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My dad started out as a physician. That is the role he went out and trained for. It is the role he held for most of my life. Back in 2018, he retired from serving at the VA Hospital in Birmingham and was figuring out what the next chapter in his life would be.
At this time, my dad felt God’s call to learn more and do more in Jesus’ Name. That call led my dad to CPE, Clinical Pastoral Education. From there he saw a great need, the need for physicians like him to have someone to minister to them. This led him to the path of becoming a deacon, which some of you have had the opportunity to witness here in this church on Fathers’ Day these past two years.
I mention my dad’s story because by tradition, Luke has been thought to be a physician. For this reason, we have our reading from Sirach this morning, though it is from the Apocrypha, those extra books before the New Testament times not included in the Tanakh, what we call the Old Testament, and thus not part of the Canon of Scripture. Yet this book reminds us to honor physicians, such as Luke might have been, and to see the work they do for God’s Glory.
If our tradition is true, then Luke eventually went from being a physician to follow Paul on his journey, as mentioned in 2 Timothy today. If Luke who followed Paul and Luke the Evangelist are one and the same, as our tradition once suggested, then Luke made the move from being a physician to being an evangelist.
We all serve God in many ways, and I know many here who have taken their professions seriously as a means to serve God in this world in large part because some of you have taken the time to let me know that. Yet the direction God wishes us to serve can at some times change. That’s what happened for my dad. It’s what our tradition hands down as what possibly happened for Luke as well.
That means we have to continue to be open to hear what direction God wishes us to go in.
We have to be open to hearing the Scripture “fulfilled in our hearing”, as Jesus puts it in the Gospel according to Luke today.
To be true to the Evangelist whose name our parish bears, we must follow this example. We must take the time to stop and listen. We need to receptive to hearing what it is God has to say. We have to be open to where God needs us to be next.
If we’re to follow the Evangelist whose name we bear, we must follow the one thing we do know beyond any doubt about him. We must make our lives a signpost pointing only to Jesus. We must do everything in our power to help others realize that in Jesus the Scripture is fulfilled in our hearing. We must put aside all else and share the Good News of our Lord Jesus Christ, just as Luke did.
In the end for Luke, it wasn’t about Luke at all. It was about Jesus. If we are to be like him and follow his example, we must be the same. Whether we change how we serve God doesn’t matter. What matters is that we are listening. What matters is who we serve. What matters above all other things is Jesus.