Was Jesus Happy?

Jeremiah 1:4-10

Heb. 12:18-29

Was Jesus happy?  While Jesus passionately called his followers to a new and better way of life, it is hard to imagine him in a Barnes & Noble, thumbing through a self-help book like Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project.

Was Jesus happy?  The question seems rather distant from our day to day concerns.  It feels sort of like asking: Was Teddy Roosevelt left handed?  Did Christopher Columbus have any pets?  Or, What was Queen Elizabeth’s favorite color? 

These questions might have an answer, but the answers don’t really matter.  What matters to us is a more personal question: how can I live the life God has given me in a way that will bring me deep and lasting satisfaction, deep and meaningful connections with friends and neighbors, and strength to face a variety of difficulties?

The matter is quite urgent: if we cannot imagine Jesus happy, what right do we have as his followers to pursue happiness for ourselves?

So, how do you picture Jesus?  Do you picture him primarily as sad and suffering – a crown of thorns above a tired face on a man always being crucified?  Can you think of him ever laughing, dancing, or playful? 

There may be some slender evidence in the gospels that Jesus laughed, danced, and celebrated: he was a regular guest at wedding parties; children seemed to love being around him; and he occasionally told the witty one-liner.  But let’s remember – the gospels aren’t full scale biographies.  We get nothing of his first 30 years of life.  Only the briefest sketch of the last three.  And even then, half of the gospel story is focused on the final week of his life, a week of betrayal, misery, and suffering.

One reason we have trouble imagining Jesus as truly “happy” is that we have a rather distorted view of what happiness looks like.  Our readings today help us explore what “happiness” means for Jesus, and for us as his followers.

Jeremiah 1:4-10:

Our reading from Jeremiah reminds us that happiness is available even to those on a difficult path.  In other words, we should give up the myth of happiness as “ease.”

The call of Jeremiah warns us that being liked by others shouldn’t be high on our priority list.  Some of you are introverted curmedgeons.  You don’t care much what others think.  But some of have personalities that make us sensitive to whether other people like us.  And so for some people, “happiness” is unthinkable unless other people like you.

But no one liked Jeremiah.  He was unlikeable.  But Jeremiah’s problem wasn’t his personality.  It was his calling.

Jeremiah lived in a difficult time, the time of God’s judgment upon the people in Jerusalem and Judah.  And Jeremiah was commissioned by God with a difficult task: speaking God’s disappointment, God’s decisive “No!” to the people.  God chose Jeremiah for this task before he was born.  But to Jeremiah, the calling felt overwhelming.  “I can’t do this,” he complained.  “I’m too young.  I don’t have the right skill set.”

But God always gives us the resources to match what God calls us to do.  God told Jeremiah to stand confidently and courageously in the midst of the people and say what God needed him to say.  “Don’t be afraid,” God adds (meaning, I think, “You’ll be afraid, there’s good reason to feel afraid, but don’t let your fear paralyze you.  I’ll be with you”).  And then God reached out his hand and touched Jeremiah’s mouth, saying, “I have put my words in your mouth” (v. 9).

God has the right to command us to do difficult things in our lives.  And if we make a habit of always pursuing the path of least resistance, always choosing the path of ease, relaxation, and pleasure, we’ll no doubt miss a good bit of life.  There are things worth doing that are really, really hard.  There are things worth doing that make you uncomfortable, that reorganize your life in ways that are terribly inconvenient. 

But God is calling us to a life that matters, a life where we live up near the top range of what our gifts and capabilities allow.  And that adventure, that sense of purpose and meaning, is a thousand times more rewarding, than a life that’s comfortable and convenient. 

Jesus was happy but his life was not easy.  It’s possible to live with delight and joy even when your path is a difficult one.  God probably won’t remove all the difficulty from your life.  But God will help you find a way to be happy in the midst of those difficulties.

Hebrews 12:18-29

In a similar way, Hebrews suggests that happiness will not be found if we demand a life that feels like casual informality.  Happiness requires that we be able to recognize times of sacred urgency.

Jesus invites us into something big enough that the only appropriate response from us is “reverence and awe” (v. 28).  We’re asked to recall the vivid scene of the fiery, terrifying mountain where God gave the law to Moses and the Israelites.  That mountain was so sacred that any person or animal who approached it to even touch it was to be stoned to death (v. 20).  Even Moses said, “I am trembling with fear (v. 21)”.

But what’s happening RIGHT NOW as we’re sitting here is MORE SACRED than Mount Sinai.  The same God who spoke to Moses on that mountain is speaking to us right now.  And this God not only descended in fire on the top of a mountain, but also has now taken on flesh like ours and lived a human life in our midst.  And this God demands our respect and reverence.  This God is a “consuming fire” (v. 29).  And the upshot is a terse warning for us all: “See to it that you do not refuse him who speaks” (v. 25).

This may be hard for some of us to hear.  We like casual.  We want everything to be low key.  We don’t want “drama,” we say.  We don’t dress up for much of anything anymore – not work, not church, not going out.  We have chosen against fuss and formality.  On the positive side, these trends remind us that God cares about the heart, not physical appearance.

The danger is that our love of the casual and low key immunizes us against the sacred urgency of listening for God’s voice and responding obediently.  Hebrews says about our worship of God, “You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly” (v. 22).  There is something spectacularly urgent about God’s speaking to us that demands our full attention.

So did Jesus live a life filled with ease and entertainment?  No, he wasn’t happy in that way.  But did he live with joy in the midst of a difficult path?  Did he live a deeply meaningful life even while being attuned to the urgency of God’s voice?  Yes, he was happy in these ways.  And yet these important themes have dropped out of our culture’s conversation about happiness.

Ellen Charry puts it this way in God and the Art of Happiness:

“Untethered from God, there is little call to locate happiness in a spiritual-moral framework.  Christian doctrine has not adequately linked piety to pleasure, thus leaving a theological gap between goodness and happiness.  Happiness unlinked from goodness and linked to excitement instead has moved in to fill the space. . . . While all want to be happy, many are looking in the wrong place” (xii).

John’s gospel allows us to listen in on Jesus’ final words with his disciples.  And he talks with them about “joy.”

“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.  Now remain in my love.  If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love.  I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.”  (John 15:9-11)

Here we’re offered a clue to Jesus’ life and the life that’s offered to us.  Everything he did and suffered was underwritten, funded, and energized by joy.  Joy was the color of his life that made sense of everything he did.  And he invites us into that kind of life.

Part of growing deeper in the Christian faith is learning to look to Jesus as the model of what a rich and full human life looks like.  Hebrews 1:2 says of Jesus, “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being.”  Colossians 1:15 says “The Son is the image of the invisible God.”

So Jesus is the fullest possible expression of God-likeness in a human life.  He is the clearest image of what it looks like to be a smooth-functioning human creature, loving and being loved.  The biblical picture of happiness turns on being the fullest expression of what God created you to be.

Now what is this joy that Jesus both models for us and shares with us?

1)   This joy emerges in a life that’s “getting better”

This life of “getting better” is a life of continual growth.  And this is the life Jesus offers us: “the slow and painful recovery of the shattered and lost image of God” in us (Charry, p. 49).

Although God’s image is distorted in us, it is being renewed by Jesus through the Spirit and toward the shape of Jesus’ life.  It is this “getting better” that is actually our deepest and most satisfying joy. 

Now of course this growth is never a straight line of progress.  We frequently despair when we catch glimpses of how slow and halting is this process in us.  There are even times when we cannot see God’s work in our own lives.

And it’s also true that we confess our sins each week together, and in our own praying.  But that practice isn’t meant to discourage us.  It’s meant to free us by naming all the ways we’re living beneath the life God offers us.  When we’re just getting started in the life of faith, we get bogged down and discouraged by specific sins that block our way.

But at some point we have to learn that God’s primary response to our sin is NOT, “I’m angry or frustrated with you.”  But instead, “I want more for you.  I have more joy for you than that.”  Seeing yourself “getting better” means seeing yourself unfold and develop your capacities to love God and others better.

2)   This joy emerges in a life that’s ”getting stronger.”

As a human being created in God’s image, you have a range of powers that are impressive.  Your cluster of powers – what you can get done – will certainly differ from that of others.  But all of us human beings are powerful.  God created us that way.  And these powers and strengths we have are gifts from God, to be exercised for the good of others and our little corner of the world.

But some of us aren’t focused on “getting stronger” as part of a happy life because we’ve heard one too many lessons or sermons on humility.  Humility is an important way of life made possible by God’s Spirit.  But the truth is we’ve overcooked humility.  We’ve spent so much time urging one another to be “humble” that we no longer encourage one another to live powerfully.

Charry puts it this way:  “Christian theology, eager to inculcate humility, has at times failed to encourage the natural skills and strengths humans posses for executing their calling as God’s emissaries in the world” (163).

The Bible does not recommend a life that is powerless and passive.  Rather, it describes us as created by God with a range of skills and strengths that we are to exercise in our daily lives.  And God expects us to build on those strengths and provides for us the Holy Spirit to organize our powers for the good of others.

This week’s recommended practice:

Take a look at your schedule for this coming week and make at least one strategic change.  Alter what you were planning to do.  You have a range of powers – areas of strength – that are productive in making a difference and enjoyable for you personally.  And yet we allow many other things to get in the way.  What might need to be removed from your routine so that you can give more time to your strengths?