Review for 9/23/15 Happy is More Than a Dwarf

Psalm 1
9/23/15
18th Sunday After Pentecost.


Psalm 1  "Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers;but their delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law they meditate day and night. They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither. In all that they do, they prosper.The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; for the LORD watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish."

Happy is more than just a dwarf, it is something of an international obsession.  The pursuit of happy is part of our "inalienable rights".  Happy is important, but what is it?

Disney World may seem like the happiest place on earth (frankly I think its tons of fun) but according to a series of international studies it actually is not the happiest place on earth... Denmark is.  Having had a Danish pastor (who explained repeatedly that "happy" just wasn't very Danish) and having read a great deal of Søren Kierkegaard (a landmark Danish philosopher) I know  for a fact that there is some underlying melancholia in Denmark. So what makes it happy?

Well....I once knew a foreign exchange student from Russia who said that all Americans were inherently untrustworthy.  It was not that he was communist (he wasn't), nor was it that he disliked Americans (he did not),  it was that we all go around smiling and happy looking.  A good Russian knows to distrust this, as it cannot possibly be true.  Russians smile...when they have to. Likewise the Danes seem averse to being outwardly gleeful and giddy.

Frankly if I had to choose a happy looking bunch of folks I would probably choose the Aussies because they always are so boisterously good natured or the Canadians who always seem witty and hilarious.  It could just be that both countries have really good beer in large supply...who knows.

But the Danes tend to win "happiest on earth" from the official United Nations Commission of Happiness. Why? Well the reason has to do with the criteria that got looked at.  It had little to do with outward signs of happiness: smiling faces, whistling, sping-in-your-step, cheerful attitude, etc.  Instead the study focused on how content you were with the following categories:  income, healthy life expectancy at birth, freedom to make life choices, social support, corruption, and generosity.  People who scored their contentment with these items higher were judged to be happier.

So, happiness has less to do with what you have (e.g. money life expectancy, freedom, etc...) and more to do with how content you are with it. Happy really is complicated...more so than this Happy the Dwarf makes it look...

When the Psalmist writes, "Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked" and "their delight is the law of the LORD" they are not talking about how cheery and smiley these folks are. They are commenting on how content they are with life.

Law has a bad reputation.  Often it is cast as the villain in life's drama; fairly or unfairly is frequently hard to say. In theological terms we tend to think of law as that thing we had to cling to before we had grace.  Law came before Jesus and Christ supplanted it.  But Jesus himself did not see it that way, in fact he said "“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished." (Matthew 5:17-18).

You see Jesus knew that for a human to be happy they needed to learn to be content with what was good and reject what was bad.  Abolishing the content of the law would hardly make humans happy as then we would have no guide by which we might gauge what things we would be content with.  To be truly happy is to learn to be content with what is good and right.  No contentment can come from evil, only a spiral of desire for more of what we thought would content us. Just ask any addict.  So when the psalmist calls the law "their delight" we must understand that in order to know happiness we must know contentment, and to know contentment we must know that which our hearts were designed to be contented with, which is to say: God's Law.