Compassionate Challenge
According to St. Irenaeus writing in the late 2nd century (or 100s), the third Gospel in our New Testament, and its sequel (Acts) were attributed to Luke, identified in Paul’s letters as a physician and companion of Paul. And midway through Acts, as Paul begins his missionary journeys, it becomes “we” rather than “they.”
Luke was most likely a Gentile proselyte to Judaism, someone who believed in the one and only God of Israel but had not been circumcised. Through Paul, Luke came to see Jesus as Israel's Messiah/Christ. And through Paul’s interpretation of the Gospel, Luke saw how Jew and Gentile could be restored to unity with God and each other in Christ Jesus. (Mission of the Church, BCP, p. 855). Perhaps it was this combination of healing and inclusion that Luke experienced which led him to write the Gospel of compassionate challenge.
Only in Luke's Gospel do we have the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Only in Luke's Gospel does Jesus ask his Father to forgive those crucifying him. Only in Luke’s Gospel does one of Jesus’s fellow crucified find salvation and healing in Jesus’s mercy. And in his inaugural address as the Chosen King of Israel, Jesus makes clear that his Good News is relevant to all people, not just in their Sunday best, but in the hard places of their lives that we might be tempted to leave outside the church walls. And yet within those stories of compassion are also challenges to those who feel unappreciated or vindictive, who can only value themselves at the expense of others, who see salvation as a zero-sum game.
For my New Testament professor, the key verse to Luke’s Gospel comes from the story of Jesus’s encounter with the short tax collector, Zacchaeus,” to whom Jesus invites himself to dinner: "For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” Compassion for the sinner and the outcast, challenge for those who think exclusion is justice. And sometimes that challenge may be to those who are already following him: “When he finished speaking to the crowds, he said to Simon, ‘Put out into the deep water, and drop your nets for a catch.’” — after Simon Peter had already been out on the water all night and caught nothing.
From Baptist to Episcopal to Catholic and back to Episcopal, from political strife to ordination and its own kind of strife, from Alabama to Florida, to Carolina to the DMV, back to Alabama to Missouri, and back to the DMV just when the water has gotten deeper. There have been challenges, along with compassion, and catches. Luke’s compassionate challenge is to all of us to put out into deep water and let down our net for a catch.
October 18th, 2026
21st Sunday after Pentecost,
St. Luke the Evangelist
The Rev. David P. Kendrick