Sermon preached at All Saints Church, Penarth on the Feast of St Luke, 18th October 2026

Isaiah 61.1-6

Colossians 4.7-18

https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=659266109

Today the church in Wales celebrates Luke the evangelist, the one who wrote the Gospel of Luke, who is generally reckoned also to be the author of the Acts of the Apostles, and who is mentioned three times in St Paul’s letters including the mention in our New Testament lesson from Colossians, from the letter to the Colossians, where he is described as ‘the beloved physician’. Another translation describes him as, ‘Our dear friend, Luke, the doctor’.

You might slightly wonder what the connection is between Saint Paul mentioning his friend Luke and the passage from Isaiah in the Old Testament, looking forward to the rebuilding of the Temple and return from exile in Babylon of the Israelites. Isaiah’s prophecy about it was this:

‘The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me, he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners’;

In the sixth century BC the Israelites had been taken into captivity in Babylon – and you’ll remember Psalm 137 (or possibly the Boney M version), ‘ by the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept’, and then following the defeat of the Babylonians by the Persians under King Cyrus, the Israelites were able to go back to Palestine. This prophecy is written against that background.

That prophecy in Isaiah comes up again a passage from the story of Jesus – but only as Luke told it. You will remember in chapter 4 of St Luke’s Gospel (verse 16) it goes:

‘So he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and went to synagogue on Sabbath day, as he regularly did. He stood up to read the lesson and was handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He opened the scroll and found the passage which says,

The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me;

he has sent me to announce good news to the poor, to

proclaim release for prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind;

to let the broken victims go free,

to proclaim the year of the Lord‘s favour.’ (NEB)

In other words, Jesus quoted the passage which we had as our Old Testament lesson. It talks about a situation that we haven’t experienced really since the time of William the Conqueror, 1066. Being on the losing side in a war, coming back to a place, your home, which you were driven out of by invaders, is a situation which we have never experienced. But Isaiah’s prophecy tells you how God would like such a situation to be handled: that people should be comforted, that captives should be set free and prisoners released; that there should be ‘a year of the Lord‘s favour’ – and what does that mean?

‘A year of the Lord‘s favour’: it is usually reckoned to mean a year of ‘jubilee’, jubilee, the concept of debt relief introduced in the book of Leviticus; that every 50 years there should be cancellation of all debts, allowing each family a fresh start, that slaves and indentured servants should be freed and allowed to return to their families; and interestingly, that all ancestral land sold or lost as a result of poverty and debt, had to be returned to its original owners or their family, so as to prevent people acquiring bigger and bigger estates and condemning people to perpetual poverty. A very interesting concept, which might well have some validity today.

Thomas Piketty, the economist, has famously argued that it is very bad for society if people amass capital at the expense of poor people’s labour, so that the rich become much richer and the poor become much poorer, because society values work less than owning things, until the wealth gap damages the life of society; he would, I think, approve of the idea of jubilee as way of preventing the growth in the division between rich and poor.

The theological basis for the idea of jubilee was that the land and the people belong to God rather than to any human agency, and that the Israelites, the people, were merely the tenants and stewards of God‘s property rather than being the ultimate owners. It was a way of ensuring human flourishing, a ‘divine guardrail’ as somebody called it, against greed, against the perpetuation of class divisions and systematic oppression. The Jubilee concept reflects God’s divine mercy and justice. It’s definitely worth looking again at Leviticus chapter 25, where the doctrine of jubilee is set out in detail. Maybe John Healey, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, should look at it too, before the Budget!

But the elephant in the room, which I am sure you are all thinking about, in the context of people returning to Palestine, is Gaza. What must it be like for the poor people of Gaza to go back to where they once lived, after the destruction wrought by the Israelis? Sadly, it is still going on, to an extent which would make it front page news if it was happening here. There, the Israelis are still bombing Gaza. 1400 people have been killed by Israeli bombing since the so-called ‘ceasefire’ began, a year ago. They are still killing people. At the last count they have killed over 70,000 people, of whom they reckon at least 20,000 were women and children.

I would like to mention that there will be a world premiere of a film about the situation in Gaza, here at our All Saints Community Cinema in the Lesser Hall, next week, on Wednesday 28th, at 7:30. It’s called

GAZA: A STORY OF LOVE AND WAR
2026 EDITION

It’s a film made by a Welsh, Jewish, journalist, Mike Joseph, about his friendship and discussions with Sami Abu Salem, a Palestinian journalist in Gaza. I will quote from the blurb for the film.

‘Two journalists meet to share stories over a Zoom link. One is Welsh and unable to get into Gaza. The other is Palestinian and unable to escape.

As they talk, an intimate history of the Palestinian Nakba is revealed, from the expulsions of 1948 to the lethal ‘ceasefire’ of 2026.

A generation ago, the journalists’ mothers escaped two different catastrophes — the Holocaust in 1939-45 and the violent expulsion of Palestinians in 1948. We learn of remarkable connections in their stories, leading to an unexpected question – Is coexistence possible? – and a surprising answer.

….. Sami describes how he, his family and Gaza people struggle to survive, as the occupier denies water, food, power, electricity and medicine.

………’

I won’t spoil it by telling you too much more, but I would encourage you to consider coming to the showing, which will be a world premiere, on Wednesday week. It will be free although there will be a collection for Palestinian charities, and Mike Joseph, the film-maker, will be there to discuss it and answer questions. Wednesday 28th at 7.30 in the Lesser Hall.

Isaiah prophesied ‘good news to the poor: release for prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind; to let the broken victims go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord‘s favour.’

Jesus said, ‘Today, in your very hearing, this text has come true’.

That was then, but what about now? We do indeed need to provide for those who mourn in Zion – and as Isaiah says, we need to give them a garland instead of ashes. Amen.