The Good Life

Before we dove into the readings for today, I want y’all to take a brief moment and think about how you would describe the good life? Turn to the person next to you and tell them briefly what your description of the good life is. Next question: How do you define the word blessed? Tell the person next to you. Hold on to those thoughts for a bit; we’ll come back to them.

But first, let’s look at the Gospel reading for today. This is Luke’s version of the better known Matthew’s telling of the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes. Matthew’s version had 9 ‘blessed are’ statements and no ‘woes’, and as is obvious by it’s common title, Jesus does the teaching on a mountain side.

Luke has Jesus talking on a ‘level place’ and the teaching is directed primarily at the disciples, not the crowd. Let’s take a moment to talk about the crowd. This isn’t a group of religious elite or the wealthy class or political officials. These were the powerless and impoverished folks trapped in the poverty of Roman Oppression. They had come looking for Jesus to be healed and made whole.

And after taking care of them, Jesus turns to his disciples and says the craziest, most upside down thing someone can say after having just taken care of the poorest and sickest of people. So we need to make the effort to look at these statements from the same perspective of the people Jesus has just healed and the disciples who had given up everything to follow this revolutionary itinerant preacher.

Jesus’ words are written in Greek yet he most likely would have spoken Aramaic and read scripture in Hebrew. The meaning of the word that we translate here to blessed in English means fortunate or flourishing, or the good life, and it is used to describe the circumstances of another person. It isn’t the same word that we would say in English “God bless you” when wishing them well.But before we get lost in a seminary style word study let me just say that the point is to understand the word, translated here as ‘blessed’ and in other translations as ‘happy’ is a description of something seen in the circumstances of another person. This word isn’t a magical incantation to initiate gifts from God that we want for ourselves.

Jesus is describing what he’s seeing in front of him – the condition of the people who had come to him for healing – using a wisdom word intended to persuade those listening that a certain way of life is the ideal state. Jesus is saying that from the vantage point of God’s Kingdom on Earth as in heaven, these are the markers of those who live the good life: being poor, being hungry, weeping, and being hated and rejected. In the second part of each statement Jesus discloses the gift from God received by those living this Kingdom of God good life.

You who live the good life of being poor in this world are given the Kingdom of Heaven. Notice that this one is in the present tense – the Kingdom of God with it’s upside down perspective of what the good life actually is, is here, for each of us to step into now, if we are willing to reevaluate what makes the good life by God’s rules for measuring flourishing.

We live the good life in God’s Kingdom when we work together to ensure no one is hungry, to lift each other up in hard times, and live the teachings of Jesus regardless of what others may think or say about us. This is the good life because this is the life that God created us to live.

These words of Jesus are his commentary on what is happening in the lives of the powerless people right in front of him, the poor and sick and impoverished. This is the kind of people Jesus chose to share the good news of God’s kingdom with. They are the fortunate ones.

And for those folks who are more concerned with amassing wealth than they are about helping others flourish, for those who would rather gorge themselves than share their abundance, and those who ignore the hardship of others and live only to impress others, well, God’s Kingdom isn’t very good news at all. Determining whether or not Jesus’ message is good news or bad news depends on your perspective of whether or not you are living in the kingdom on earth as in heaven.

If you are walking through life in God’s Kingdom at hand, this is all very good news; if you are walking through life working at building your own kingdom, this is bad news.

From the very beginning, God lays it out plainly: Flourish in the abundance of the garden, just don’t mess with that one tree. Through all of the stories of our faith ancestors, God has instructed us about blessings and woes (otherwise known as curses), life and death. God created us to live within this framework. And over and over again, we get tired of waiting on God’s blessings because we have redefined “blessed” as getting what we want when we want it. In the economy of God’s Kingdom on earth as in heaven, being blessed is about everyone having what they need to flourish and participate with God by blessing others. This is the good life.

When God made the choice to create us all in God’s image, it wasn’t so that we could convince others to worship us but so that we would know that we are God’s representatives in this creation and our purpose is to be stewards of all that God offers us in and through creation.

Being rich or having enough food or being happy aren’t bad. These are good things that God wants for all people. When we let others go without when we have more than enough, that’s when we’ve taken the wrong path; we’ve corrupted the goodness of God’s provision for all people.

God’s blessings aren’t about making our individual lives easier. God’s blessings are to flow outward from the recipients to build up the Kingdom of God on earth. And when we try to seize our own blessing on our own terms, well, woe to us because God will turn us over to the consequences of trying to take on our own terms what God freely gives us.

What we do with our money, how we share what we have with others especially those who don’t have the same societal privileges as us, and who we admire and celebrate with, how we interact with our neighbors, who we consider to be our neighbors, convey what our preferred Kingdom is.

Jesus invites us to live the good life and challenges our understanding of just what the good life is. Remember back to the beginning when I asked you to tell the person next to you what the good life is? We can’t share the good life if we are sitting by ourselves. The good life can only be lived in community with others, loving God and our neighbors, so that everyone flourishes in God’s Kingdom. Amen.