Looking for happiness

St Paul’s Church, Ipswich
Epiphany 6C
16 February 2025

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Two of our three readings today revolve around the question of happiness. Expressed in other terms, these readings deal with the recipe for a good life.

This idea is conveyed through the concept of beatitudes, which are essentially a form of wisdom teaching where the master urges the disciples to embrace the good life—and find true happiness—by acting in certain ways.

Blessed (happy) is the person who …

That idea is introduced in the Old Testament reading from Jeremiah 17, with a carefully crafted set of parallel exhortations:

Cursed are those … blessed are those

That doubling of the form, with both blessings and curses, is especially significant as that is what we find in Luke’s version of the Beatitudes as well.

I suspect that many sermons will be delivered on the Beatitudes on Luke today, and I am pretty confident that some of them will focus on the ways Luke’s version of the Beatitudes resonate (or not) with the extreme “Christian Nationalist” agenda being implemented at considerable speed by the new administration in the USA.

But I want us engage with these texts from a different angle.

While the natural focus with today’s Gospel is the double set of in-your-face Beatitudes, there is a back story mentioned in the opening paragraph and an even deeper back story in the previous paragraph that has not been read today.

You may recall that last Sunday we had the story of miraculous catch of fish in Luke 5:1–11.

In the meantime we have skipped over the rest of chapter 5 and much of chapter 6.

In those missing episodes Jesus has been quite busy:

• He heals a blind man (5:12–16)
• He heals a paralysed man whose friends make a hole in the roof of the house (5:17–26)
• He calls Levi the hated tax collector to join his band of followers, and then has a meal at Levi’s house with a wider circle of Levi’s colleagues (5:27–32)
• Jesus gets into an argument with the Pharisees about his poor choice of company (5:33–38)
• He then upsets them further by picking grain to eat while walking through a field on Shabbat (6:1–5)
• He adds further salt to their wounds by healing a man with a withered hand on Shabbat (6:6–11)

All of that has been happening prior to the paragraph that directly precedes our Gospel passage today. In that final missing bit of the story, Jesus spends a night in prayer up a mountain as he decides which people to call as his followers, and which ones to designate as apostles (6:12–16).

Only after all that do we get the opening scene of today’s Gospel:

He came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them. (6:17–19)

When we were exploring today’s readings in the online Thursday evening discussion group, I was struck by Luke’s portrayal of the impact Jesus was having.

As Luke tells the story, people were coming from the far south (all Judea, Jerusalem) as well as from the southern coast of Lebanon (coast of Tyre and Sidon). They not only came from far away, but they came in huge numbers.

And they were a demanding lot. Everyone was trying to touch Jesus. As they did so, spiritual power came out from him and everyone received whatever blessings they were seeking that day.

Luke even tells us why they came, and what they were looking for:

They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. (6:18)

• Some came for spiritual wisdom (to hear him) …
• Others came with some health problem (to be healed of their diseases) …
• And some came with powerful personal problems (troubled with unclean spirits) …

So the question that the text poses for us this morning may simply be: why are you here?

What blessing are you seeking in order to enjoy a happy life?

Note that Jesus is not offering any kind of prosperity gospel here. 

The harsh terms of the beatitudes in Luke make that very clear.

Those seeking wisdom will find it. Those seeking healing will be cured. Those needing to deal with their own demons with find the power to do that.

• But they will still be poor.
• They will still be hungry.
• They will still be sad.
• And they will still have people talking badly about them!

What does the Gospel of Jesus look like?

It looks like wisdom for everyday life, healing of our diseases and overcoming our demons.

True happiness—the good life—is not measured by wealth, food, laughter or popularity. 

Rather, true happiness is ours when we find in Jesus the wisdom we need for everyday life, strength to lives with our diseases, and the strength to overcome our personal demons.

May you find those blessings today as you join us here in church or connect with us online.