by CCW | 18 October 2018 22:00
The opening of the understanding is a recurring motif in Luke’s Gospel. It serves to highlight an important feature of his commemoration as the author of the third Gospel and the author of the Book of the Acts of the Apostles. There is something significant and attractive about the figure of St. Luke and the role which he exercises in the Christian imagination. He is, as the Collect puts it,“an Evangelist and a Physician of the soul” and one “whose praise is in the Gospel.”
Healing is about more than just relief from bodily ailments. More important is the idea of the healing of the soul captured in the Gospel for his feast day. The Scriptures are opened for our understanding and in particular the understanding of Christ’s Passion and Resurrection from which flows the preaching of repentance and the forgiveness of sins. These are powerful ideas which Luke explores in his writings to the glory of God and the good of his church and people, we might say.
The healing of our souls. How we think about things and how we look upon one another are critical concerns. It strikes me as somewhat ironic that we should commemorate Luke, Evangelist and Physician, the day after the legalisation of cannabis in Canada. It is true that from a Christian perspective nothing in the physical and natural order is simply evil. Somehow there is something good in the being of every creaturely thing, something good by definition about cannabis and its chemical components. But there is also the great and good wisdom about how we use the good things of our world and day.
That is a far greater question. We know that we can abuse all manner of good things. What I must confess to being utterly uncertain about is the recreational use of marijuana, of cannabis. What exactly is that good? We know only too well about the misuse and abuse of alcohol, namely, drinking to excess, drinking to get drunk, to intentionally lose control and imagine that one is ‘feeling good’ while under the influence. We know only too well what dangers that can lead to and the cost it brings. But abusus non tollit usum. The abuse of something doesn’t take away from its proper use. What is the proper use of cannabis exactly?
What is meant by the recreational use of cannabis? To get high, it seems, though apparently with the production and marketing of different edible forms of cannabis there must be some appeal to taste, to something more than just getting high. Yet it seems that being stoned to some degree or another comes with the territory of smoking or consuming cannabis quite apart from its putative medicinal effects and use.
It may be now legal but it seems to me that there are a host of ethical concerns that are not encompassed in the legal outlook. No doubt we will have to live with the consequences of this political and legislative decision. The simple point is that the legal is not always the ethical.
On the feast of St. Luke, we reflect on the ethical dimensions of his life and ministry, his work and writings which speak profoundly to the good of our souls in the face of the darkness of the human heart. Luke, it seems, to me often speaks to our hearts and in a most gentle and compelling way. He shows us something of the compassion of Christ in his dealings with our confused and disordered humanity. Healing can only happen when we face the darkness of our hearts and our culture. For only then are we able to look to God and his grace.
Luke offers us another view of our humanity in the Ascension of Christ. There is joy for us in the homecoming of the son to the Father, to our having a place in the love of God. No greater high, if you will, than our being lifted up into the heart of God through the opening of the understanding.
Fr. David Curry
The Feast of St. Luke
October 18th, 2018
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2018/10/18/sermon-for-the-feast-of-st-luke-the-evangelist/
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