Our church recently started a new sermon series called An Invitation to the Good and Beautiful Life. As part of the series, we’ve been asked to consider a simple question:

What do I believe makes a good and beautiful life?

So I started thinking…

I believe a good and beautiful life:

• is full of meaningful relationships
• is connected to community
• has a healthy rhythm of work and rest
• adds beauty to the world
• knows what is true and lives from that truth
• leaves things better than it found them
• stewards well the body, time, resources, and life God has given.

I felt pretty good about this list. It seemed a little more virtuous than the usual definitions of the good life: money, status, power, fame, ease, entertainment, comfort, convenience, pleasure. I didn’t write down a bigger house, more money, nicer vacations, or professional success because I honestly believe you can have a good and beautiful life without any of those things.

But Jesus has His own definition of the good and beautiful life, and if I’m honest, it doesn’t look like mine. 😬

We see this perhaps most clearly in the Beatitudes.

This week, we were challenged not to read the Beatitudes primarily as virtues to attain, but as invitations extended to the marginalized.

That challenges me.

Because if I’m honest, I think I’ve mostly read the Beatitudes through the lens of virtues and vices.

Blessed are the meek.
Blessed are the merciful.
Blessed are the pure in heart.

Ok, check, check, and check. I’m on track to be blessed.

But Luke’s version makes that reading a lot harder.

Blessed are you who are poor.
Blessed are you who hunger now.
Blessed are you who weep now.

Wait a minute. I’m not sure I’d define poor, hungry, and grieving as the good life. This isn’t lining up anymore.

But that’s the point. Jesus wasn’t making a new law saying do this if you want the blessed life. Jesus was speaking to people whose circumstances would seem to put the good life completely out of reach and announcing that they have a place in His Kingdom too.

You are welcome here.

You don’t have to become wealthy first. You don’t have to stop grieving first. You don’t have to get your life cleaned up, put back together, or looking particularly blessed.

The Kingdom of God has come near, and you are invited in.

Luke’s account continues to make this even more uncomfortable for me because Jesus doesn’t stop with the blessings. He follows them with woes.

Woe to the rich.
Woe to those who are well-fed.
Woe to those who laugh now.
Woe to those whom everyone speaks well of.

Yikes. 😧

I’m rich (compared to most of the world). I’m well-fed. I like to laugh. People speak well of me. This is sounding uncomfortably like my list of the good life.

If the blessings are a checklist, then apparently I’m on the wrong side of it. And if I’m reading the Beatitudes as a list of virtues to attain and the woes as a list of vices to avoid, I have a problem.

Do I need to give away everything I own? Stop eating? Make sure nobody likes me too much?

I don’t think Jesus is asking me to manufacture suffering so that I can qualify for the Kingdom.

But He is confronting something in me.

My wealth doesn’t get me into the Kingdom. Neither does my reputation. Neither does having enough. Neither do healthy relationships, meaningful work, a well-balanced life, or any of the other things I might point to and say, See? This is the good life.

And that made me start thinking about the rich young ruler in Mark 10.

By almost every outward measure, this man appears to have the good life. He’s wealthy. He has status. He’s moral. He’s kept the commandments since his youth.

And yet he comes to Jesus and asks:

“What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

For everything he has, something inside him is still crying out, THIS AIN’T IT.

Jesus looks at him, loves him, and tells him to sell what he owns, give to the poor, and follow Him. He invites him to a different way.

And the man walks away sad because, Scripture tells us, he had great wealth.

This man possesses so many of the things the world associates with a blessed life, and yet when the King is standing right in front of him, inviting him into His Kingdom, he can’t let go of what he has to receive the invitation. His hands are already full.

And that makes me think of another story Jesus tells: the parable of the treasure hidden in a field.

When this man finds the treasure, he joyfully sells everything he has to buy the field.

Two men. Both confronted with the possibility of giving up everything they have.

One walks away sad.
The other sells everything with joy.

The difference is what they see as Treasure.

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Matthew 6:21

And that has me looking back at my original list differently.

I still want meaningful relationships. I still want healthy rhythms of work and rest. I still want to add beauty to the world, know what is true, steward what I’ve been given well, and leave things better than I found them.

Those are good things.

But they aren’t the Good Life.

Because if those things were stripped away, the invitation of Jesus would still stand.

And if I possessed every single one of them but didn’t have Jesus, I would still be missing the Treasure.

The good and beautiful life isn’t defined by what I have or what I lack.

It’s the life of the Kingdom, offered to me in Jesus, that I get to receive and learn to participate in with Him.

So in short, this time the Sunday school answer hits.

What is the good and beautiful life?

Jesus. The answer is Jesus. 😆