Happy but which happiness!

Luke 6:20-26

20 Then Jesus spoke: You're blessed when you've lost it all. God's kingdom is there for the finding.21 You're blessed when you're ravenously hungry. Then you're ready for the Messianic meal. You're blessed when the tears flow freely. Joy comes with the morning. 22 "Count yourself blessed every time someone cuts you down or throws you out, every time someone smears or blackens your name to discredit me. What it means is that the truth is too close for comfort and that that person is uncomfortable. 23 You can be glad when that happens-- skip like a lamb, if you like!-- for even though they don't like it, I do... and all heaven applauds. And know that you are in good company; my preachers and witnesses have always been treated like this. 24 But it's trouble ahead if you think you have it made. What you have is all you'll ever get. 25 And it's trouble ahead if you're satisfied with yourself. Your self will not satisfy you for long. And it's trouble ahead if you think life's all fun and games. There's suffering to be met, and you're going to meet it. 26" There's trouble ahead when you live only for the approval of others, saying what flatters them, doing what indulges them. Popularity contests are not truth contests-- look how many scoundrel preachers were approved by your ancestors! Your task is to be true, not popular.

Food for thought!

These words of Jesus are bombshells. It may well be that we have read and heard them so often that we have forgotten how revolutionary they are. They are quite unlike any conventional laws. They take the accepted standards and turn them upside down. The people whom Jesus called HAPPY the world would call WRETCHED; and the people Jesus called WRETCHED the world would call HAPPY. Just imagine anyone saying, "Happy are the poor, and, Woe to the rich!" To talk like that is to put an end to the world's values altogether.

Where then is the key to understanding these words? It comes in Lk.6:24. There Jesus says, "But it's trouble ahead if you think you have it made. What you have is all you'll ever get." The word Jesus uses for have is the word used for receiving payment in full of an account. What Jesus is saying is this, "If you set your heart and bend your whole energies to obtain the things which the world values, you will get them--but that is all you will ever get." In the expressive modern phrase, literally, you have had it! But if on the other hand you set your heart and bend all your energies to be utterly loyal to God and true to Christ, you will run into all kinds of trouble, you may by the world's standards look unhappy, but much of your payment is still to come; and it will be joy eternal.

We are here face to face with an eternal choice which begins in childhood and never ends till life ends. Will you take the easy way which yields immediate pleasure and profit? or, Will you take the hard way which yields immediate toil and sometimes suffering? Will you seize on the pleasure and the profit of the moment? or, Are you willing to look ahead and sacrifice them for the greater good? Will you concentrate on the world's rewards? or, Will you concentrate on Christ? If you take the world's way, you must abandon the values of Christ. If you take Christ's way, you must abandon the values of the world. The challenge of the beatitudes is, "Will you be happy in the world's way, or in Christ's way?"