St. Luke's Day by Robert Crouse
Tuesday, November 22, 2005 at 07:32PM Bishop Anthony Burton
St. Alban's Cathedral, Prince Albert, Saskatchewan
September 18, 2003
The Rev. Canon R.D. Crouse, Canon Theologian of the Diocese of Saskatchewan
Ye are witnesses of these things (S. Luke 24)
This Festival of St. Luke the Evangelist moves us to consider that fundamental aspect of all Christian vocation, which is evangelism. St. Luke is an evangelist: one who witnesses to the Evangel--the Gospel, the Good News of the Word made flesh in Jesus Christ; the Good News of God with us in the power of the Holy Spirit. "Thus it is written, that Christ should suffer, and rise again from the dead the third day; and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning from Jerusalem; and ye are witnesses of these things." "Ye are witnesses of these things." So speaks Jesus to his Apostles; and so speaks Jesus also to us: "Ye are witnesses of these things." So speaks Jesus to his Apostles; and so speaks Jesus also to us: "Ye are witnesses of these things."
Evangelism--witness to the Gospel--is a fundamental aspect, indeed, the very fundament of all Christian vocation. "Ye are witnesses of these things." "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, and our hands have handles, of the word of life". That which we have seen and heard and declare unto you, that ye may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son, Jesus Christ." (2 Jo. 1). "Ye are witnesses of these things."
Our own Church intended that the nineties--the last decade of the twentieth century--should be especially a decade of evangelism, in the hope of encouraging renewed zeal in our proclaiming and our living of the Gospel. If that hope was largely frustrated, the reason is to be found, I think, not in any ill-will, but in our preoccupation with the confusions and dilemmas, theological and moral, which face us in these days, as we try to understand and live the implications of the Gospel in an increasingly secular society, in which Christians tend to be seen as just one of many special-interest groups within a multi-cultural society.
Certainly, the tribulations of the Church in our day are manifold. In a recent book, entitled, In the Ruins of the Church, Russell Reno speaks of "the fetters that our age has given us to wear: an increasingly inarticulate theological tradition, a capitulating and culturally captive Church, a disintegrating spiritual discipline." He speaks, of course, from the perspective of what he sees as the impotence and lifelessness of the Church in North America, and within those limits, I think his diagnosis is convincing.
But for us, I think, that perspective needs to be balanced by two considerations. First, we must not become so preoccupied by our local, provincial or national concerns that we fail to see and fail to be spiritually nourished by the vast numbers of faithful Christians, including the vast majority of Anglican Christians, here and elsewhere, who witness to the faith, sometimes in dire circumstances, sometimes at the cost of their lives. Secondly, we must know ourselves to be upheld by the witness of all the saints: by the witness of all who have been in Christ before us, who live in a faithfulness which does not falter. As John Ellerton put it in one of his hymns:
They name is blessed by countless numbers
In vaster worlds unseen, unknown,
Whose duteous service never slumbers,
In perfect love and faultless tone.
These are matters which the festival of an Evangelist should impress on our minds: "watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry." Watching and witnessing: that is our evangelical vocation. If we are true to that vocation, even our tribulations turn into blessings, even our sins become occasions of more abundant grace. As the Psalmist says:
Blessed are the men whose strength is in thee,
in whose heart are the pilgrim ways;
Who going through the Vale of Misery use it for a well;
yea, the early rain covereth it with blessings.
They go from strength to strength,
and unto the God of gods appeareth every one of them in Sion. (Ps. 84)
How similarly appropriate it is that this Festival of St. Luke should also be the occasion for our celebration of the tenth anniversary of our bishop's consecration. When I preached at that ceremony ten years ago, I remarked that the bishop must somehow be a focus of unity in a Church threatened by the Scylla and Charybdis of radical schism on the one hand, and a vacuous bureaucratic uniformity on the other. He will be under constant pressure to conform to the faddish standards and inclinations of the present age in the Church and in the world; he will be tempted often towards discouragement, and even cynicism; and there won't be many easy answers. In fact, there will be only one real answer, and that one won't always be easy. St. Paul says it, in First Corinthians: "It is required in stewards that a man be found faithful." And as St. Irenaeus, the great exponent of Apostolic Succession in the midst of the Gnostic crisis of the second century, clearly saw and said, the bishop can serve as a focus of unity only inasmuch as he himself is faithful of the tradition of the truth divinely given; only thus can he hold the freedom and integrity of mind which can resist the pressures to conform to the spirit of the present age.
The bishop's vocation has become no easier during the past decade. We give thanks to God today for ten years of Bishop Burton's faithful stewardship here; for ten years of steadfast loyalty to the doctrine, sacraments and discipline of Christ our Saviour. The Word of God goes forth into all the world. "It shall not return to me void", says the Lord, "but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it."
I'll spare the bishop the embarrassment of any more personal encomiums, and simply sum this up with some words in which John Donne speaks of a preacher:
I glorify God much in the gifts of the man, but I glorify God much more in the gifts of his grace; I am glad that I have heard the man, but I am gladder that I have heard God in him; I am happy that I have heard those words, but thrice happy that in those words I have heard the Word.
As so we come today, with thanksgiving, in penitence and faith, to the altar of the Lord, where we recollect and proclaim anew the mystery of our salvation; where we show forth the Lord's death until he come again. Here with angels and archangels, with St. Luke and all the company of heaven, we laud the Name of our salvation, and adore the mystery of divine love, in Christ's Body broken and his blood shed for us. Here today the Gospel--the Evangel--is proclaimed in word and sacrament, and "we are witnesses of these things."
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