Pastor Dan Mangler's Sunday Sermon

The Pursuit of Happiness

Matthew 5: 1-12

January 30, 2005

The Pursuit of Happiness

The second sentence in the Declaration of Independence is, no doubt, the most familiar: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." It is a masterful political statement but, theologically, it has led us down a mistaken path toward a deceptive destination. It was "self-evident" to Thomas Jefferson, who penned these words, that a very significant "unalienable" right was the "pursuit of happiness", and it would seem to go without saying that right, thus protected, ought to be exercised to the fullest of expression. Here is a document, the cornerstone of our national identity, stating that we have the God-given right to pursue happiness. The pursuit of happiness, then, becomes both a religious right and a patriotic duty, to our misfortune.

But those who have obeyed that summons have found it to be an endless pursuit and like the donkey led forever onward by the carrot held on the end of a stick always just out of his reach, so also those who pursue happiness are forever striving yet never to be satisfied. The pursuit of happiness is fruitless because pursuing happiness is not how it is attained.

That is not to say happiness is not a worthy, or even a sacred goal. The biblical witness is clear; there is nothing more important in God's design than that we be happy. Jesus said, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. My quarrel is not with the end but the means by which it is sought. Happiness is not pursued and caught; happiness is received."

Happiness is the central theme of the Beatitudes, the "Blessed are the..." statements of Jesus in Matthew 5, our Gospel reading this morning. The Good News Bible even substitutes the word "happy" for "blessed". It is a tricky substitution, one that requires a special understanding of the happiness meant here, but an effort you will find very worthwhile. I can do no better than quote William Barclay in a word study on the Greek word alternately translated blessed or happy:

"The word 'blessed',” Barclay writes, “which is used in each of the beatitudes, is a very special word. It is the Greek word 'makarios'. 'Makarios' is the word that specially describes the gods. In Christianity there is a godlike joy.

"The meaning of ‘makarios’ can best be seen from one particular usage of it. The Greeks always called Cyprus 'he makaria', which means The Happy Isle, and they did so because they believed that Cyprus was so lovely, so rich, and so fertile an island that a man would never need to go beyond its coastline to find the perfectly happy life. It had such a climate, such flowers and fruits and trees, such minerals, such natural resources that it contained within itself all the materials for perfect happiness.

"‘Makarios’ then describes that joy that has its secret within itself, that joy which is serene and untouchable, and self-contained, that joy which is completely independent of all the chances and the changes of life.

“The English word 'happiness' gives its own case away. It contains the root ‘hap’ which means by chance, (as in haphazard). Human happiness is something that is dependent on the chances and the changes of life, something that life may give and that life may also take away. The Christian blessedness is completely untouchable and unassailable. 'No one', said Jesus, 'will take your joy from you.' (John 16:22). The beatitudes speak of that joy that seeks us through our pain, that joy that sorrow and loss, and pain and grief are powerless to touch, and joy that shines through tears and that nothing in life or death can take away."

It is clear that whether we call it blessedness or happiness, that which Jesus promises in the beatitudes is not something caught after some long chase, but something received as a gift from God.

I think it is easier to see those lessons in others than in ourselves. It is often less painful that way. It is for me anyway. Are you as amazed as I am when you read in some of these movie magazines, or even in more reputable periodicals as Time or Newsweek, how unhappy many of the rich and famous are.

Hollywood, dubbed “Tinsel Town”, would seem to be the paradigm for happiness. One prominent actress, as the story goes, was married four times, as is not unusual in movie land, in a search for happiness. Her first marriage was to a millionaire, but finding money not the sole source of happiness, she divorced him. She then thought she would try someone in the profession, so she married an actor. But this second marriage also ended in divorce. Taking a more serious attitude, she chose as her third husband a minister of the Gospel. But she was quite unsuited to parsonage life and left him. Her fourth husband was a mortician. A reporter, writing an article about her life, asked her why she chose her husbands in this order. Referring to them by number, she replied: "One for the money, two for the show, three to get ready, and four to go."

But there is a far more serious and sad side of Hollywood. Freddy Prinze was the prime example of someone with fame and fortune for whom fame and fortune were not enough. At the age of 20, Freddie Prinze had a top-five rated television show, Chico and the Man. He was a star, and his face graced the covers of numerous magazines, such as People, US and Rolling Stone. But at the age of 22, in a state of depression, he shot and killed himself.

We read again and again of this person or that, whom we believe to have everything that promises happiness - fame, fortune, good looks, great looking husband or wife - complaining of depression or fighting same with drugs and alcohol. And we say silently, "How stupid! I'd be happy with half of that!". But what more proof does one need that happiness can neither be pursued nor acquired, or that external circumstances are not the key to happiness?

Back in 1987 Carolyn and I, as part of a continuing education experience, took a 5-day cruise to the Bahamas stopping in Freeport and Nassau. Kenneth, our tour guide as we drove around Freeport and Lucaya on the Grand Bahama, told us that of the 700 islands making up the Bahama group, only 35 were inhabited. The key ingredient was fresh water. All of the islands had fresh fruit, fish, and fine white beaches and clear waters making each a paradise. But without fresh water no one lived there. What a waste, I thought, paradise, but lacking one ingredient, worthless. It is obvious that in the lives of the unhappy rich and famous some one thing must be lacking too.

Compare those palm-graced island paradises, useless for human habitation, with the sun-parched desert of southern Israel known as the Negev. Forty years ago it was a dry and lifeless wilderness. Today, populated with scores of kibbutzim (agricultural settlements) it is covered with thousands of acres of cotton, sugar beets, fruit, and groundnuts. How is it that this desert wasteland could become more hospitable than a paradise island? What the uninhabitable islands lacked, the desert wasteland called the Negev was given - fresh water.

uninhabitable, and the presence of which brings life from the desert - fresh water. There is also a single ingredient, the absence of which leaves the most rich and the most famous empty but which bring happiness to the poorest and the least significant. It is simply the presence of God.

That is the reason Jesus could say that the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, the persecuted were all blessed, that they all could have inexpressible joy. There is nothing inherently good or of moral superiority in being poor or meek, or in mourning. But rather, like fresh water that brings life to and out of the desert, God's love and power brings a divine joy independent of external circumstances.

How many times have you, in response to complaining, been reminded to "count your blessings"? The understanding is that you will somehow realize how happy you should be. Go ahead and count your blessings. Now imagine they have all been taken away. The degree to which you can still be happy is the depth that you know and experience God’s happiness, a blessedness, holy joy. If we are ever to know true happiness, if we are ever to experience that "peace that passes all understanding" that I believe is the definition of true happiness, we must stop pursing happiness as if it is in the future and dependent on what we can do, and come to know happiness now as God's gift of his presence.

One man noted, "If you ever find happiness by hunting for it, you will find it as the old woman did her spectacles, safe on her nose all the time." God’s happiness, that which Jesus calls blessedness, is not something you can pursue, some distant goal that you may reach some day. Happiness is as close to you as God.

It is ironic that the Declaration of Independence gives us a concept of happiness that enslaves us, enslaves us to outward circumstances, something we have to pursue. The happiness that Jesus proclaims is true independence, the happiness of knowing and having God. Amen.

May the peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Amen.