Thank God for Doctor Luke! His gospel is so clear and so well-told. It’s not surprising it’s a favourite with so many people. Now you must understand me: I am not decrying the other three. We need them all: we need the white-hot urgency of Mark; we need the painstaking Matthew with his deep sense of continuity and fulfilment within the Jewish tradition; and we need John, whose mystical intensity is coupled with such a feeling for drama. But Luke, the Greek doctor, is so civilised, so organised, so educated and so balanced-seeming! How can anything he says be doubted? He wouldn’t put his name to anything daft. If Paul and the other apostles were all suffering under some group delusion, wouldn’t Luke be quick to recognise it and steer clear of it? After all, he wasn’t a Jew, was he?; he wasn’t an apostle; he was outside all that.
It’s from Paul that we know definitely that Luke is a doctor. In the letter to the Colossians, he writes, ‘Luke, the beloved doctor, and Demas, send greetings.’ And scholars all agree that he had the best command of Greek of any writer in the whole of the New Testament. It is also generally agreed that this gospel and the Acts of the Apostles were both written by him, as both the language and the approach are so alike.
But why did he bother? Well, it’s obvious that something very important had happened to him. One thing which is nice is the prologue at the beginning of the gospel, in which he tells us he is writing for someone called Theophilus. Now Theophilus means ‘friend of God’, and it’s not certain whether Luke was writing for a particular individual with this name, or more generally to anyone and everyone who could be described as a friend of God. What Luke says is that others have written the story just as it was handed down from eye-witnesses; what he wants to do is, after careful investigation, to write an orderly account – the clear implication being that the other accounts are not particularly orderly or well-researched, being as they are a written record of the story as passed down by word of mouth.
At the end of the prologue he tells us why he is writing. He tells Thophilus it’s, “so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.” He wants to back up the teachings with clear evidence, expressed in clear language and organised into a coherent structure, so that the reader should have no doubt about accepting the certainty of the things described. You can imagine him saying, “I’m not a fanatic. I’m not out to radicalise you. I’m a doctor, you know. I am used to studying patiently; I am used to weighing things up carefully and not jumping to conclusions; and I know more than most people about the realities of living and dying, and what I’m telling you is true. It really did happen.”
Now it’s been suggested that, as a Greek, Luke would have shared the Greek idea of human potential – the sort of wish to work towards the ideal by cultivating such things as arts and sciences, politics and philosophy, and sports and religion. And that the whole gospel of St.Luke is centred round that one idea, the idea of the perfect man, and the conviction that in Jesus, the perfect man is no longer just an idea, but a reality. It is interesting to read Luke with that thought in mind. You start to notice things like the way he places Jesus in a wider family context with ‘cousin Elizabeth’, how important things like the story of Jesus being left behind in the temple are. And odd details like the description of Jesus’s fast during his temptation in the desert: “He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry.” Doesn’t that bring out the humanity of the situation with touching simplicity?
Now let’s turn our attention to today’s passage. It’s the very last appearance of the risen Jesus, leading up to his ascension into heaven. It describes how he appeared amongst his disciples. They were all excitedly coming to terms with the truth of Jesus’s resurrection, whereupon the two whom Jesus had met on the road to Emmaus added their testimony. This is when Jesus stood among them, desiring that they should be at peace. It didn’t work, though. I’m sure Luke has a sense of humour when, immediately after Jesus says, “Peace be with you,” the next words he writes are: ‘They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost.’
And notice how Luke – and Jesus himself, of course – emphasizes the continuing humanity of Jesus in his risen body. “Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see I have.” Can’t you just hear the doctor talking?! And then he asks for, and eats a piece of broiled fish.
Instead of being startled and frightened, now their feelings are of joy and amazement. In place of agitation and doubt, Jesus desires that they should have peace and certainty. “Why do doubts rise in your minds?” he asks. Do you see how we’ve got back to the idea of ‘certainty’? – the very thing which, in the prologue, Luke said was the whole purpose of writing the gospel in the first place Now here we are, right at the very end of the story, as Luke tells it. And someone as organised and as thoughtful as Doctor Luke would end his story in a way which served his purpose.
It’s worth considering how he does bring his mighty undertaking to a close. Well, just as with the two on the road to Emmaus, Jesus’s task is to make the disciples understand that their holy scriptures had been fulfilled in him. He reminds them that they are witnesses. It’s a lot to take in, of course. The fact that they witnessed all the events of Jesus’s life, death and resurrection is already rather a lot. But they have to understand – and obviously they didn’t understand until Jesus told them – that they have also witnessed the fulfilment of everything written about him in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.
The role of witnesses is very important to Luke. He himself was not a witness. He didn’t see the risen Jesus. If the disciples who did see him were full of doubts, how much more must he have been. He understood what it took to change a doubter into a believer, as that’s the journey he’d been on. This doctor, used to judging rationally for himself, he’d thoroughly investigated the eye-witnesses, to the point where believing what they said made more sense than not believing them. So, once again, we find that we are ending just where we started, with the role of witnesses.
If you think about what it means to be a witness, you will realise that it has two parts. One part is seeing or experiencing. If you witness an accident, you see it. But it also means that you tell, or are ready to tell, other people about your experience. What Luke seems to be saying is, “This really is what happened. You can take my word for it. I’ve checked the witnesses very carefully, and they are telling the truth.” You see why this ‘outsider’s’ gospel is so very important. Just as Theophilus can stand for anyone who is God’s friend, so Luke, can stand for anyone who feels inclined to wish they could ask the friends of Jesus themselves what really happened. Luke’s done the work. If an intelligent Greek doctor can believe them, anyone can!
There is one further thing to say, though. It’s not enough to believe that the resurrection happened, awesome though that is. If it stopped there, it would just be an extremely amazing miracle. Anyone used to thinking intelligently – like Luke – would be bound to ask, OK so it happened, but what for? What’s it all about? And Luke doesn’t let us down. In the words of Jesus himself: “The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations.”
Now that’s what changes the story from a tale of extraordinary happenings, into a gospel – into a message of good news and genuine hope. The resurrection itself would give hope that resurrection was possible, all things being possible with God. But it would doubtless be reserved for only those people who had lived perfect lives, as an embodiment of the ideal human being. And the total count of such people has now reached – 1… All that is needed, the final piece of the jigsaw, is repentance and the forgiveness of sins. This is our new covenant with God: we repent; God forgives.
And that’s where all those far-off happenings 2000 years ago have the power to touch and transform our lives. Have we ever experienced God’s forgiveness? Have we ever, burdened by some dreadful thing that we are ashamed of, or by a general sense of our own unworthiness, turned to God, and been lifted by grace into the knowledge that we are forgiven and can make a fresh start? If we do turn to God, he surely forgives. Take that story of the crippled man being let down through the roof. That determination to reach Jesus was such a sure sign of turning to God that he could immediately say, “Your sins are forgiven.” But God is ready to forgive even before we turn to him. Listen to the words of Jesus, pleading from the cross: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Think how much harm we do in ignorance, and how much we need God’s readiness to forgive.
Immediately following these words to the disciples, and with the promise of power from on high, Jesus demonstrates the most profound forgiveness of all, by ascending into heaven, and leaving them to it. He’s not stupid: he knows the sort of people he’s leaving behind to carry on his work. He knows they are going to make all kinds of dreadful mistakes. What trust, what patience, and what forgiveness his ascension into heaven shows!
And that is the very end of Doctor Luke’s story. It is an extraordinary story – culminating in the truth of the resurrection and of God’s forgiveness – by a man whose life’s work was dominated by an understanding of the physical realities of life and death, and the inevitability of sickness given our many weaknesses and stupidities. So, either this careful, thoughtful realist has been completely taken in by the collective madness of the witnesses he investigated, or he’s telling the truth, and I know which I’m inclined to believe!