Hello my friends,

I don't know about you, but it seems to be harder and harder to fight against cynicism or even dread with all that is happening in our world today.

So, today I want to focus on Jesus’ sermon from Luke 6:17-26 and invite us to be encouraged to not fall into cynicism and instead, pursue the cause of justice, especially for the most vulnerable among us, and to see joy not only as a source of encouragement but also as an act of resistance.

But before we get into that, here are some resources to consider:

​-Into The Gray Podcast. As many of you know, I paused my podcast because I wasn't able to produce it and work on the manuscript for my first book at the same time. Well, now that my manuscript is officially submitted, I am planning to restart this podcast soon! My goal is to do a sermon series specifically geared towards our current context through the teachings of Jesus. I also am thinking through ways to do a youtube version of sermons down the road as well, possibly even do semi regular small groups around them with those who are interested. Let me know your thoughts on this and if you'd find value in these things. Some of you have already kindly asked how you could support such efforts. If that's you, you can do so here.

​-The Emperor Has No Clothes. I recently started posting on Substack. If you follow me on Facebook or Instagram, I will be posting similar content to my substack I post on those platforms. This recent piece explores the end times theology held by much of Evangelical Christianity is being ignored by much of Evangelical Christianity for the sake of political power.

​-Don’t Believe Him the Ezra Klein Show. A friend sent me this last week and I have been sharing it with all my friends, so I thought I'd share it here as well. Ezra brings such needed context and calm to our current situation. It is a similar theme to my newsletter today as well. It is only a ten minute listen and very much worth your time.

​-IMPORTANT Good News: Faith Pushback by Diana Butler Bass. I found this substack to be both informative and encouraging. Diana explains the circumstances surrounding how more than two dozen faith groups — including most mainline denominations, the Brethren and the Mennonites, the Unitarians, and Reform Jews — filed a lawsuit against the administration for violation of their religious freedom regarding their practices of serving immigrants and immigrant communities. I thought I'd share it with you here.

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Okay, onto today's content.

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The Subversive Nature of Joy.

Luke 6:17-26

Jesus 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 impure 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 yours 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.

“Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.

“But woe to you who are rich,
for you have already received your comfort.

Woe to you who are well fed now,
for you will go hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now,
for you will mourn and weep.

Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you,
for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.

​
​Jesus really meant "good news for the poor."

I’m not sure anything else needs to be said from Jesus’ own words here. To me, they are just so powerful, not only for his time, but for ours today as well.

So, I’ll just add a few layers of context and share a few thoughts I had while reflecting on this sermon in a time like ours.

Our passage today closes out a section of Luke’s gospel that introduces Jesus’ ministry and what he has set out to do in the world. This section begins in Luke 4, where Jesus gives a sermon in his hometown synagogue, which has a very similar theme to the words we just read.

In that first sermon, he quotes the prophet Isaiah and says, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18-19). After which, he boldly says, “Today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” He then embodies those words throughout his entire ministry.

Even before that, his brave and courageous mother prophetically sang about the works of God in Israel’s past as a foreshadowing of her son’s own ministry in Luke 1:51-53, “He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.”

The theme Luke is making abundantly clear about Jesus’ ministry is that his mission is propelled by a deep and passionate commitment to the poor and the powerless in a world that oppresses and exploits them.

In the context of our passage today, which historians call the “Second Temple Period,” Jerusalem’s population was characterized by extreme social stratification, both economic and religious, which grew incredibly pronounced over the years. There existed in the city a clear distinction between the rich and powerful and the wider poor population. Religious leaders like the Sadducees were among the elite rich and powerful, who both propagated and benefited from unjust practices against the poor.

This context sheds needed light on why Jesus did something like clearing the temple of everyone who were selling things while calling them “robbers” (Luke 19:45-48). Things like sacrificial animals would be sold at a very high price which directly exploited the poor. Akin to the abuse of selling indulgences that Martin Luther raged against in 1517, which put a high price on people’s ability to find remission from punishment for their or a loved one's sin before God.

It is in this context of extreme economic stratification that we hear Jesus’ “sermon on the plain.”

This is Luke’s parallel to Matthew’s “sermon on the mount,” which you may have already noticed has some differences.

Rather than going up on a mount, Luke shows Jesus going down and standing on a “level place.” This movement down and standing on level ground shows solidarity with the crowd around him. Unlike those seated on high thrones or watching from high towers, Jesus, the Son of Man, is standing on equal ground with all people.

We then learn that people have come from all around because of the power he had to restore them. People came with diseases and impure spirits to be healed by Jesus. Yet instead of treating them as impure or unclean, Jesus allows himself to be surrounded by them and even touched by them, which resulted in all of them being healed.

Jesus had lowered himself and became a source of God’s mercy and love on their level, allowing all to freely come and be restored.

Then after this miraculous display, Jesus turns to his disciples and speaks directly against the stark social stratification of their time.

In a time when so many believed that the rich and well fed must be more blessed by God than anyone else, Jesus boldly says, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied.”

In a time when so many would regularly weep under endlessly harsh and exploitative labor, most often indentured servitude, with very little provisions to show for it, all while the wealthy often rested in their status of luxury, Jesus boldly says, “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.”

In a time where “getting ahead” meant building strong alliances with the rich and powerful and Jesus was calling those who followed him to do the opposite and prioritize the poor and powerless, Jesus says, “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.”

Jesus then points back to all of Israel’s history with the prophets, all of whom raged against injustice in their day and spoke truth to power on behalf of the poor and the powerless. Prophets whose names they had memorized and revered, Jesus reminds them how hated they were in their time for doing as they did. The same mission Jesus was calling his disciples to embody as well. He calls them to “leap for joy” because they are in good company of those who inherit the kingdom of God.

Then Jesus turns from blessings to woes. “Woe” in our passage should be understood more as a warning than an outright curse. Jesus is giving stern warnings to those who are participating and benefiting from the kingdoms of the world rather than inhabiting the kingdom of God.

In a time where the super wealthy made their riches through the ownership and exploitation of others, a way of life that made them comfortable, well fed, and happy at the expense of others, the very kind of injustice God promises to overturn, Jesus boldly says, “Woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort. Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep.”

In a time where this kind of economic advancement through the exploitation and degradation of others was praised as “good business” and even as “God’s blessing,” Jesus again points to Israel’s own history and boldly says, “Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.”

Jesus’ sermon here is such a powerful and needed reminder for us today.

The False Gospel of Tyrants and Bullies

We are currently hearing people with unprecedented wealth and power spread the myth of scarcity. Trying to convince us all that there “isn’t enough to go around.” All while presenting their efforts for “government efficiency” that they endlessly praise each other for, as the perfect solution to this myth of scarcity, all of which directly harms the poor, the sick, the immigrant, and the powerless in our country.

To make matters worse, many prominent Christian leaders praise and support these efforts rather than speak truth to this misuse of power on behalf of the poor and the powerless.

This leaves many Christians who are choosing to speak truth to this misuse of power to be insulted, excluded, and even hated by those within our own religious group, friends group, and family.

In times like this, despair seems so much more plentiful than hope. In fact, those in power right now work hard to make it that way, especially for their opposition. They want to distract, overwhelm and demoralize any and all forms of opposition. All in an effort to convince the world that there is no one more powerful than they are and any kind of resistance is futile. They want people to just give up.

This is exactly the kind of world Jesus preached in during his time and it is the same world his words are so needed in today.

In a time where people like Herod, Pilate, and Caesar participated and exploited the kind of wealth and power that was greater than the world had ever seen before that time (Rome), we see a pregnant, unwed teenage girl loudly singing about how her God’s kingdom was coming and would not tolerate the tyrants of her day exploiting poor people like her any longer (Luke 1).

In such a time, Jesus preached a message that was “good news to the poor.” A message that the same God that had created all the universe was a God of abundance. An abundance that was meant to be shared, stewarded, and cultivated for the flourishing of all humanity and all of creation. An abundance that was not meant to be hoarded and by the few and held over the heads of many.

In the kingdom of this abundant God, the cause of the poor, the hungry, the broken hearted, and those who advocated on their behalf are “blessed” and prioritized while those who exploit them for their own gain are sternly warned to stop doing what they are doing, for the “kingdom of God is coming.”

The coming of that kingdom is a reason to "leap for joy."

My friends, this is why joy is not just a source of encouragement, it is a conscious act of subversion. It is a refusal to allow the arrogant boasting of power by the would be dictators of our time to have a shred of influence over what we believe about the world and about ourselves.

Bullies and tyrants would have us believe in the kind of world that they want for themselves and forget about the kind of world that it SHOULD be for everyone. They want us to just surrender to despair and cynicism as if the world will be what they say it will be no matter what.

This is why joy is courageous. This is why joy is brave. This is why joy is a subversive act because it declares with all our mind, body, and heart that the bullies and tyrants of this world do not and will never have jurisdiction over who we are and the kind of world we are working towards.

We know better. We know that all the tyrants and bullies of history, no matter how powerful they thought they were, they all fell in the end. We know that they only think they have “real” power, but they don’t. While they are preoccupied with the power of wealth and government, we joyfully join together to embody the real power of justice and love, which will always have the last word.

We know that there really is enough to go around because we serve a God of abundance, not scarcity. We know that even while the bullies and tyrants do their worst, the only way they can win is if they can get us to believe their lies about the way the world should be and vanquish our joy.

So we won't let them. We will persist in joy all the more to reveal how powerless they really are over us. We will persist towards the way the world should be for everyone, no matter what they do.

We will embody the subversive nature of joy.

What To Do:

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This may be a repeat for some, but these action steps have been so helpful for me and so I want to continue sharing them with you.

-Get like minded and motivated people together, even if its just a few, and have a “what’s my role" party. I am hosting one of these very soon with local community and faith leaders and we are simply going to enjoy good food, enjoy each other’s company, and see if there are any ways we can collaborate together to make an intentional local impact. You can do the same. Every little effort helps.

-Find an issue you are really passionate about and find a local or national organization you can get involved with. Sign up for their newsletters, volunteer, call your local and state representatives, or just give what you can. When you find ways to actually do something to work towards change, you will see your joy not only grow but be sustainable.

-Stop doom scrolling. The algorithms are literally built to keep you glued to your screen with outrage, fear, or sadness. They have been weaponized in our time to relentlessly spread the demoralizing narrative of helplessness spouted by tyrants and bullies. It is an act of joyful resistance to refuse to allow them to define your mental health. When you see something online that sends you into a spiral, instead of staying on social media, immediately get off social media. Write the issue down to look into later and find out more context about that issue from more trusted sources. Joy comes when you are in command of your mind, body, and heart, rather than those algorithms.

-Find the true prophets. The trademark of a true prophet is that they are not pursuing power for themselves and they are not aligning themselves with those who have great power and wealth while condemning everyday, ordinary people. As we see with all the prophets of scripture, a true prophet is one who is speaking truth to all those with great wealth and power on behalf of the poor and powerless. When someone claims to be a prophet, yet they are constantly defending the cause of the most powerful and wealthiest people among us, rather than the poor and powerless, that’s when you know something is off. Why do the wealthy and powerful need a prophet's defense? True prophets are the ones who are daring to speak the truth to those in power among us, just like Jesus did. Find them. Join them. Support them. Become one yourself.