If Your HAPPY and You Know It Clap
Your Hands
Happiness -- what is
it? We live in a country whose
primary purpose has been built upon
the notion that all of us have a
right to it. Our Declaration of
Independence names the "pursuit of
happiness" as one of three
inalienable rights with which we are
endowed by God. It says we even hold
this notion to be "self-evident." It
is, of course, the Gospel according
to Thomas Jefferson, "life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness."
What is self-evident is how
radically different Jefferson's
notion is than what Jesus says bout
the subject. Jefferson viewed "life,
liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness" as human rights, the
Bible understands them to be gifts.
That is to say, they are not
inherent in life. That should be
obvious to anyone who has taken a
moment to look around carefully. Let
me put it another way: how many
people do you know that you would
describe as truly "happy?" The
lessons today address the question
of happiness with instructions for
how it comes to be. The question I
would like us to use as we explore
them is this: is happiness a
blessing or a life-style?
Jesus begins with
four blessings, but they sound like
anything but blessings. What, after
all, is blessed about being poor,
hungry, reduced to tears, or the
object of hatred? Jesus continues on
to four curses. Cursed are the rich,
full, laughing, and those of whom
people speak well. Forget the fact
that most of us here qualify, isn't
that precisely our culture's
contemporary definition of
happiness. There is nothing
inherently cursed about abundance,
prosperity or wealth. You have heard
me say this before: all of God's
gifts have the capacity to be either
a blessing or a curse. It simply
depends upon how you and I relate to
them and use them. Money, after all,
is not the root of all evil. Money
can be a great blessing, most useful
in securing the necessities of life
as well as providing for its
pleasures, not only for ourselves
but others. Money is not a curse. It
is the love of money that
turns it from blessing to a curse.
It is the desire, no worse, the
desperate trust in money, and a
devotion to it as the source of
life, which turns it from blessing
to curse. Consider the number of
people in this town and county
sixty-plus hours a week to make it.
Someone said to me not long ago that
he had not been to church for years,
primarily because he needed Sunday
morning to rest. After all, his job
required that he work twelve to
fourteen hours a day. "Really?" I
ask. You have to do that? The
answer, of course, is “No”. He is
choosing to do it. He thinks it is
going to give him life. To compound
the error, he shuts himself off from
the source of life on the Lord's
Day, thinking a few extra hours
sleep will restore him! See how
perverse our hearts are? How badly
have we distorted things when a
couple of extra hours in bed are the
source of life? God is the source of
life! And anytime we allow a
condition, substance or activity to
take God's place in life we have
turned a blessing into a curse. This
is precisely Jesus' point. When you
and I turn to wealth, fulfilled
appetites, mirth, or public
adulation as the source of life, we
have committed ourselves to ways of
living that are filled with curses.
Jesus' words are
addressed to people who are poor,
hungry, and filled with grief. His
word to them is that in such
circumstances, their only source of
hope is God. They are blessed
because they are the object of God's
love and concern. It is Jeremiah's
word: "Blessed are those who trust
in the Lord," or the psalmist's
"Happy are those whose delight is in
the law of the Lord." Jesus is
saying that blessings in life emerge
for those who live in dependence on
God rather than dependence upon
another or even themselves.
Life begins to be "living"
when we focus on, and search after
the one who is the author and
sustainer of life. For as you and I
seek God, we find God filling us
with the gift of himself until life
is spilling over the brim of our
lives. Those who search for God
become like trees planted near
streams, they show signs of constant
nourishment, and they flourish.
Here is the clear
distinction between the way the
Bible looks at happiness and the way
our contemporary culture promotes
it. Happiness in our culture is
inevitably self- centered, something
that happens to us because of what
others do for us or something we
earn by hard work and acquisition.
In our more charitable moments we
might call it a blessing, but still,
the bottom line is ourselves, how to
fill our appetites, or put ourselves
at the center of things. Happiness
in the Bible is not self-centered,
it is God-centered. Happiness
emerges in our lives, not when we
build life to revolve around
ourselves or our notions of personal
need, but when we entrust our lives
and ourselves to God, regardless of
our hardships or circumstances of
want. In answer to the quest
happiness is a blessing, which
emerges out of our life-style,
entrusting our lives to God in every
circumstance, choosing not only to
live for God, but also to live
according to the rules of his reign.
