Sunday 18 October 2026, 10.30am Eucharist
20th Sunday After Trinity, Luke the Evangelist
The Very Reverend Nicholas Papadopulos, Dean of Salisbury
2 Timothy 4: 5-17
Luke 10: 1-9
‘The alienation of man thus appeared as the fundamental evil of capitalist society’.
It’s been a while since I quoted Karl Marx in a sermon. Once upon a time the bewhiskered and impenetrable godfather of dialectical materialism was a common point of reference for a certain sort of Anglican priest (some would no doubt say that that was when the rot set in). But I am convinced that – up to a point – Marx was correct. The fundamental evil of society is the sense of alienation that grips many of us.
Let’s think about it in terms that are comprehensible – the means of production, distribution, and exchange as they relate to a treasured Western institution that is facing existential danger. The dinner party. If that doesn’t bring people to the barricades in Exeter Street I don’t know what will.
In the last fifty years, in the US, the number of people who regularly host family or friends at home has fallen by 70%. In the UK nearly half of us avoid hosting. Now, personal experience suggests it’s a statistic that does not apply to the Close…but beyond its walls, where there be dragons, various contemporary realities contribute to it: cost, our dispersed social networks, and the complex matrix of answers to the question that the contemporary hosts dread – do you have any dietary requirements?
There is also the Instagram/Masterchef factor. The Internet abounds with images of expertly curated cocktails (they’re always ‘curated’), with images of gorgeous table decorations, and with images of artisan candles. The TV cooks whip up dishes of exotic provenance and bewildering nuance. In this world, a microwaved curry in front of the television doesn’t cut it. Some tell a story about place settings, glistening cutlery, and vintage wines; some prefer chicken madras and Celebrity Traitors. Their story is different.
Saint Luke, who we honour today, is routinely acknowledged as the master storyteller among the four Evangelists. It’s not just that he writes in the most polished Greek. It’s that he has a flair for the dramatic from which Claudia Winkelman could learn a thing or two. Remember the moment when Jesus returns to the synagogue in Nazareth, where he had grown up. He reads from the scroll. He rolls it up and sits down. ‘The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him’ writes Luke. Only then does Jesus begin to speak. There’s a cliffhanger quality to it. But it’s not just the way Luke tells his story. It’s that he tells stories that none of the others tell. Rattling good stories: the shepherds come to the manger only in Luke; the Good Samaritan stumbles across the unfortunate traveller only in Luke; the Prodigal Son finds himself flat on his face in a pigsty only in Luke.
We honour a master storyteller by reflecting on the stories we tell and on the stories we hear. And we are surely compelled to acknowledge that our nation’s stories are becoming increasingly disparate. On the surface it may be about microwaved curry versus tian of crab in a rosemary jus (it’s always a jus). On the surface. But – back to Marx – it’s really about alienation. Those who favour the ease of the former are alienated from the glamour of the latter. Haute cuisine represents a world from which the curry aficionado is excluded. And here’s the (far more serious) thing: masked groups are blockading our ports. They are groups who are alienated from the story that they believe the migrants’ arrivals tells. They are groups who tell their own story, a story of falling living standards, disappearing opportunities, and repeated exclusion from the centres of power.
What story do we tell as Christians? What story do we tell as Church? Too often it has been a story that alienates its hearers – its gay hearers, its female hearers, its black or brown hearers, its poor or working-class hearers; its hearers who associate Marx only with Spencer. Too often the Church’s story has not been theirs.
Paul writes to Timothy that Luke is the only companion left to him. Crescens has gone to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia, and the very disappointing Demas to Thessalonica. Luke is the only one who is left behind. In his telling of his story he is constantly faithful to those who are left behind. He tells us of Zechariah the priest of the Temple, but also of Elizabeth his wife; he tells us of Simeon the prophet, but also of Anna the prophet; he alone records that Jesus bestows upon a crippled woman the dignity of being ‘a daughter of Abraham’. Luke invariably stands with the dispossessed, foregrounding them and bringing them to our attention millennia before such behaviour became fashionable. So, in the story we tell as Christians and as Church, with whom do we stand?
Often – perhaps more often than not – our story will compel us to stand in two places, and to stand in two places at once. With the terrified migrants plucked from the sea and placed on buses in a land far from home, yes, of course – but also with the protestors who believe their communities and their stake in them have been changed and taken from them. Not with the cynical crime of casting the former adrift and not with the violence and intimidation associated with the latter. But our story must take account of the fear in both stories and the pain in both stories. It must tell of the pain and the fear in both stories. Our story must not condemn the pain and the fear or despise the pain and the fear. Our story must…must what?
The Collect reminds us that Paul writes of Luke ‘the beloved physician’. Luke is the one who stays; he is also the one who heals. If our story does not bring healing then it is not Luke’s story and if it is not Luke’s story then it is not Christ’s story. For Christ is the one who comes to heal. And if I am right, and if I am right that Marx is sort-of right, then Christ is the one who comes to heal the greatest alienation of them all: the existential fear that is the stuff of our darkest nightmares – the fear that we are alone in the universe, that, ultimately, we are not known and we are not loved.
In his incarnation Christ assures us that such fear is groundless. Whatever stories we tell ourselves, whatever delusions haunt us, to whatever lengths we go in tormenting ourselves about our eternal alone-ness, we cannot be alienated. Not from Christ. Ever. We are known. We are loved. All of us.