the gifts that St. Luke gives to us, by the grace of God!

Dr. Humphrey teaches New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.

1. The first verse of the Gospel of John can be translated, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was towards God, and the Word was God."