Sermon Tone Analysis

As I was preparing for out time together this past week, I stumbled across some information you might find interesting…and I want to do a quick poll this morning...

Who Is Happier?

Someone who wins the Lottery?

Someone who, having been in an accident, becomes paralyzed?

Marc Reklau in his book Destination Happiness, asks this very same question and the response is quite extraordinary…Marc writes that “The lottery winners were very happy, but not for very long,” Reklau continues.

“After six months they went back to their previous levels of happiness.”

On the other hand, “the accident victims were sad, but surprisingly after six months, they [also] went back to their previous levels of happiness.”

Think about that for a moment.

Six months later both groups--those who had won the lottery and those who had an accident and were paralyzed--had returned to their previous state of happiness.

I don’t know what that says to you, but it says to me that happiness comes from somewhere other than ourselves, it is on the inside rather than our physical possessions or abilities might give.

Our circumstances don’t determine how satisfied we are with our lives.

Something else--on the inside--makes the difference.

So that begs the question, what brings us happiness and I mean true happiness in our lives?

Is it what we have or something we desire to have?

I would venture a guess that if Jesus were standing in our midst in this very moment, his response would be that true happiness comes from something that we already have and know.

The thing is though that his definition of Happiness, Contentment, and Comfort are probably vastly different than what we would say they are.

The Sermon on the Plain

Now, Jesus talked about happiness, but not in the same way you or I would talk about it.

In fact, he turned our understanding of happiness upside down.

In the Sermon on the Mount, for example, he made some unique and unusual statements about happiness which we know as the Beatitudes.

Luke, in his Gospel, gives us a condensed version of some of those stirring statements:

Happy are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

Happy are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied.

Happy are you who weep now, for you will laugh.

Happy are you when people hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man.

Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven.

For that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.

One point to make here…I chose the English word Happy rather than Blessed.

In the original Greek, the word, “makarios”, can be translated as blessed or happy.

For our purposes today and our understanding for today, I want us to think of the Greek word as meaning, happy, ok?

With that being said, I don’t know about you but these statement don’t seem very happy or comforting, do they?

I mean who really wants to be poor, hungry, sad, or hated?

Here’s the thing though, I think Jesus wanted for us to get a little befuddled by his proclamations just so that we get more out of these statements rather than just taking them at face value.

I mean think about it…Jesus could have said that we would be blessed later if we only do this or that or act this way or that way, right?

He wanted us to think and to pray and to delve into what it truly means to be one of his followers.

If we are happy because everything is good and we have no struggles, would we really appreciate what we have?

Would we really be happier if we won the lottery?

I know that for some, just like my Benediction, these words can be challenging and the furthest thing from comforting.

But I want us to take some time to look at Jesus’ words to see where we can find comfort and ultimately, everlasting happiness, in the words of his sermon as it is presented for us this morning...

Yours is the Kingdom of God

What does it mean to be truly poor?

Do we hear in these words that we are to lack everything?

Is Jesus only speaking of being financially poor or is he truly speaking about being poor from the perspective of lacking standing in society?

Remember status in Jesus’ time, well and to be perfectly honest, in our time as well was based upon what you have.

Your possessions, in particular, the land you owned and the flocks you had, determined how much you were worth to society.

What this means is that those who owed any kind of debt were slaves to the person to whom they owed the money.

Not unlike us today who have credit cards, mortgages, student loans, etc., we are slaves to the debt we owe to another.

Does this mean that we are the poor to whom Jesus was claiming?

I am not convinced.

You see, for most of us, we get into debt to get things that we want and desire.

The people of Jesus’ time went into debt to get their needs met, food, shelter, clothing, etc.

People in that culture did not just go out and borrow money to buy things they desired, they went into debt to others so that they could survive.

I believe that when Jesus is speaking of being poor here, he is speaking about what it means to be unloved, unwanted, undesired.

In that case, many of us would not be considered poor.

We are loved.

There is an entire family of faith right here that loves each one of us.

But for those of Jesus’ time, to be loved was based upon status and there were many who were believed to be unlovable.

So, for Jesus to say that those in society who are looked down upon because of their status, like many who reside in shelters or with family members because they cannot afford to live on their own, he is trying to tell them that their suffering on Earth is just that, suffering here.

If they follow in Jesus’ way, their suffering will only be here and not in the Kingdom of God.

The comfort is knowing that whatever you feel you are poor in, it will only be here, there is much better place to which we will go as long as we believe and follow…our true happiness cannot be found in the material things we have or desire it is found somewhere else.

You Will Be Satisfied

If you have ever been to the point in your life where you needed to rely on a food pantry or were close to relying on a food pantry for your daily requirements of eating, you know what it is like to be truly hungry.

I have been there and I have actually put myself there on one occasion to know what it was like to live without food for an entire weekend.

Can you imagine an entire weekend?!?!

But here’s the thing…I did it out of choice.

There are many children in our society who live without sufficient food to eat every weekend and there are families who go days or even weeks without food.

When we are gathered around tables to eat, the one thing I often hear is, “Boy, am I stuffed”.

We are fortunate to be able to eat until our bellies groan in pain from all that we have to eat.

But there are some around us who do not have enough to say, “Boy, am I full.”

Jesus’s words to those gathered around him that day still resonate into today’s society.

I can give you examples of how many people Stephanie and I have had the privilege of meeting while we served meals in Lancaster and other places and the happiness that exudes from them for the gift of the meal that they had received.

It has always amazed me how much I take for granted and forget when we leave the places where people fight for every meal.

And yet, I have always walked away feeling blessed for having an opportunity to be in their presence.

For me, it is almost as if the more we have, the more we need, and the more we need, the more we forget about those in society who truly needs what we take for granted.

This is the kind of satisfaction that I believe Jesus is speaking of.

Not the satisfaction that we have it but the satisfaction that someone actually cares enough to take notice and not just take notice but to do something about it.

There is the comfort in these words…but we need to stop taking for granted and start taking notice...

You Will Laugh

For many of us who are still deep within the grief process, no matter what the grief might be related to, it is hard to imagine anything to laugh about.

For Jesus to have said, “You will laugh,” must have felt like a slap in the face for some.

When we grieve, we sometimes want to stay in that grief and not let go.

For many in Jesus’ time, if they were not high in society status, if they were thought to be of lesser quality humans, they probably would have faced grief in their everyday lives and I mean every single day.

Can you imagine being trapped in sorrow every single day?

It is hard to imagine being joyful in some of our circumstances.

I mean there are those of us who are battling through cancer and yet, those that I am thinking of, do not mourn for the diagnosis that they have recieved but rather are looking toward the hope that something they try will be the treatment that brings them relief.

There are those of us who live in fear each and every day of our lives, fear of being hurt by someone we love, fear of being tempted by the one thing we thought brought us happiness but in the end only hurt us and our families (addiction), for some, we might be living in fear of our daily routine because we just know that someone we know is going to say something to hurt our feelings.

Again, I don’t want to bring us all down here but this is the kind of sorrow to which Jesus is referring.

For some of us, it is going to be hard to hear the words, I know you feel like that now but in the end, the pain will all be gone.

But truly this is the comfort that Jesus is trying to instill in those around him and in us right now.

For those who struggle with just merely getting up in the morning, wondering why God has not called them out of their daily drudgeries, I get it, I really do but doing something to harm yourself or others is not the answer either.

There may be sorrow today but there is someone who loves you enough to help you to get through just one more day…that is the hope that Jesus is giving us in these words…there truly is someone who will listen...

Blessed are you...

It is a curious spiritual principle that the more we have, the more we demand out of life.

So often it is the person who appears to be blessed, with all the external trappings of the good life, who is also so easily miffed at God, while the person who has very little feels a much greater sense of gratitude for life’s little joys and pleasures.

This is not to say that in order to find happiness, we need to give away everything we possess.

That might help or it might be the worst thing we could possibly do.

It might fill us with so much resentment, or even worse, with so much self-righteous pride that we would be intolerable.

It is to say, however, that some of us have our values all out of whack.

That is why we are so miserable.

There are only two sources of happiness in this entire world.