Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7

Everyone wants a happy life—it’s one of the most universal human desires. Some people even work tirelessly day and night to provide for their families in pursuit of it. As the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle argued in the 4th century BC, the ultimate purpose of human life is the pursuit of happiness.

For the ancient Greek people, happiness and virtue were always connected. Simply put, you could not live a happy life without being good and wise in all your relationships. The biblical idea of happiness might be similar, but it is more closely connected to God. Psalm 1 is one of the readings that talk about a happy life in the Bible. I’d like to read a few verses from it:  

“God blesses those people who refuse evil advice and won’t follow sinners or join in sneering at God. Instead, they find happiness in the Teaching of the Lord. They are like trees growing beside a stream, trees that produce fruit in season. Those people succeed in everything they do.”

And in today’s reading from Jeremiah, the prophet Jeremiah wrote a letter to the Jewish people in the exile in Babylon in the sixth century BC regarding a happy life.

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Luke 16:19-31

Last week, President Trump gave a speech at the opening of the UN meeting. One of his nonsensical statements perfectly revealed his own personality as a President. He declared, loud and clear: “Climate change is a great scam. I don’t believe it!”

This is a deeply concerning denial, especially when millions of people are being forced to leave their homes due to rising sea levels and warming ocean temperatures. Consider Dhaka, for example, the capital of Bangladesh. Dhaka is similar in size to Sydney, yet its population is a staggering 25 million! The one city, Dhaka’s population is similar to Australia’s total population.

For the past many years, over a million people move to Dhaka from coastal villages since the climate crisis made it impossible to carry on their lives as fishmen. This unfortunate phenomenon of ‘the poor becoming poorer’ on a global level is being caused by the climate crisis.

We can’t do much about it as individual believers, but we can still reflect on today’s Lukan passage as God’s children. To make the story of ‘Lazarus and a rich man’ come alive for us now, we need to raise three fundamental questions to begin with.

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Luke 16:1-13

Imagine you hired an architect to build your dream home. The architect is the most highly skilled at designing the finest homes. But instead of letting the architect design the home for you, you come up with your own amateur home designs and ask him to simply approve it. You feel so excited thinking that the best architect is going to design your home when the home has been designed by yourself.

I presume this happens a lot in our Christian journey in our relationships with God. We ask God to lead and guide our lives, but we have already planned how we build our lives, organising our fortunes and shaping our course. In this case, we’re not seeking God’s way, but we’re seeking his approval of our own way.

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Luke 15:1-10

Jesus’ main goal during his three years of ministry on Earth was to find and save people who were lost.  In Luke 19:10, he revealed the purpose of his ministry like this. “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.”

It’s about God’s unquenchable passion for the lost and his unstoppable willingness to make sure to get them back, no matter what it takes, even to the point of risking the life of His only son, Christ our Lord.  So, the church is God’s agent for this divine mission and passion for the lost.  In other words, God accomplishes his passion for finding the lost through the church and its members. 

We’ll explore how we can live out God’s great passion for finding lost people in our lives by reflecting on two true stories today.

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Luke 14:25-33

A young man wakes up in the morning and hears the birds singing. He realizes how fortunate he is. Recently, he has been reading about Jesus’ call to his discipleship in the gospel of Luke, which is today’s Gospel reading, that reads: “Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”

What does this mean for me? He was reflecting.

This young university student decided that morning that he would take Jesus’ words seriously and personally. He had lived a privileged life. God had given him many gifts. What should be his response to those words from Jesus?

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