This week we are looking at the beautiful verses Jesus uses to open his Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s gospel.

We call this passage the Beatitudes, which is Latin for Blessings, and they begins Jesus’s first major block of teaching which takes up the next 3 chapters, chaps 5-7.

Now the gospel of Matthew is a very Jewish gospel and one of its major themes is that all of the Jewish Law and prophesy is fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus can be seen as the new Moses, leading God’s people out of slavery, through the wilderness to the Promised Land, which Matthew calls the Kingdom of Heaven.

Here Jesus ascends a mountain, just as Moses ascended Mt Sinai to receive the law, to teach the new way of living that characterises the new Promised Land – the new Kingdom of Heaven. And this is what we celebrate in Epiphany that God’s people includes the whole world, if they so desire.

The thing we celebrate in this season of Epiphany is that Jesus came as a light to the nations.  The revelation that Jesus is Lord of all the earth, of both Jews and gentiles, as prophesied by Isaiah in this morning’s reading

The apostle Paul was sent to preach Christ to the gentiles and on his second missionary journey (AD 49-52) he started a small church in a house belonging to Titius Justus in the bustling, cosmopolitan and multicultural port city of Corinth in the Roman province of Achia, in southern Greece.

He spent eighteen months there and the church grew rapidly and with that growth came the problem that has beset the universal Church ever since – disunity.

But first, I think we need a little background.

Last week we looked at Jesus’ baptism by John and today’s reading begins, “the next day.” So to put today’s gospel in context, it is the very day after Jesus was baptised by John.

Now there is a whole series of sermons on what John the Baptist has to say in today’s gospel in vv.29-34. But today we are going to look at what happens next.

These two disciples are so intrigued by what John had just said of Jesus that they went after Jesus, who turned and asked them, “What are you looking for?” This is a simple yet profound question.

Not ‘who are you looking for?,’ or ‘what do you want?,’ but ‘what are you looking for.’ These are the very first words spoken by Jesus in John’s gospel, and they could, perhaps, define the whole book.

Today we are looking at the baptism of Jesus by John.  Baptism is an important rite of passage for us as Christians: in fact, the living out of our faith is hallmarked by the two sacraments of baptism and Holy Communion.

So I think it is important to celebrate our baptisms today and to recognise that our own baptisms are located back into the baptism of Jesus Christ himself in the River Jordan, which is what we heard about in our Gospel reading just now.

Now, baptism has come to mean different things to different people.  For some, it is just a traditional thing to do, for others, it is about becoming a part of the family of God, for others, it is about identifying with a particular church family, for others, it is about feeling washed free of sin and having a new start in life.

All of these are valid reasons for baptism.  But I want us to think this morning about what Jesus’ baptism told us about him and how that relates to each one of us and what that tells us about who we are.

Today we celebrate the Epiphany of our Lord, which means ‘revelation.’  God revealed to people who were not Jews, whom we call the Wise Men, that Jesus Christ was the Messiah, the Son of God who would reconcile all people to God, Jews and Gentiles. 

This is because God so loved the whole world (not just Jews), that he gave his only son so that all who believe in him could be brought back to their loving Father and not perish, but have eternal life.

So the big revelation of this season of Revelation is that God loves you and me in and through this Jesus, this Son of Man and Son of God, whether Jew or non-Jew.

There are many ways to look at this morning’s gospel from about the Wise Men, it is easy to focus on the gifts, but today I want to look at the Wise Men themselves and what happened to them. 

Today we are going to look a little closer at two betrothed teenagers, Joseph and Mary of Nazareth, chosen by God to be essential for most important event in all of history, just because they were faithful to God.

God uses many ways to speak to us.  We the Church, the people of God now, are the people of God in post-Pentecost times.

The Church, the people of God that Mary and Joseph were part of, was before the great revelation of Christ crucified and God often spoke to them through his sending of angels.

John the Baptist's question from prison is really the question for listeners of every age.  “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”  It is the question.

It jumps off the page.  Is Jesus the one or is there someone else?  What are we to make of this Jesus for whom we wait?  Is he real?  Could he really be ‘God with me?’ 

When John preached ‘Repent!  For the Kingdom of God is nigh,’ what are we to repent of, and how will we know that the Kingdom of God is here?

When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we pray “Your kingdom come,” but what are we praying when we say this?  Jesus himself says “the kingdom of God is very close to you.”

Jesus is talking about himself.  In him is the Kingdom of God

For all the gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and for the early Church, John the Baptist was the start of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus didn’t just arise out of a vacuum but is the continuation of what God had already been doing through the Jewish people.  

John the Baptist is the beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ.  He begins by prophesying that the Kingdom of Heaven has come near.

The phrase Kingdom of God or Kingdom of heaven is itself an Old Testament phrase used to describe the breaking in of God’s kingly rule into the world.  John is prophesying that the coming Messiah is the embodiment of God’s kingly rule over the world.

Then Matthew tells us in v.3 of today’s gospel, that the coming of the prophet John is itself a fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophesy:  “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:  ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’”

Until around 150 years ago, Advent was not so much a time of a time of waiting for the great joy of the promised Christ Child, but rather the time for ‘pious meditation’ on what are called the Four Last Things.

Not hope, peace, joy, and love, but rather the four last stages of the soul in this life and in eternity:  Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell.  Which is why Advent is a penitential season (like Lent).

Today is the last Sunday of our deep dive into Luke’s gospel, which we have been looking at for the last five months.  Today is the day we celebrate Christ the King and the end of the church year.

And how does Luke portray our King of Kings?  In his mighty resurrection and glorious ascension, or his coming again with the whole host of heaven to judge the earth?  No.  Crucified between two common criminals.  His body broken and bleeding.

We end this season of the Church - the Body of Christ, by gazing on the crucified and violated body of Jesus the Christ, Son of Man.

We are in the last fortnight of the Church Year.  And the focus of the readings in these last weeks is always what we call the ‘end times.’  So this year, the year of Luke, we look at Luke’s account of Jesus’ words on the last days, the end of times.

Last week we looked at the certainty of the resurrection, the very heart of our faith.  Today we will look at the things that point to the end of the world as we know it.

And next week, the feast of Christ the King, the last Sunday after Pentecost, we will look at what is means when we say Christ is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. 

And so to the end times.  Probably no other question puzzles and vexes the minds of believers (and non-believers for that matter) as what will happen just before what we call time changes, in some way, forever.

This morning, we are looking at nothing less than the resurrection of our souls, and what it means to be called by Jesus the “children of the resurrection.”

Our gospel begins with a question/riddle to Jesus from the Sadducees while he is teaching in the Temple courts.  This is part of a long line of escalating questions directed at Jesus by various Jewish leaders and teachers of the law.

Luke tells us earlier, (11:53-54), that the “Pharisees and teachers of the law began to oppose him fiercely and to besiege him with questions, waiting to catch him in something he might say.”

From there on the interactions the Jewish temple leaders and the teachers of the law have with Jesus are acrimonious.  The motivation behind the questioning is not to learn from Jesus, but rather to try and catch him out. 

It is arrogance and pride, dressed up as sort of banter.

Today we celebrate All Saints’ Day, the day we remember all those who love, and have loved God; those the New Testament calls saints.  All the gathered people of God who have ever lived, the quick and the dead.

‘All Saints,’ is the most popular name in the entire worldwide Anglican Communion for a parish church.  So it is for us in our parish too, a time to remember all the saints who have worshipped and continue to worship at All Saints, Cambooya.

And finally, it’s a day to pray for and thank God for all us saints everywhere, who worship the living God.  It is a day to re-proclaim pure and simple truths that Jesus is Lord of all the earth and the Lord of life.

Over the last month or so, we’ve twice briefly dipped our feet into Paul’s 2nd letter to Timothy, his son-in-Christ, and Paul his great Godfather.

As I’ve said before, this is Paul’s last letter, written from a Roman jail shortly before he was beheaded. He writes in v.6, “the time of my departure has come.”

In some ways this is an immensely sad letter. He writes in v.16, “At my first defence no one came to my support, but all deserted me.” Alone and knowing he is about to be put to death by the imaginative-if-insane Emperor, Nero.

But it is also an immensely hopeful letter. He fully knows that the Lord will defend him from the ultimate evil of death, and on that day he, and all who long for the Lord’s coming, will be crowned with the crown of righteousness.

Our Old Testament readings for the last couple of months have been from the prophet Jeremiah, the great prophet of the downfall of Jerusalem and Judah’s exile to Babylon.  A book vast in its prophetic scope and the longest book in the bible.

It can be difficult to follow because it’s not necessarily chronological!

God’s prophecy through Jeremiah shifts or transitions from a message of repentance to a message of the promise of salvation; of future hope and blessing.  Jeremiah 30 and 31 are the tipping point of this transition.

Now for us as post-Pentecost believers baptised in the Holy Spirit, we read passages like this (and much of the prophets) as very clearly pointing to Christ Jesus as the one, true fulfiller of all prophesy.  To us it speaks so clearly of Jesus.

For the last three weeks we have listened to Jesus’ intense teachings on money, forgiveness, and living with a servant mind-set. It is absolute and it is simple-in-a-difficult-way.

We cannot grasp for material gain alone.   We can either serve God or Money.

It is also about the absolute mercy of God, (consider Lazarus and the Rich man), which is where we are heading today, but in a different context. Jesus and his disciples are back on the road to Jerusalem.

Our gospel this morning is I think, centrally concerned with mercy and also thanksgiving or gratitude.  

In the gospel we heard last week, Jesus has just told the disciples the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, poor beggar and servant of any and everybody’s.  Yet the servant/beggar is raised up and the rich man is tormented in the great reversal of death.

Today’s passage follows directly on from last week and Jesus now teaches his disciples what this servanthood means.  It means that we seek to look at things, and think, and act, in ways that won’t cause the ‘little ones’ of God, so very, very precious to our Father, to stumble.

We can’t be the church, the people of God, if we cause others to stumble because that destroys the sacred community of Christ Jesus.  The sacred oneness between Jesus and his bride the church.

It can seem at first glance that today’s gospel is just several disconnected sayings strung together rather loosely, but on a closer look, Jesus is speaking to us about faith for living in this sacred community.

This morning’s gospel reading can be seen as part two of last week’s gospel about the dishonest manager.  Both last week’s and this week’s gospel parables begin with “There was a rich man!” 

Last week’s gospel ended with the phrase “You cannot serve both God and money,” and this morning’s gospel is a story illustrating the fate of one who served God and one who served money.

But this morning we are going to see a way in which Paul brings all these things together in today’s reading to his letter to his spiritual son, Timothy, written towards the end of his tumultuous life.

Jesus said that if “the Son sets you free, you are free indeed.” In today’s reading Paul tells us exactly what this freedom means, and how we are to live in this freedom in the full confidence of faith, in the bright and sheer light of the future.

Many of the parables Jesus told are perplexing, but none more so that today’s reading from Luke.  What an unpleasant character this manager sounds!  So what would Jesus have to say to us today in this parable?

As always, let’s begin by putting this parable in context.  This parable of the dishonest manager acts as a bridge between the stories of the Prodigal Son (15:11-32) and the Rich Man and Lazarus (16:19-31), which we’ll look at next week.

Like the prodigal in the preceding story, our dishonest manager has “squandered” what was entrusted to him (15:13; 16:1).  And, like the story that follows, this parable begins with the phrase, “There was a rich man” (16:1).

We join Luke again as he continues his record of Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem and we arrive at the magnificent and unique chapter 15.

We could call this chapter the ‘gospel of lost things.’  It is a series of three parables beginning with today’s passage on the lost sheep, and the lost coin, and concludes with the parable of the lost (or prodigal) son which we spoke about in Lent.

So today we are looking at the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin and they have much in common.