Happy Is
If you were to take a survey of people in 38 different countries asking them this question “Taking all things together, would you say you are: a) not at all happy b) not very happy c) quite happy or very happy. I know that you are answering the question right now in your head, but here is another question, where do you think Canadians would rank in that list?
First? Fifth? Tenth? How about 17th? Iceland was first the Netherlands was number 2 and the UK was # 10. Only 75 % of Canadians surveyed selected the third option. Compare that to Iceland with 94%, Australia with 90 % and Venezuela at 87 %. Now personally I would think we would be happier then Venezuelans. Their average annual income is less then $6,500.00 and the US Department of state traveler’s website reports “Violent crime in Venezuela is pervasive, both in the capital, Caracas, and in the interior. The country has one of the highest per-capita murder rates in the world. Armed robberies take place in broad daylight throughout the city, including areas generally presumed safe and frequented by tourists.” It maybe be warmer there but I would still think we’d be happier here. Unless of course it’s because we define happy in different terms.
But you know the quest for “Happy” isn’t necessarily a new concept, in the first twelve verses of the Sermon on the Mount Jesus talks about this very issue. You say “that’s nice a sermon about happiness.” And really for too many people that is their view of Jesus, someone who makes them happy. Almost sounds like Aladdin’s Genie. And yet the concepts that Jesus deals with here are anything but nice because they don’t line up with our views of what it means to be happy.
So what is happy? A number of years ago David Myers of Michigan’s Hope College and Ed Diener of the University of Illinois co-authored an article that was printed in “Psychological Science” entitled “Who is Happy.” And this is some of what they discovered.
No time of life is notably happier or unhappier than any other
There is little difference in happiness between black and white Americans
Wealthy Americans are only marginally happier than poor Americans
Lottery winners are initially elated but the feeling soon wears off
A “Psychology Today” article on happiness a number of years ago was based on a survey of 5,200 readers, I love the response of one reader who wrote “I think I’m happy please verify” and while they didn’t discover what happiness was they did come back with some conclusions about unhappiness, the biggest being “Unhappiness is wanting what I don’t have but think you do have.” And so the stay at home mom thinks that she is deprived of her independence that those who work outside the home enjoy while the working mom thinks the stay at home mom has more freedom to do as she wishes. And so we gauge our happiness by what we perceive others happiness to be.
Which reminds me of the story of the lady in California who was buried at the wheel of her Rolls Royce Silver Shadow, while they were lowering the car into the grave with a crane one grave digger turned to the other one and said “Now that’s living”
Let’s pull up a map, Jesus has been travelling along the road from Tiberius to Metula, which skits the sea of Galilee. The road branches off here at Tabgha and the church of loaves and fishes was built here in the fourth century , across the road about 3 kms north of Tabgha is a hill that is about 100 metres high. It is commonly referred to as the “Hill of the Beatitudes” It was on this hill that Luke records that Jesus called the 12 apostles and there is little doubt that it was here the Sermon on the Mount was delivered, although if it had been in a country a less flat then Israel it would have been called the Sermon on the Mound.
And it was here that we are told his disciples came to him, not the crowds, not the multitudes but his disciples confirming what we already knew and that is the Sermon on the Mount was for Christ Followers. And it was to these followers that Jesus spoke of being happy. So what is “Happy”? Good question, it is possessions, a feeling, unencumbered leisure, absence of all restraint, uninterrupted ecstasty, a sense of purpose and freedom from threats. Hmmmm, maybe the problem is that we don’t actually know what happiness is. Maybe we have allowed the world to define what happiness is and when we reach for it, pouf it disappears.
Do you remember what William Lyons Phelps said about happiness? No? Phelps stated “If happiness truly consisted in physical ease and freedom from care then the happiest individual would not be either a man or a woman; it would be I think, an American cow.”
Jesus states his views on happiness in these eight poetic sayings we call the beatitudes. And we find that bizarre because they have so little relevance to what we think of as happiness in 2007 But really the term that Jesus uses that our bibles translate as blessed was in the original language the word Makarious and it literally meant to be “Supremely blessed, well off, fortunate or happy.’’ Sounds like what we are looking for.
So let’s start by noting a couple of things. 1) Happiness Is A Result Not A Goal. Happiness is not something we search for and find, it is something we find while we are looking for something else. You ever do that? How many of you have ever lost your car keys and while you were hunting for them you found other things. Had a guy in my church in Truro that got tired of losing his car keys, bought one of those key tags that beep when you clap your hands, do you remember those. Brought it to church one Sunday night and during the singing people started to . . . yeah.
Jesus said in Matthew 6:33 Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need. So 2) The Something Else We are Supposed to be Looking for is the Kingdom of God. Christ doesn’t tell us to pursue happiness, that freedom is enshrined in the US Constitution not the Bible. And if we only embrace God to find happiness then we’ve done it for the wrong reason. The pursuit of happiness can be as idolatrous as the pursuit of mansions, millions or careers
Alexander Solzhenitsyn said “If humanism was right in declaring that man is born to be happy then man wouldn’t be born to die” There is nothing wrong with the desire to be happy, there is everything wrong with the way we often go seeking it.
And so Christ begins the beatitudes by making this remarkable statement found in the scripture that Karen read earlier. Matthew 5:3 “God blesses those who are poor and realize their need for him, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.” The NIV and Authorized Version translate that “Blessed are The Poor in Spirit.” And that is a strange way to begin a discussion on happiness. A more accurate translation might be, those not inflated in spirit. And so Christ says “Happy are those who don’t get ruined by the delusions of deserving the Kingdom of God.
In the classic movie Quo Vadis, the Roman General Marcus Vinicus is returning to Rome after a military victory and is riding into the city on his chariot, people are screaming and cheering, this is the equivalent on a ticker tape parade. And standing on the chariot is a slave whispering in his master ear: “Remember thou art only a man”
In our culture happiness is reserved for those who exceed human limitations. In other words it is for the athlete who breaks the records, the parent who raises three perfect kids, the writer who produces the best seller, the preacher with the biggest church, the politician with the biggest majority. From day one we are told that happiness is achieved when we become the very best that we can possibly be.
“Are you content now?” the caterpillar asked Alice in Wonderland. “Well, I should like to be a little larger.” She said “Three inches is such a wretched height to be . . . I’m not used to it.”
Everybody wants to be a little bigger, maybe not physically but every other way. In our work and in our play. Reminds me of the T-shirt I saw that said “Finishing second means you are the first loser.”
Happiness will never find us as long as we see ourselves as good enough to make it on our own. All of our lives we are told how great we are. In humanism we are taught that man is the ultimate good and he can make it on his own. If a man realizes his own helplessness and can then put his whole trust in God then two things will happen. The first is that he will become completely detached from things and the second is he will become completely attached to God.
And so Christ says “God blesses those who are poor and realize their need for him” Why? “For the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.” You see until we become poor in spirit we can’t accept Christ, and until we accept Christ we can’t gain the kingdom of heaven.
Until we accept our depravity and the futility of our works we will never see the need of salvation. Jesus spelled it out for us in Luke 19:10 Jesus said “For the Son of Man came to seek and save those who are lost.” Does that mean that those who aren’t lost don’t need to be saved? No, because the Bible tells us that everyone is lost. But until you can admit that you are lost you won’t ask for help to find your way.
Christ next statement seems almost as absurd as his first one, Matthew 5:4 God blesses those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are those Who Mourn And it is here that Jesus uses the strongest word in the Greek language for mourning. 15 years ago my cousin and her husband rushed their four year old to the local hospital with what they thought was a bad case of the flu. Twelve hours later there were asked to sign consent to remove him from life support, and they lost their first born child. That is the type of grief that Jesus is talking about. So, is Jesus saying that the true path to happiness is through grief? Not at all. Anyone who has ever lost a loved one through death, divorce or rejection knows that there is no great unhappiness. In our minds happiness and grief are at the far ends of the spectrum of human emotions and we spend most of our lives trying to insulate ourselves from grief. And yet Jesus definitely lines our happiness and our grief.
Some would say that the second beatitude is linked to the first one and so Christ begins by saying “Happy are those who know they are sinners.” And continues by saying “And happy are those who grieve for their sinfulness.” You know those believers who always seemed to dressed in black with long sorrowful faces and there never seems to be any joy or celebration in their lives only guilt and self hatred. While the concept of grief over our sinfulness maybe be part of what Jesus is teaching here, I really can’t accept it as the sum total of his teaching. So what do I think? Glad you asked.
1) We Never Life Fully Until We Experience Grief and Overcome it. Part of being human is conquering grief in such a way that come out a better person and not a bitter person. What would be if never experienced grief? A rock, a robot. It has been said that “all sunshine makes a desert.” And it’s true, the ground upon which the sun always shines soon becomes arid and barren.
Without grief you could never fully comprehend joy. Without grief there would be no way to tell the difference between the good and the bad, between better and worse. When friends of ours lost their three year old in a tragic accident one night it was a Wesleyan Pastor and his wife who were able to minister to them. Was it because of the pastors great theological knowledge and wonderful counseling techniques? No it was because only a year before they had lost their young daughter to a traffic accident. The truth of the matter is that God never promised any of us a sorrow free environment.
2) When you Grieve for the Right Things. If I was to ask each of you to write down one thing which had caused you grief and hurt what would it be? What was the last thing you grieved over? I remember the grief that I felt when my cousin’s little boy died. My heart broke, not so much for Sean as for the sorrow that Cherese and Tim were experiencing. And I think that was valid and that Christ would have approved. After all the scriptures tell us that Jesus wept when Lazarus died. And because we know that Jesus would raise Lazarus from the dead he wasn’t weeping for him, instead he was weeping for Lazarus’s sisters Martha and Mary.
Two years before seas death I grieved as well, it was in May of 1990, it was just before we moved to Australia and it was the day I sold my motorcycle. We can laugh now, but right then it didn’t seem so funny. And I think if I could have choose that day between keeping my bike or moving to Australia, Australia would have lost. And to be truthful, in a human sense that grief was valid too. I thought a lot of that bike, and when I lost it I grieved and even though it may have been valid in a human sense I’m not sure that Christ would have approved.
I’ve said it before, twice in the time we’ve been married we’ve sold everything and started over, houses, cars and furniture. And I was amazed at how much stuff we owned. And even more amazed by how much stuff owned us.
I have discovered that unhappiness doesn’t come from grieving as much as it comes from grieving over the wrong things. Happiness ultimately happens when we grieve over the right things. When we weep for the things that God weeps for, weep for the things that cause Jesus to weep. Happy are those who mourn as God mourns. And what does God mourn? The lostness, the brokenness the confusion of a world he created with so much beauty and love. God weeps over those who refuse to acknowledge their sin and die and go to hell. God weeps over those who ignore the plight of their fellow man and fellow Christians. God weeps over those things that stand in the way of the Kingdom of God.
And so Christ doesn’t say that we will always be comforted when we grieve, but that we will be comforted when we grieve for the right things. And so Jesus says Matthew 5:4 God blesses those who mourn, Why? for they will be comforted. For as we learn to grieve we also learn to lean, and as we cry we discover there is a God there to wipe away our tears.
And if people weren’t already confused, “poor in spirit, those who grieve?” Jesus adds to their discomfort by stating Matthew 5:5 God blesses those who are humble, for they will inherit the whole earth. Maybe you remember it as Blessed Are The Meek. Now that’s a radical concept isn’t it? Whether it be the humble or the meek that flies in the face of all the world teaches. If we were to develop a beatitude today it would have to be “Blessed is the aggressor” We are aggressive and competitive in everything we do, from work to sports to church. And if you’re not aggressive then you can take assertiveness training and learn to become aggressive. You can let people know what you want, how you want it when you want it and start getting your own way.
For most of us meek and humble mean weak and nobody wants to be thought of as weak. You don’t see people lining up to take meekness training. And so when people hear this beatitude they shake their heads and call it rubbish or foolishness. The philosopher Nietzsche wrote “I regard it as the most fatal and seductive lie that ever existed.” To be frank a lot of people feel the words of Christ at this point are a mistake and at the worst are a deliberate lie. Our experience has shown us it’s not the meek and humble who will inherit the earth. The multinational corporations, the slick politicians, the multi-married movie starts, the porn producers, the military dictators, they are the ones who will inherit the earth. Aristotle defines a virtue as the middle ground between two extremes. He goes on to define this particular virtue of meekness as the middle ground between excessive anger and excessive angerlessness. In other words the meek person is not a hot head but he’s not a wimp either. What Christ is saying is “Happy is the person who gets angry at the right time and doesn’t get angry at the wrong time.”
If we put this into context with Christ’s other teachings we would say it is never right to be angry over a wrong done to us but it is often right to be angry at injury done to others. Selfish anger is always a sin but selfless anger can be a great moral catalyst. It is this type of anger that changes the world when it sees injustice done. It is the anger that abolished slavery, fought for civil rights and get’s angry that people are hungry and without clean water.
And the greatest meaning of this meekness is the fact that we are called to be meek toward the Lordship of Christ, when we allow our entire life to come under the rule of God. When our lives and loves and angers and fears are at the will of God, then you will find happiness.
And so Christ tells us Matthew 5:5 God blesses those who are humble, Why? for they will inherit the whole earth. The world belongs to the saviours, not to the conquerors. We honour those who made the world a better place not a worse place.
So where you at today? Are you happy? Do you want to be? Then maybe it’s time to stop trying to do it all your self and allow Jesus to have control.
PowerPoint may be available for this message email me at denn@cornerstonewesleyan.ca
