Today is St Luke’s Day. There is an ancient tradition that Luke was one the seventy disciples sent out by Jesus ahead of him – our Gospel story. Another tradition makes him one of the unnamed disciples on the road to Emmaus. I doubt both of them. Luke would probably have been far too young. Far more likely is that Luke was one of Paul’s companions and co-workers. There are several passages later in the Bible that make that connection. And as a young man, he was very probably an eye-witness to some of the things he writes about in the Acts of the Apostles.

It’s very likely that Luke wrote his two hugely important and wonderful books, the Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, around fifty years after Jesus’s execution. He was articulate, almost certainly a native Greek-speaker, probably not born a Jew, was a resident, perhaps, of Antioch and quite probably a physician. He is thus very appropriately patron saint of doctors (and rather surprisingly of artists too).

Today we don’t just thank God for his writings and all that they mean to us, but we celebrate the distinctive message that Luke preached, one that is truly Good News.

Let’s not dwell too long on the passage abut the sending out of the seventy. It is, after all, perhaps, not entirely Covid-secure. Luke has a broader, more exiting Gospel that is typified in two of the stories that only he brings us, a Gospel of hope even in these difficult days.

The first is the story of Mary. Only Luke gives us details of the birth of Jesus and of Mary’s uniquely special part in them. Luke features women in the Gospel story more visibly than the other three evangelists. This young woman hasn’t got much going for her. As a Galilean, she’s from a backwater on the edge of Jewish respectability. Her family isn’t mentioned, and her social status is low. She’s an insignificant country girl, aged not more than about twelve and yet in God’s eyes she is favoured – highly favoured, as the Angel Gabriel declares to her.

One of Luke’s core messages is that being part of God’s family is all that really matters. He brings truly good news to the poor and tells us that one of the key consequences of our calling must be to befriend and utterly accept all those who in this world are in any kind of need, because God does.

This is illustrated supremely well in the remarkable story of the Good Samaritan, a story also unique to Luke’s Gospel. The great point of this, of course, is that being a neighbour to someone must extend not only to how we exercise our charity when we’re in control of the situation, but how we’re to behave when we’re utterly helpless and in need. Who then will we accept as our neighbour and friend? If our enemy comes to embraces us, will we respond? Who then is our neighbour? Luke’s Gospel reveals that a Christian concept of reconciliation sweeps away our normal human conventions. God’s forgiveness explodes the tentative constraints that even the most libertarian and imaginative of us tend to adopt.

While Luke rightly makes much of the significance of Jesus’s death and resurrection in God’s purposes, his understanding of what salvation means keys in with what we’ve seen in these two stories: it is all encompassing. It’s about reconciliation, healing and forgiveness as we begin to re-orient ourselves and everything that we do in line with God’s purposes of self-giving love. It’s also all about seeing ourselves and finding our true selves in community with others rather than as individuals desperate to save our own skins.

It tells us again and again that our relationship to Jesus must determine our day to day behaviour, and that as a result of this we must put all that we have in God’s service in order to reach out to those in need. And in opening ourselves to other people beyond and across the barriers that the world erects we meet God. This is what discipleship means. This is how God’s kingdom comes close.

But if I give the impression that Luke’s is primarily a social Gospel that would be wrong. Luke also immerses us very deeply in the world of prayer. He can be very reflective and has a special concern to emphasise the life of the Holy Spirit within the growing Christian community. There is always in this Gospel a vivid sense of God at work amongst us. Luke both draws us in and broadens our horizons.

Luke’s two books are written, so he tells us, that we may know something of the truth of how things are, but they are even more an exploration of the meaning of the amazing events he describes. And it’s as such that they have the power to inspire us today.

We’re not given a detailed blueprint of how we should reach out to those most in need right now, or of how we should hold onto a sense of community in a world blighted by Covid, but we are reminded that such things matter profoundly; and that if we trust in God by trying to follow the Way that Jesus reveals, the right way forward will emerge.

It sends us on, just as Jesus sent out the seventy disciples in the days of his earthly ministry, with a sense of excitement, anticipation and urgency. We don’t quite know what will happen, but God will be with us and as Jesus reassures us, the harvest will ultimately be plentiful. Luke’s writings bring us hope and are Good News for today indeed.