St Luke’s Gospel

St Luke’s Gospel

Dear Friends,

It has been deeply moving to read so many of your comments and experiences over the last 10 days in response to the series on Safeguarding and the worship materials for last Sunday.  As ever these series are planned, and written, months in advance; it was timely (but accidental), then, that they appeared just as the Makin Report was released.  This report looked into John Smyth’s sadistic abuse of boys and young men, the Church of England’s failures in dealing with him properly over so many years and failings of senior church leaders.  As you know this culminated in Justin Welby announcing his resignation as Archbishop of Canterbury.  Over the last 10 days we’ve thought about safeguarding, what leadership might look like, what justice might mean and how we might help our churches be safer.  I hope these reflections have given food for thought; I know from the many people who’ve written to tell me of their own experiences how helpful some have found them. 

We turn, tomorrow, to St Luke’s Gospel which will be, on and off,  the Gospel we read on Sundays from the first Sunday of Advent until this time next year.    The Gospel of Luke tells of the origins, birth, ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus.  Together with the Acts of the Apostles, it makes up a two-volume work which scholars call Luke–Acts, accounting for 27.5% of the New Testament. The combined work divides the history of first-century Christianity into three stages, with the gospel making up the first two of these – the life of Jesus the Messiah from his birth to the beginning of his mission in the meeting with John the Baptist, followed by his ministry with events such as the Sermon on the Plain and its Beatitudes, and his Passion, death, and resurrection.  Most modern scholars agree that the main sources used for Luke were a), the Gospel of Mark (which is copied almost in its entirety), b), a hypothetical sayings collection called the Q source and found also in Matthew but not John and Mark, and c), material found in no other gospels, often referred to as the L (for Luke) source (much of the Christmas story). The author is anonymous and there’s no name in the text despite the work with a named recipient. The most probable date for its composition is around AD 80–110, and there is evidence that it was still being revised well into the 2nd century.

We start this work tomorrow but will jump over the Christmas story, looping back to it in late November, and continue our reading through of this Gospel until Easter next year.

With every good wish

Andy

The Rev’d Andy Braunston
Minister for Digital Worship