Good morning, my name is Brooke, and today I'm going to be reading chapter 6 of Luke verses 17 through 26. It says, He went down with them and stood on a level place. A large crowd of his disciples was there, and a great number of people from all over Judea, from Jerusalem, and from the coastal region around Tyre and Sidon, who had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. Those troubled by him pure spirits were cured, and the people all tried to touch him because power was coming from him and healing them all.
Looking at his disciples, he said, blessed are you who are poor, for years is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed 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.
For joys in that day, and leave for joy, because great is your reward in heaven, for that is how their ancestors treated the prophets. But what are you who are rich, for you already received your comfort? What are you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry? What do you who have now, for you will mourn and weep?
What do you, when everyone speaks well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets? This word is true and can be trusted. Thanks, Brooke. So the Gospel of In many ways, it's because Luke is where Jesus is at his most human.
We see him, his honesty there, we see him get a little irritated and a little frustrated people more in Luke. And the story of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke has a really long drawn out arc. It begins with his birth and with these narratives of his aunt and his uncle and his cousin John the Baptist and his parents. And it stretches actually pretty far beyond his resurrection.
It's a big story. But throughout the book, when we read it, what we see is that there's a level of amazement with the way that people encounter Jesus. Regardless of where they're in the story, we find them marveling, we find them wondering from when he is in Utero and Mary's belly when she goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth until after the resurrection, people are always just amazed at what Jesus says and does. Jesus was clearly making a difference in their life.
And we're about to jump into a long stretch of time in the Gospel of Luke. I'm not sure how long it's going to last. It might be eight or nine weeks. We're going to be there because I want us to just look at Jesus and who he was and what the Jesus difference is.
You might be asking why is this so important? And I've been thinking about this for several months. And here's just kind of one example. This is a chart that's outlining the religious landscape of America right now.
You probably can't read that. You can see the colors, right? If anybody can read the actual numbers. I want to know who your optometrist is.
I need to talk to them. But I want to just show you a couple of things. This is broken down from generations. So the very top line, what this is, is this is the religious composition by generation, the top is the silent generation and then the baby boomers, then X, millennials and Gen Z.
And what you see in these colors are just the different, they're different religions are part of it. This is what's interesting to me. Look at those bottom two lines and look at the orange. I'm going to tell you what those are.
That is what's called the religious nuns. Okay. These people, these are not atheists. Atheism is number is the yellow number.
These are the religious nuns. These are the people who claim no religion. We talk about that idea of none a little bit. What they're saying, to take it out of the fancy language is this, that religion fails to make a difference in my life.
So look at that. Millennials and Gen Z, let's be honest and we throw the term millennial around a lot, but I'm 42 and I'm at the edge of what that designation is. So what we're seeing is bottom two rows are people in their early 40s, all the way down to people who are in high school right now. But over a third of that living population says religion makes no difference in my life.
You know, every year what's estimated to be 1 million people in Gen Z. So that's current kids that are in high school up into their early to mid 20s. 1 million a year lose their faith in Jesus. It's estimated that a current amount of kids who are in elementary school to junior high in high school right now that are in church, not outside of church, in church.
Only one out of every three of them will have a practicing faith in their 20s. Friends, we have to talk about why Jesus is different. And we go deeper into this, the scary thing that we see is in every story of losses of faith, the primary religion that people attribute this isn't about belief, it isn't about doctrine, it isn't about morals, whatever, it is religious, people aren't safe. And this has happened up and down and up and down and up and down for several hundred years.
And why is Jesus different? You know, when we look back at this story and this larger sociological phenomenon happening right now, what we find out is we allow cultural expressions of religion to get in the way of people knowing God. Before we can beat ourselves up over this, this isn't just a phenomenon in Western history. But it's also biblical.
You know, the reason we see people amaze at Jesus and the things that he says in the gospels is these are a group of people who had lost the ability to believe to the amazement and the wonder that happens when these people encounter Jesus, that they realize that he is speaking of a different world than the one I live in right now. And then he lays that different world out in front of them. And then Jesus had the actions to back it up. And all four of the gospels, we see these things.
Now, we just looked at kind of a sad short, kind of frustrating, short, sort of going to go out in that chart one away. Let's look at a fun chart right now. Okay. This is a fun chart.
This is what we see Jesus doing all there at the gospels, but also inside of the passage that Brooke read for us earlier, you know, we see him doing miracles. We see him, you know, the feeding of the 5,000. We see him the multiplication of fishes when he called Peter to follow him. We see it when he tells the fig tree to die.
You see Jesus doing miracles and showing his power over the natural world. We also see Jesus healing people, causing the blind to see, causing the lame to walk, bringing back people from the dead, showing his power over the physical world. We also see Jesus doing exorcisms, calling demons out of people, out of oppressive situations. So in Jesus showing power over the supernatural world.
In the gospels, we see Jesus has power over the natural world, the biological world and the supernatural world, the entire whole makeup of how the world made sense to these folks, Jesus showing power over them. In all these miracles, these things we were doing, they were giving credibility to his teaching because he said a different world exists. Let me show you what this different world looks like. So every time he taught, we find it all repeated all throughout the gospels.
People were saying they were amazed at his teaching because he had an authority unlike anyone else. Jesus was different. So I want us to jump into this Jesus story, not just today, but for a good long while. And I want us to talk about why he is different.
And today we start with this story of these blessings and woes. So Jesus had just gone up on side of a mountain. He had called us disciples to come together to him. Then he goes down and he begins up doing miracles, showing his power and authority among all of this, his followers.
And if this passage sounds a little familiar to you, it's because in many ways that parallels Matthew 5, 6 and 7, we call this sermon on the Mount Luke is telling his angle of this story. And this is why Luke tells the story from a different idea. Luke was a Gentile. He was not a Jewish person.
He was not an ethnic Jew. He might have been a Gentile who was interested in Judaism and kind of hung around a little bit. But he comes in, he tells the story. He's not an observant view.
And Luke is just the first part of his writing. He also wrote the book of Acts. And when you look at Luke and Acts together, there are one big huge long, combined story that take up roughly 25% of the New Testament. So Luke's story is big and he's telling a specific story.
And we pull back Luke's story and we look at his works and the things he's trying to do. It is clear that Luke's communicating to people that God is here on earth as the person, Jesus Christ. And he is doing things differently. Jesus begins this time of teaching to these new disciples who he's just called out, but he's teaching these disciples in front of everyone.
They're all there to hear what he is telling a small group of people. And what Jesus teaches him about is uniqueness. He speaks of blessings. Much like we read the Beatitudes in Matthew chapter 5, Luke also talks about woes and we can get bogged down and we can go in the weeds to just kind of pick apart blessing and woe and blessing and woe.
But that doesn't help us understand this different story that Luke is telling. What we see when we pull back is that Luke wants to talk about what the good life looks like for someone who follows God. And this passage and its sister passages in Matthew, what they show us is that it's a call to push above just the nominal life with Jesus. And what's interesting is Luke goes into these blessings and these woes and talks about these categories of wealth, of hunger, of weeping, of inclusion and exclusion.
Not just here but in other places in the gospel. But he's also doing something kind of neat. He's counteracting a really popular philosophical movement of the day, the Stoics, this massive group of people in the first century. They were the nuns of their day.
This philosophical way of thought stoicism was these people's religion they did not believe in an afterlife and because they did not believe in an afterlife. They said that happiness or the blessedness is something that's simply self-created by focusing on oneself and choosing to not be bothered by other people's needs. That the more us and your expectations of what others are going to do, the happier you will be for yourself. Now this actually sounds kind of familiar doesn't it?
We think of Stoics like guys in bathrobes like bedsheets like the kid in the school play. But y'all this reads like about half the people I know. This even reads like things I've told myself to try to get myself out of a funk before. They were the nuns of their day.
Early church fathers even talked about this teaching and talked specifically about the teachings of a stoic named Episeedus. I think I pronounced that correctly. And drew about how Luke was trying to counteract on those popular ways of thinking and that the Roman life was a life actually of disconnection, of finding happiness by hurting others. Like I said, we're not going to go deep into these four categories, we're getting the weeds.
But think about this. Jesus is telling his disciples this in front of everyone else. He's calling together the leaders who people did not trust leaders anymore. And he's saying, I want you to see in public what I'm telling these people they need to understand.
And what he's telling them is this. Are you willing to live a self sacrificial life in order to see the kingdom? Are you willing to be different for a purpose? John Calvin said almost 500 years ago that the happiness Jesus calls us to isn't one that just exists here.
This absent from any dangers or from living some sort of a non-trivial life from happiness is just a life that doesn't have drama in it. But the happiness Jesus talks about actually pushes us into eternity and not just our own personal eternity of us having a good life in eternity. What does it mean for the entire world to be living in eternity? Are you willing to be different?
So how does this change us? All the stuff on the home sheet this week, you can find that online or you can find that on the back desk. All of that home sheet is about us beginning to pick apart the idea of different in our life and what does different look like and how have we encountered different or been affected by different or maybe not been affected by not being different. But two things just kind of hit quickly is this.
It's not optional. It's central. She just talked about the prophets in this message and how the prophets were men and women of in the Old Testament who spoke about being different, spoke about how God is different, who spoke about how the nation of Israel is supposed to be different, about how everything that's wrapped up in God's vision for His people and God's vision for this world is supposed to be different. But God's people didn't want to be different.
They wanted to be the same but be treated with the benefits of difference. I'm gonna say that again, God's people did not want to be different. They wanted to be the same but to be treated with the benefits of difference. And that led this world, this place, God's own country, God's own people to a place of religious dissatisfaction because so many folks were no longer safe.
Mary, the mother of Jesus and her praise to God when she was pregnant with Jesus and in Canada Elizabeth, she read this. We'd only read this passage at Christmas time. It's appropriate for us to read today. It's called Mary's Magnificon.
Think about how this reads compared to what Brooke read for us earlier. And Mary said, My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices and God my Savior, for He has been mindful of the humble state of His servant. From now on, all generations will call me blessed for the mighty one has done great things for me. Holy is His name.
His mercy extends to those who fear Him from generation to generation. He has performed mighty deeds with His arm. He has scattered those who are proud and they're in most thoughts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones.
He has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things and He has sent the rich away empty. He has helped His servant Israel remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever and ever, just as he promised his ancestors. The same thing Jesus is talking about, same thing Luke showing here that humility, that mercy, that hunger, and that money, all of these things that are in front of people and they're helping them not feel safe the way that things been built up around them.
And Jesus and His kingdom are different because of the union of justice and holiness of things being done right and things acting right. Of morality and welfare. Things a lot of times we in our world now, we like to put a wall up between those two things. And Jesus is coming here saying this can coexist and this should coexist.
Because here's the message of Jesus that's actually good news. Because His good news is safe. His good news is a better message from what others are trying to say. Jesus' message of good news, it confronts our idea of the good life.
What Jesus is saying is if your good life means a bad life to others, how good can it really be? And Jesus is also speaking to these people who struggle with resources, who struggle with status, who struggle with health, who struggle with place. And it's also different because He's telling them, if your life is less than stellar, if you think it's not good, it's also not a judgment on you. See, they lived in a world to where they feel, and this was the religious leaders taught them this, that if they had any sort of problems in their life, it wasn't a result of anything but God judging them for their sins or their parents' sins.
So if they were born into a life where they were problems with physical ailments or problems with resources or problems with hunger or problems with mercy, all these sorts of things, they were told this is your fault and you're being judged. This is an optional, this is central. The second thing He says is there is a line. This is the thing in the store that's sticking out to me more.
I was reading further and Luke yesterday and I realized this happens in other places too. Jesus calls His disciples together to speak specifically to them, but in front of everyone else. Why is He doing that? Like my mind is perplexed at what that might be right now.
Why is He calling His disciples together to tell them strong things? Like this is not an easy message is it? Why is He calling them to tell them these really, really strong things in front of everybody? Don't you normally, like when you have something really strong to say to somebody, you tell them in private, right?
Okay, we need to control this narrative. Let's get a small room together and talk about this. Imagine someone had a really, really important conversation with somebody who is not you in front of you. Wouldn't that feel awkward?
I'll have an answer to this right now. I'm really, really curious, but this is what I'm thinking right now, at least, is this. This is the opposite of what religion does. Normally it draws a line and tells people that they have to be aware of this line if they want to be included.
And Jesus is doing things differently about calling His closest followers to people. He's trusting that people, He's depending on the most, that people He's relying on the most. He's calling them together and He's drawing a line and He's saying, this line isn't for the outsiders, this line is for the insiders. I'm going to hold you to a higher standard.
And I'm not going to tell you I'm holding you to this higher standard in private. I'm going to tell you I'm holding you to this higher standard in public. When I think of that statistic of the nuns, that 30% of the population of two different generations, one of those being the largest generations ever walked the face of this earth, I can't help but think of one of the reasons that statistic might be there is because we have forgotten that we are called to be different. And we've instead asked those who are not following Jesus to be different before they're included.
That's not different. That's the way the world says behave before you belong. And Jesus is saying you belong first. You know, Mary got that in her song that she's sung and Jesus is now telling His disciples this.
He's not only telling disciples that He is different, that Jesus be saying that you all are different, that we are different together. That God coming to this earth means reversing. All of our attempts to make good things happen. Instead, Jesus defines what good things look like because they are different than what we would say.
Jamie Smith, a weaving writer now says this. Our identity is shaped by what we ultimately love or what we love is ultimate. What at the end of the day gives us a sense of meaning, purpose, understanding, and orientation to our being in the world. Shorten version of that is he says this, you are what you love.
And if you want to know who you are, look at what you spend time on, look at what you spend money on, look what you spend resources on, that you are what you love. So how does this change us? How do we respond to this and make a difference by being different? Really, this morning we're just going to think about one thing shortly as this.
We redefine life, we redefine the good life on Jesus' terms. And sometimes our own janky example of Jesus is a janky example of evangelism. Is there an overflow of the spirit of God in our own life that affects others? Maybe it's what example do we have that speaks to a different sort of power in this world, a power that calls us to live outside of ourselves?
Are we willing to be self-sacrificial in life in order to see the kingdom of God around us in tangible ways? I love the way Psalms 1 talks about this life. It says this, blessed is the one who does not step, who's not walking step with the wicked or standing the way of sinners or take or sit in the company of mockers. But whose delight is in the law of the Lord who meditates on that law day and night.
That person is like a tree planted by streams of water which yields its fruit and season and whose leaf does not wither. Wherever they do prospers, not so the wicked. They are like the chaff that the wind blows away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment or sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
For the Lord watches over the waves of the righteous, with the ways of the wicked lead to destruction. Honestly in our life right now, how are we calm? Because what we're seeing is that Psalm 1 is that this blessedness that we read about earlier, this really marked by things being calm. How calm do you feel right now?
On a scale of one out of ten. About four. And our calmness is a testimony to our ability to live in the power of Jesus and to trust and to live with that to share that. It says, you're like a tree planted by streams of water which yields its fruit and season.
How often do we testify to not getting caught up in drama or chaos? How often are we personally seeing the yield of those fruits? Now we can self-diagnose ourselves pretty easy. But we also have the power to do through Jesus is we can pick up our tree.
We can replant that tree by that stream of living water. Our tree might be that lone tree out in the field somewhere. That one you always wonder how does it stay alive? David Kenneman, a researcher in this phenomenon of the knowns, offers this advice to counteract the chart we showed earlier.
He's one who made it. This is what David Kenneman says. Keep Christianity weird. I read that kind of laugh at first and I thought about it.
What on earth does that mean? Keep Christianity weird. All of a sudden again, I'll laugh about it. I'm a preacher's kid.
I grew up in the middle of like super six flags over Jesus' church. Okay. Anybody my age or around our age, remember? Do you all remember?
Like the all the t-shirts that you'd buy at youth fest at the youth conference? That was like a fake t-shirt of another t-shirt. I don't remember that. Okay.
Like it's like a fake Nike t-shirt with something else. Had like a no fear when it had a Bible verse underneath it. Also, I remember there was a poster you could buy at the Christian books to work. That was like, if you like this artist, listen to this Christian artist.
It's like, if you like Led Zeppelin, there's nobody out there. It was like, if you like Black Sabbath, try Keith Green. It's like, we've spent decades all trying to tell people that the church is not weird. And that chart is where it got us.
David Kenneman says, keep Christianity weird. Keep Christianity weird. Be that tree playing by church. You know, you keep Christianity weird?
You pray in public. If somebody says they have something going on, you say, can I pray for you? And then what you do, you pray for it. Sometimes we say, I'll pray for you as a way to try to get out of an awkward situation.
Keep Christianity weird. Pray for people in public. Keep Christianity weird. Be generous.
Generosity is weird in our world now, y'all. Be generous. Keep Christianity weird. Keep Christianity weird.
Talk about scripture. Keep Christianity weird. Again, building up that Psalm one life. And we do what we can in public, not just for others, but also for us.
To keep up that belief and to build and to create that belief. That there is a different world that we are living in right now as we speak. Jesus is different. Invites us to be different with him.
He sends us Holy Spirit. The very same power. He sends us in Romans eight. The very same power that caused Jesus to rise from the dead now lives inside of you.
Father, we echo that prayer of the early church, calm Holy Spirit. God for us to see that difference, God. For us to be able to step into that difference. God for us to be able to live in that difference.
God for us to learn with the power of differences like. So where we come to you knowing that you are making us this thing, all we have to do is to allow it to happen. So we offer ourselves to you. Come with me.
Not just for our sake, but for the sake of our families, for the sake of those we love, for the sake of those that we are around, for the sake of the whole world. We take on that admonition of John Calvin, he says, not just the eternity of your own private self, but for the eternity of the world. God give us eyes to see that far reaching. Or give us ears to hear those calls, God, and also to have mouths to call as well.
God, let us take the time to just make a market where we are right now. God, and to say, I want to be different because I want to experience difference. So let me pray. Amen.
Let's stand together and continue singing.