Sunday, August 16, 2015

What Is The Path to a Happy Life? The Answer Might Surprise You

What is happiness?   How do you get it?  How do you experience a truly fulfilled life?  Getting an answer to that question doesn’t come so easily.   I know.  I tried.   I went to that font of all information, Google to find out.  It gave me 128 million results and an advertisement for Scientology. 

Still, I did learn some things from my little search.   I learned that pretty much nothing around us will bring us happiness, or at least a happiness that lasts for any length of time.   In a famous study researchers looked at two different groups of people.   One group had won millions of dollars in the lottery.   The other group became paraplegics, sentenced to a wheelchair for the rest of their lives.   Now a year after both these things had happened, guess which group of folks were happier?  

When you averaged it out, both groups experienced the same level of happiness.  Study after study has shown similar things.   Nothing we do or acquire or experience can bring us happiness.   So what does?   Interestingly enough, in the words we’re about to hear, Jesus tells us.   How do we become happier, truly fulfilled?   In some of his most famous words, Jesus shows us the way.  Let’s listen and hear what Jesus has to say.  


Likely like me, you’ve heard these words of Jesus’ many times.  But do you really understand what they mean?   They sound nice, even poetic.   But what in the world was Jesus trying to tell us?   Jesus was telling us, telling the crowds.   You want happiness, a fulfilled life?  Then let me show you how such a life comes.   Jesus isn’t describing a series of different people here.  Jesus is describing in these beatitudes, the characteristics of one person, the person who is truly happy. 

Essentially that’s what the word blessed means.   It means happy.   And in these words, Jesus is giving us a map to happiness.   No, let me take that back.   Jesus isn’t giving us a map.  That would imply that somehow it’s up to us to get to happiness.  And at the beginning, Jesus makes it clear.  Happiness only happens when you realize there is no map; when you realize that not only do you not have a map, you are already on a dead end road.

That’s why he starts with those words happy are the poor in spirit.   Jesus is saying that happiness comes to only those who see how utterly spiritually bankrupt they are.  Happiness only comes to those who realize that when it comes to their spiritual bank account, they have nothing, nada, a big goose egg.  

But doesn’t that seem a little harsh?   A lot of folks would acknowledge that maybe their spiritual bank account has insufficient funds, but to call it empty?   Their internal conversation might go like this.     Sure, I need God’s forgiveness.   I’ve done some bad things.   I’ve made some mistakes.  But it’s not all been bad.   I’ve done my share of good things.  I’ve got something in the bank.  It may not be enough to cover my debts, but it’s something.   But is it? 

Jesus is saying that happiness only comes when we realize that whatever our something is, is actually nothing.   How does that happen?   It happens when we realize that even our good deeds were done with mixed motives.

If we’re honest, can we say that any good deed we performed came without any mixed motives at all?  Sure.   We had genuine desires to serve others, to love and care for them.  But was that all of it?   Did we also do it because we wanted others to like or approve us, or because it made us feel better about ourselves?   When have we ever done a good deed without having a bit of ourselves in the mix, some degree of self interest in the midst of our motives?

What happens is you realize how utterly bankrupt you actually are, that even the assets you have, your good deeds, are essentially junk bonds with no real value at all?  And when that happens, what do you do?  Well, you grieve.  You mourn.   But paradoxically, it is this very mourning, this grief that opens the door to true happiness.  Because our grief changes us.   Another word for this grief of which Jesus speaks is the word repentance.  That is the sort of grieving we are doing here.  And what does this word repentance mean?  It literally means a change of mind, to the way we think.   Our realization of our poverty leads us to a grief, a grief that transforms our minds, our very thinking.

How does it transform our minds?  It makes them meek.   Now our word meek doesn’t come close to what Jesus is telling us here.   Our word meek typically means timid or fearful, but Jesus doesn’t mean that.   The word Jesus originally used actually means a humble and gentle attitude that comes through a loss or time of difficulty.  This humility and gentleness comes because through our loss, we have submitted our lives to a larger reality.  The Greek word, Praus that the gospel writers use for Jesus’ Aramaic word points to this.   The Greeks used this word praus to describe a number of things.  It could mean a soothing medicine or a gentle breeze or a broken colt.    Now each of these things have one element in common.  Do you see what it is?  They all describe a great power under control.   Meekness isn’t weakness, not at all   It’s rather our strength acting under the authority of a strength greater than ourselves.   It is a giving up of our power that actually makes us more powerful than ever before.  Why? Now our power is given over to God, a power infinitely greater and wiser than ourselves.    We are a horse that now has a rider. 

This is what develops from the inward experience of poverty and loss Jesus describes.  This is the first fruit we bear, a fruit that becomes evident not only inside of us but to the people around us.   We become less angry, less reactive.   We become more patient and forgiving.   When something unjust happens, we stand up against it, sure.  But we come from a different place, one where our strength flows through a strength greater and wiser than our own.   We are a horse whose rider leads us where we really need to go. 

And from that place, we realize what truly matters.   Instead of hungering and thirsting after success or money or the approval of others or any of the other false ways to happiness that the world offers, we hunger and thirst for something profoundly different.  We hunger and thirst for a deeper, more intimate relationship with God, with our rider so to speak.   That’s what righteousness means.  It simply means a right relationship with God.

This past week, I heard from an old friend, who first came to this church to get his daughter baptized.  But the baptism was about more than his daughter, it was a desperate act to save a floundering marriage.  Somehow he thought that this ritual might restore the relationship.  It didn’t.
And over the next years, this very accomplished man saw his life collapse.  In the space of one week, he hit bottom.  His relationship with a woman he planned to marry crashed and burned. He lost his job with little prospect for another.  And he wondered how he was going to provide for himself much less his daughter. That’s when he came to me, broken and bereft.   And in that pain, he was ready.   He was ready to face his poverty, to begin the process of grief that facing that poverty would mean.   And literally overnight a man who had been full of arrogance, a jackass by his own admission, transformed into a man of gentleness and humility.   But that transformation didn’t become apparent to me for a while, what showed me just how profoundly God had changed him was a text message I received a few days after we had first met.  At our first meeting, I told him that he needed to read the whole Gospel of Luke by the next time we met which was about a week away.  He looked at the Bible and said to me.  That’s like 30 pages.  That’s a lot for me.   Then three days later, I got this text.  I finished Luke.  I’m thinking John would be next.   Then two days after that, I got another text.  I finished John.  What’s next?  I told him Acts or Matthew.    Do you see what was happening?  This man was hungering and thirsting.  

Think about those words.   If you are hungering and thirsting, how do you deal with it?   Do you go?  Wow, I need to plant a garden so I have some food.   Or sheesh, I need to find some work so I can buy something at the grocery store.  No, when you are hungering or thirsting, you seek nourishment wherever you can.  You beg for it.  You look for anyone who has it.  You are desperate for it.   This guy had that hunger, and he hasn’t lost it.   He is now once again quite successful but as he texted me this week.  He wrote.  I still hold God’s hand daily.   This man at one time was the famous chef GordonRamsay’s boss.  He had reached the pinnacle in his profession, but was he happy?  No.   But when he faced his poverty, when he felt that grief, it changed him. It led him to hunger and thirst for what ultimately mattered.  And when he did, God answered. God filled him up.  God opened the way to true happiness in his life. 

All that follows this beatitude is simply Jesus describing what this happy, fulfilled life looks like.  It means you don’t hold grudges, that you are filled with mercy towards others.   Why?   You know how merciful God has been to you.   You see things clearly, with a purity of heart that enables you to see God even in the most difficult of places.  You become a person who brings greater wholeness and peace to the world, someone who knows in their heart of hearts that they are a child of God.  So even if hard times come, even persecution, it doesn’t destroy you, it only leads you to hold God’s hand more tightly, rely on his strength more deeply.  Your happiness doesn’t diminish.  It simply grows deeper and stronger than before.

So this is the path to happiness.   This is a fulfilled life.   But how does it happen?  How do we face our poverty, enter our grief, submit our power, and get filled with God’s presence.  We realize.  Jesus didn’t just preach these words.  Jesus lived them. 
 
How can we inherit the kingdom of heaven? Because Jesus gave it up.   Jesus, who was rich became poor so that through his poverty we might become rich.   How in our grief can we be comforted? Because when Jesus cried even tears of blood, no one comforted him.   How can we give our power over to God and inherit the earth?  Because Jesus, gave up every bit of his power, even his life, in order that we might.  How can we, when we hunger and thirst, be filled?  Because Jesus hungered and thirsted first, even emptied himself for us.    How can we receive mercy?  Because Jesus didn’t.    How can we see God?  Because Jesus in the purity of his love for us, lost sight of God so that we who were blind might see.   How can we become peacemakers? Because Jesus became our peace through his dying for us. 

Do you see how Jesus, the truly blessed one, lived out these words for you?  The more you see that, the more you and I will see how profoundly poor we are.  The more you see what Jesus did for you, the deeper your own grief will be.  And in that grief, you will gladly submit your lives to the one who give up his for you.  When he says, 28 “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. You will trust the truth of those words.  You will hunger and thirst for them.   And in doing so, you will be filled like never before with the grace, the favor, the utter fulfillment that only Jesus can give.

Where today do you need to face up to your poverty?   Where today do you need God to fill you?    This is the way to happiness, because Jesus is the way to happiness.  Let Jesus love you.  Let Jesus fill you.  Let Jesus give you life as only Jesus can.  


No comments:

Post a Comment