When Jesus came riding into Jerusalem on a donkey at the beginning of Holy Week, he came in peace. Symbolically, the animal he rode, a donkey, signified that. No sane person would go anywhere on a donkey, wanting to make it appear that he fiercely intended to wage war. On that long-ago day, many in the crowd who welcomed Jesus apparently believed he was the Messiah. The twelve disciples may also have believed it. By the time Jesus was born, however, most Jews expected the Messiah to be a warrior. So as far as most of his contemporaries were concerned, Jesus could not possibly be the Messiah.

It is no easy assignment to become a follower of Jesus Christ. As the 20th century German theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” “Take up your cross and follow me,” said Jesus. It was not an insignificant or offhand observation. He who knew his own cross was soon coming challenged us to take up our own crosses in our quest to enter fully into God’s kingdom.

For Americans living in the early years of the 21st century, the third Beatitude is very difficult to understand, let alone to emulate. Meekness, as ordinarily understood, is not an admired American attribute. If anything, it is a personal quality most of us have been taught never to attempt to adopt. Americans think of themselves as being tough, tough-minded, and not easy to intimidate. Meekness is not an ordinarily admired virtue for Americans.

Grieving or mourning is a very real and very painful emotion for most human beings. The most serious mourning is usually the result of the death of someone who held a unique place in our lives: a spouse, a parent, a child, a close friend, even a public figure we did not know personally, but whom we greatly admired. For example, some older people are not yet over the deaths of John Kennedy and Martin Luther King, even though both died over fifty years ago.

Before we consider the first of the eight Beatitudes, we need to ponder for a few moments the context in which Jesus made these statements. They are the opening words of what the Church has always called “The Sermon on the Mount.” For three complete chapters, from Matthew 5 through Matthew 7, at least according to the person who wrote this particular Gospel, Jesus made some extraordinary observations about numerous subjects. Many scholars believe that Matthew probably put this collection of sayings together to help us remember them better. The fact is that Luke also has many of these exact sayings, but he does not string them together in just one place as Matthew does. Mark also has a few of these teachings scattered here and there throughout his Gospel.

All of us love many people with partiality: those who love us back in like manner, and those who are cute or cuddly or loveable, particularly small children or babies. That, however, is not the kind of love that Jesus was talking about in the Sermon on the Mount or Paul was talking about in I Corinthians 13. Agape love is unconditional love, impartial love, love which never demands anything of anybody. It is offered without the expectation of anything in return. For this reason Jesus told us to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us. Thus could Paul say, “Love is patient and kind; it is not arrogant or boastful, it does not insist on its own way. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

Today we come to the sixth in a series of six sermons, all of which are based on the Gospel of Luke. In each of the previous sermons, we looked at events which are found only in the Third Gospel. Today we see the same pattern yet again. In this account of the resurrected Jesus, as in all three of the other Gospels, there are considerable ambiguities in what is reported. It is possible they were intentionally meant to be ambiguous. For example, in some of the stories, Jesus clearly seems to have been physically resurrected. In others, the resurrection seems to be entirely spiritual, and not physical.

This is the fifth in a six-part series of sermons on the courageous journey Jesus took with his disciples on the way from the Galilee to Jerusalem. Normally that walk would take perhaps a week to ten days, depending on where Jesus was when he began his trek to the south. But, according to Luke’s Gospel, we may deduce that the journey took a few weeks to perhaps two or three months. We deduce that because the expedition begins at the end of the ninth chapter of Luke’s Gospel and ends in the middle of the nineteenth chapter. Nearly everything Luke writes about in that portion of his story of the life of Jesus is found only in Luke, and nowhere else in any of the other three Gospels.

Jesus doesn’t seek only people like us. We are socially acceptable, at least to ourselves. But Jesus intentionally also sought outsiders and outcasts. He searched for people whom everyone else had given up on, because Jesus never gave up on anybody.

On the issue of biblical law, there is a tendency among ultra-conservative people to minor in majors, and to major in minors. This is what Jesus was talking about in Matthew 23:23-24 when Jesus said, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith; these you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.” They put too much emphasis on minor things, and too little on major things. They put the em-pha-sis on the wrong sy-llab-les. Conservatives focus too much on swearing and sexually provocative clothes and sexual behavior, and too little on seeking justice for the downtrodden and being fair to awful people and taking care of the poor rather than telling them they must take better care of themselves.

This Lent we are following Jesus on a long, slow journey he took on his way to Jerusalem, and Palm Sunday, and Good Friday, and Easter. Along the way, he said and did some things that are not recorded in the other three Gospels. Luke recorded several parables on this journey not found in the other three Gospels, the best known being the Parable of the Good Samaritan and the Parable of the Prodigal Son.

Here is my hypothesis: Luke perceived the ministry of Jesus to be more directed to outcasts and outsiders, people such as himself, than did the other three Gospel writers. Luke never knew Jesus, and was probably thirty or more years younger than Jesus. In some fashion Luke heard the story of Jesus from other people, certainly including Paul, because he traveled with Paul on missionary journeys.

All four of the great patriarchs of Genesis have fascinating stories associated with them, but Joseph’s story is the most amazing of all. Perhaps more intriguing things are said about Joseph than about his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather put together.

Of the four patriarchs of Genesis, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, Jacob was without question the sleaziest. He was the most scandalous. He was the most scurrilous. He was a self-indulgent, self-centered, self-absorbed serpentine scalawag. He wasn’t esteemable, either.

Years ago I wrote a book called A Light-Hearted Look at Genesis. It was intended to show some of the unintentionally humorous sections of the Bible’s first book, but also to portray the serious themes initiated by that humor. I called the chapter on Isaac Isaac-in-Between.

By the traditions of the peoples of the Middle East, Abraham is the father of both the Arabs and the Jews, the Arabs by his son Ishmael and the Jews by his son Isaac. But Abraham didn’t have any sons for a very long time. He and Sarah were living in Canaan when a famine came, as happens every so often in the Middle East. So they went to Egypt, where the Nile River was, and where there was no famine. Then, when conditions had improved in Canaan, Abraham and Sarah returned there. Once again, God told Abraham that He would give Canaan to Abraham’s descendants, and once again Abraham reminded God that he had no descendants. Nonetheless, Abraham trusted that God knew what He was doing, and so he went forward in faith. Many questions in his mind went with him, however.