Christian Pathway

Sermon on Luke 6: 17-26

Outside Wickford junior school is a sign that has these values literally tied to the railings outside it.
Honesty:

Telling the truth and taking responsibility for your actions.

Positivity: Looking for the good and trying new things.

Determination: Keep trying and learning from your mistakes.

Respect: Caring for everyone and being polite and friendly.

Democracy: Deciding together, listening to others, and sharing ideas.

Individuality: Believing in yourself, asking questions, and having ideas.

Rule of Law:

These are the schools’ value system.

A value system is a set of principles or standards of behaviour that guide how individuals, organizations, or societies make decisions and act. It encompasses the beliefs, ethics, and priorities that influence our actions, choices, and interactions with others.

These systems are things we inherit and learn, and they evolve through our lives.   They are the things that guide us and steer our actions throughout our lives. We try and teach our children them. Be Honest, act ethically, show empathy, and have respect for others and our world.

We must understand others’ cultural value systems to communicate across cultures effectively. China places much more emphasis on the collective than on the individual. Japan places much more emphasis on politeness and etiquette. In contrast, Arabic places much more respect for elders and emphasizes hospitality. Africa has the idea of Ubuntu, which roughly translates to I am because we are. It is about our shared humanity. A core idea of Nelson Mandela and why he resisted Apartheid.

When you start looking for value systems, you can see them everywhere.

They are in our reading today.

Why

Luke’s beatitudes are Jesus explaining God’s Value system.

If you are poor or hungry, then good times are coming.
If you work for me and people don’t like it, then God does notice.

The flip side is if you let all the stuff of the world make you lose focus on him, that’s not good.
Praise from the world when above valuing me, pleasure when pleasure becomes your only goal above staying focused on him.

God’s value system is actually really simple; don’t take your eyes off me.   Even more easily explained: When the world and life is hard, I’ll be there with you, and when it is tremendous and full of distractions,  be with me.

That’s God’s Value system.

That’s the what of what he is talking about.

However, Jesus loves us and only wants what is best for us, so why does he want these things?

To understand that, you must know what Jesus means by Blessed or Happy.

The actual word used in Greek is Makarios. There’s no direct 1-1 translation.
Makarios means three things in English,
Benediction or blessed by God
Happy (which explains some other translations ),
And complete, like an actual wholeness of body and soul.
So, bodily and spiritual completeness

In short, God’s Value system leads to you being saved.

Those things resonate with what salvation really means: it’s about being made whole. The word salvation actually translates to Hoel. You can see my struggle here because we don’t have an equivalent word or words for Makarios. This is why we should always pray when we read the bible because that’s how God really gets his point across, and all these barriers drift away 😊

But if you want to experience Makarios, all of you happy, blessed, complete, or saved, and all of you are made hoel,   not just the bit that gets rewards from the world. That’s why today, he asks you to copy his value system.

As we head towards Lent and then journey through it, we should remember Jesus’s words as the crowd gathers around him exactly as we do today. He wants you to listen to him when it’s good, and he will be with us when it’s terrible. Good times or bad, we are all on the journey to being restored to who he made us to be. Keeping Jesus first in our lives all the time is the only way to do that.

That is what he was telling us today.

Amen