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The happiness of God
Sermon preached by John Armes at Holy Communion on 8 January 2006
Isaiah 60:1-6 ; Ephesians 3:1-12 ; Matthew 2:1-12
What makes you happy?
Swedish scientists have apparently been working hard on this question. This week they have come up with the not altogether surprising conclusion that merely winning the lottery will not in itself make us happy. Indeed, whilst many people believe that happiness would come with wealth, or fame, or promotion at work, or, for that matter, success in romance, in fact these things very quickly lose their glamour.
You might call it 'happiness fatigue'. Very quickly your exciting new lifestyle with its expensive holidays, eating in the best restaurants, occupation of the new house or the new office, becomes just ordinary, run of the mill, 'normal'. Suddenly we find we are in need of a new 'fix' - we need more and more of the drug of wealth or celebrity or success if we are to be satisfied.
I found myself trapped in a room with a TV last week and was forced to watch the launch of Celebrity Big Brother. This is where a group of once famous people brave humiliation and mockery, in full glare of the viewers, simply to obtain their next fix of the drug 'publicity'. As the Beatles used to sing, 'Money can't buy you love' or, to paraphrase, 'Neither money, fame nor status can purchase those enduring qualities of human relationships that genuinely validate you as a human being.' (Not as catchy as the Beatles, perhaps, but I'm sure Black Eyed Peas or someone could make something of it.)
No. Our Swedish Scientists tell us that we are much more likely to derive happiness from working towards and achieving a goal. Oh dear, I suspect that this research was sponsored by the NUSP - the National Union of Smug Parents. As a fully paid up member of this union I have to say that I agree. A windfall, like a lottery win, is far less likely to bolster our sense of self-worth than a simple creative act, or the successful completion of a task we set for ourselves. The pride we take in it and the praise we receive for it, simply could not be there in winning a million pounds on the lottery. This is why people who earn ridiculously high salaries still try to convince themselves that somehow their incredible talents have earned it for them.
Of course, work too can be addictive. I'm not sure that workaholics, whose only source of self-validation seems to be derived from an obsessive busy-ness, should read this Swedish research. Indeed, I wonder how far the research outcomes have been culturally conditioned. Would Italians, or West Indians have drawn the same conclusions as northern Europeans?
Nevertheless, happiness does interest us. Most of us would agree with the authors of the American Declaration of Independence that amongst our inalienable rights are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But what our scientific friends tell us is that happiness is not easily acquired - and too often we pursue it in the wrong direction.
We might want to suggest that Jesus got there first. His version of happiness turns popular wisdom on its head. Happy are those who are poor in spirit, who hunger and thirst for righteousness, who are meek, who mourn and so on. For that matter there is even the thought that happiness, true blessing is derived from giving happiness to others. The Son of Man came not to Lord it over us, to claim Kingship, but to serve, to love his neighbour, to lay down his life for his friends.
Was Jesus, then, the happiest of men? Perhaps. But if so, given the end of his life, it indicates just how far we fall short of the mark when we suppose that happiness is anything at all to do with money, or fame, or worldly success.
This is partly why I find the visit of the Magi to Jesus so poignant. They bring gifts, they wish happiness. And yet the happiness they wish is not that this child should please himself, quite the contrary. He is the One who has a destiny to fulfil. God's purposes will be fulfilled in this child. And their gifts, whilst fit for a king, yet foreshadow suffering and the tomb.
Sometimes they are wrongly called Kings, at others they are named Wise Men, or astrologers. Whatever they are, representing power or learning, or perhaps a bit of both, they come to pay homage to a vulnerable child, in whom they glimpse, something of the divine, the mystery that St Paul speaks of in the second reading. The star they followed did not make all things clear but it did illuminate their path sufficiently to bring them to the point of offering, and in their offering, their achieving of their goal, they find purpose, meaning, perhaps even happiness.
So it must be for us. Whatever our goal in life, whatever our gifts of wisdom or power, they mean nothing, and offer no lasting joy until they are brought in homage and laid at the foot of the manger that becomes for us also the foot of the cross.
And for us this means that we face not merely one journey to worship with shepherds and wise men, but a lifetime's journey in companionship with all God's people, in their amazing and exciting diversity. And whatever our wisdom, wisdom that may have brought us on a long journey, yet the wisdom of God remains far, far greater. It is this wisdom, 'the wisdom of God in its rich variety' as our second reading puts it, that is to be made known through the church.
This, St Paul tells us, has been God's eternal purpose since the beginning of creation. A goal God set himself. To make himself known, first to the Jews and then through his Son to the rest of humanity, represented in the gospel reading by the Magi, in the epistle by Paul's mission to the Gentiles, in the Old Testament reading by the vision of a light to which all the nations will come. It is a long-term project. When it is brought to completion, our Swedish scientists might say, God will be blessed with happiness, for this will be no undeserved lottery win. Or, as Jesus might have put it, when all things are brought to completion, there will be joy in heaven.
It is a happiness and a joy we can share, but only by also sharing in the long-term project itself - by ourselves becoming the means by which the rich variety of God's wisdom is made known. So for us, all our gifts as the church must be brought to God. Our golden wealth of resources, our fragrant offerings of prayer and service, our costly and sacrificial calling to prophetic word and social action, all these must first be laid before God, as we know God in the Christ Child and the Crucified King.
However small and senseless our offerings may seem; however feeble our prayers, pleading for healing, hope, strength and love, in the face of so much that seems to deny these virtues, God can take them all and use them as part of the rich variety of his purposes to give them meaning and value.
The wise men brought their gifts. They discovered their king and went home rejoicing. We follow the same path, the sometimes indistinct and rocky path towards our God, as we bring our gifts, trusting that this is the way down which true happiness is to be found.
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