Gospel

Feast of St Luke, Evangelist (18 October 2018)

2 Timothy 4:10-17

Luke 10:1-9

“The kingdom of God is very near to you.” 

St Luke is the author of two books in the New Testament: the Gospel according to Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. Probably Luke was a native of Antioch, and a physician by profession. He had become a disciple of the apostles and later followed Paul until Paul’s martyrdom. He seems to have been a close companion of Paul on some of his missionary journeys and on his final journey to Rome. This is based on the belief that the Acts of the Apostles was written by Luke and that in the Acts a number of passages use the word “we,” suggesting the writer was a companion of Paul (Acts 16:10-17; 20:5-15; 27:1-28:16).

The gospel given by Luke and others is by no means a historical document (nor is it ahistorical). Luke (as others) writes as an evangelist, the result being a statement of faith in Jesus Christ. We should not read the gospels as mere history, but accept them as reflections on God who revealed himself in the historical person Jesus. But the trouble is that we have made the Bible into a bunch of ideas—about which we can be right or wrong—rather than an invitation to a new set of eyes. Bible and the gospels in particular are all for the sake of astonishment! They are for our journey of divine transformation and configuring ourselves into Christ, not intellectual or "small-self" convenience.

So the best way to read the Bible is to use both the head and the heart. Without this balance we can end up in either of the following two temptations (mediocrities): the progressive temptation or the conservative temptation. The progressive temptation is all head and little heart. It is a mediocrity that discounts all genuine God experiences, and focus merely on the historical and the critical part. The conservative temptation is all heart and little head. It's sweet and nice, but it's never going to transform history; it's the other mediocrity that is never going to influence people in a sensible way.

If we believe the Bible to be revealing the Word of God then it has to be received with all our self, with all our being. The Word of God is forever inviting us and moving us towards the fullness of the divine union: the kingdom of God. God's reign has already come, it is very near to us, it is inside us. Only that we need to acknowledge and celebrate it with all our lives. This is good news (gospel) all about! Only that it is so hard to accept that God already accepts us and celebrates us unconditionally.

To allow yourself to be God's beloved is to be God's beloved. To allow yourself to be chosen is to be chosen. To allow yourself to be blessed is to be blessed. It is so hard to accept being accepted, especially from God. It takes a certain kind of humility to surrender to it, and even more to persist in believing it. Any person of God knows this to be true: God chooses and then uses whom He chooses, and their usability comes from their willingness to allow themselves to be chosen in the first place. What a paradox! The very desire to love God comes from God Himself. He both creates the desire and fulfills it.