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?
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