The Changing Face of Happiness

Jesus says, “Happy are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” You know that’s another way to translate the Beatitudes. ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit can also be ‘happy are the poor in spirit.’ But what is happiness?

I know a place full of happy people. “Animal Crossing.” It was a big hit in my house for awhile. In this video game you are a little guy or girl wandering about a town populated by animals who live in stylish little cabins and who seem to have an endless supply of errands that need to be run. There is a post office where you can mail notes to your new friends or other players. There is a stream where you can fish, a museum where you can take treasures you’ve found, and a train station where you can ride the rails to the next town, which looks just like the one you left.

The major task of your life in Animal Crossing, however, is to collect things and decorate your own stylish little cabin (which can quickly grow to a substantial house if you’re good at the game). To do this you earn bells, which are the currency of the land, and take them to Tom Nook’s store to buy things like carpet and wall coverings and furniture and knick-knacks. In Tom Nook’s store you can even buy the “executive’s toy,” that thing which consists of five steel balls suspended from strings and when you take one and bang it into the end of the others physics takes hold and merriment ensues.

There is something empty about the happy world of Animal Crossing, though. Is this what the good life is all about? Or does the game only mimic the worst trivialities of the real world? In a land with no culture, no churches, and no schools, what do people do? They busy themselves by filling up space with manufactured knick-knacks! The world will not end in fire or ice, it will end in an overstuffed chair watching an “executive’s toy” click-clack away the last fading seconds of our pitiful lives.

My house in the game, by the way, was always a wreck since I don’t have the patience to organize it correctly. Otherwise, though, it was sweet.

Why do I bring up Animal Crossing? Because I think we may be finding it hard to know when we’re happy these days. We comfort ourselves with diversions and devices but maybe you, like me, fear that something essential about ourselves is being neglected, that we are somehow disconnected from something more meaningful and more substantial. Have you ever felt that way? Have you ever wondered if the ideals of the world or of your working life were tissue thin and ultimately deceptive?

The Sermon on the Mount begins with the Beatitudes, that series of blessings which we just read. Here Jesus takes his disciples up a hillside away from the crowds who could easily have deluded the disciples into believing that what they were called to be a part of us was a mass, popular crusade. When they looked at the people they could say, “This is not some sideshow. This is a movement! Look at all the people. We must be doing something right. We must be saying something that makes sense. You go, Jesus!”

But Jesus takes them aside and says, “No, it’s not like that. You think this makes us successful. Let me tell you a little bit about God’s standards. It’s not about feeling full, it’s about feeling empty. It’s about meekness and mourning. It’s about poverty of spirit and purity of heart. It’s about hungering and thirsting after righteousness. It’s about mercy and peace. And for you, even for you, it’s about persecution because when you really hear what I’m saying, you will not have crowds coming to celebrate your name. You will have nations who do not understand and powers that do not want to listen.”

With the beatitudes Jesus seems to say that we have lived too long in the bright lights of the city. We have become seduced by values that now seem wise and rational. We can call ‘war’ peace and no one will flinch. We can call ‘oppression’ freedom. We can call ‘neglect’ charity. We can leave a whole generation of children behind and say that we lost none.

It is no different in the depths of our souls. We can say we care for others, but can’t get over ourselves. We can say we’ve got it all together when inside we’re falling apart. We can say we don’t care about making a fortune, but we wouldn’t mind. We can say that sin is an old-fashioned word when our own limitations and delusions stare us right in the face every morning.

What Jesus says in the Beatitudes is that if you are frustrated in figuring out how to make it into this equation…if you can’t find yourself in one of these blessed categories, “poor in spirit, mourning, meek, peacemaker, persecuted,” then perhaps you are still too seduced. These words are not meant to be comforting. They are meant to be disturbing. They are not meant to be a pat on the back, they are meant to be a kick in the rear. God is not waiting in the world we have created for ourselves. If God were there we would have already found her. God is waiting in the world and home we have left behind…in the world which operates according to standards that make no sense unless we live with them every day. Jesus gives us these strange little notions of happiness (Happy are those who mourn? Really?) because we need to be tripped up to pay attention again.

Martin Buber, was a twentieth-century Jewish thinker who felt that God could be discovered in dialogue. His most famous writing was “I and Thou” and in it he talks about how our normal interaction with the world is instrumental. I see the world as a collection of “its” - things which I can more or less comprehend and which I don’t have to interact with as if they have a claim on me. I can pick up my spoon at breakfast and it usually doesn’t talk back. I don’t think about my spoon very often. We can even start to treat other people that way. This is the bank teller, that’s the bus driver. Even in our most comfortable relationships we fall into a pattern.

But when we call something “Thou” we say something more intimate. A “Thou” has an impact on me. It troubles my easy definitions. When I have a long talk with a person I thought I knew, what I thought I knew about them and about me changes. They rise above the level of my previous understandings. They become a “Thou” and it is no accident that this is also the most common reference to God in old translations of the Bible. “Thou hast made us.” In the true encounter with others and the world we sense the eternal source of others and the world. We sense God. But we have to get our understandings messed up first. We have to hear how upside down God’s values are when compared to the world’s.

So my message today is to pay attention. Being happy in this world does not consist of comfort and riches. Happiness is about being God-directed. It’s about letting God come disturb us. It’s about listening to the deep hunger within us for righteousness. It’s about looking for God in our poverty of spirit and in our mourning. It’s about the humility that knows we don’t know it all, but which trusts with a purity of heart that God does.

Happiness is knowing that the world is God’s. The world is shot through with God. And God leaves no place untouched or unredeemed. Thanks be to God.

Matthew 5:1-12 [NRSV]

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

"Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

"Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

"Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

"Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

"Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”