A SHORT LESSON IN HAPPINESS
A sermon based on Psalm 1

by Dr. David Rogne

In her syndicated column, Abigail Van Buren shared the following letter from a teen-ager:

Dear Abby,

Happiness is knowing that your parents won't almost kill you if you come home a little late.  Happiness is having your own bedroom.  Happiness is having parents that trust you.  Happiness is getting the telephone call you've been praying for.  Happiness is getting good grades and making your parents proud of you.  Happiness is being a member of the popular circle.  Happiness is having parents who don't fight.  Happiness is knowing that you're as well dressed as anybody.  Happiness is something I don't have.

(signed)  Fifteen and Unhappy

A few days later Abby's column carried this response to the above letter from a thirteen-year-old girl:

Dear Abby,

Happiness is being able to walk.  Happiness is being able to talk.  Happiness is being able to see.  Happiness is being able to hear.  Unhappiness is reading a letter from a fifteen-year-old girl who can do all these things and still says she isn't happy.  I can talk, I can see, I can hear, but I can't walk.

(signed)  Thirteen and Happy

Happiness is something that every one of us hopes will be our experience, but opinions are varied as to what constitutes happiness.   The author of the first Psalm, which we read earlier, suggests that the godly person finds happiness and that the ungodly person does not.  As religious people, we hope that we are among the godly and that happiness will be ours.  It is in our interest, then, to examine what the Psalmist meant by "godly."

The first thing he does is to point to several things that the godly person does not do.  For one thing, he says that the godly person doesn't walk in the counsel of the wicked.  That sounds like something out of an old melodrama, where the villain, who is easily recognized by his black cape and arched eyebrows, whispers seductive suggestions from behind his cape.  Unfortunately, purveyors of bad advice are not so easy to identify in real life.  Flip Wilson, the comedian, made himself famous with the line:  "The Devil made me do it," whenever he was caught in some indiscretion.  We might like to use that explanation for our conduct too, but often it is not some obviously evil person whose advice has gotten us into trouble.  Rather, the advice has come from a very plausible source, so we need to be careful about the counsel or advice we accept.

In many areas of life, we have learned to be discerning about the advice we receive.  For example, we learn not to ask a colorblind person whether a particular tie looks good with a certain suit.  We learn that a person with a head cold may not be the best judge of how the gravy tastes.  A person who listens only to hard rock music may not be the best judge of a classical concert.  In fact, they may not have enough hearing left to judge the sound of anything.

As the Psalmist says, those who seek a happy life had better consider carefully the source of advice they follow.

A second thing a person who wants to be happy won't do is to stand in the way of sinners.  Unfortunately, some do follow the wrong advice, and their next step is to become careless about their companionship--to become actively involved with those who knowingly and openly live life without any reference to God.  To stand in the way of sinners means to order one's life contrary to what we know about the will of God.

Often when young people leave home and live on their own, they rejoice in their newfound freedom.  They may feel that they have been raised in a stifling environment, some of which is associated with the church, and one way to avoid those restrictions is to get away from the church and any other influences of home.  Movies and television and the highly publicized escapades of most youth heroes make it appear that people can do pretty much as they please with few consequences.  James Bond represents the fantasy of most people to live a life that is completely free of restrictions or moral considerations and still come out as a consistent winner.  The films we watch are increasingly depictions of an amoral life; people simply live their lives without conviction, and it appears that if we do have convictions, we are the strange ones.

If we have ethical convictions in any area--sexuality, business, politics--we are apt to feel rather alone in our concerns.  One gets the impression that people with Christian convictions on conduct are very much in the minority.  And that impression is absolutely correct.  Christians have always been in the minority.  A Christian is one who has decided to turn himself or herself over to the direction of Jesus Christ and his way of life--and there are not many people willing to do that.  It is a decision that John Oxenham put into poetry:

        To every man there openeth

        A way and ways and a way,

        And the high soul takes the high way,

        And the low soul gropes the low,

        And in between on the misty flats

        The rest drift to and fro.

        But to every man there openeth

        A high way and a low,

        And every man decideth

        The way his soul shall go.

Those who have chosen the high way can no longer take their lifestyle from their contemporaries, because they do not share the same allegiance.  A Christian cannot find happiness by following the way of uncommitted companions.

A third thing a person who wants to be happy will not do, says the Psalmist, is to sit in the seat of scoffers.  Someone has called this whole verse the rake's progress--from poor advice to poor company to poor action.  And it is true that life can go this way--no noticeable change at first, but, because of faulty decisions, little by little, the fibers of faith are undermined and the person becomes a hardened opponent of that which is good.  Samuel Clemens--Mark Twain--was often irreverent and scornful of sham and other things that needed to be challenged, and, for the most part, he was no friend of religion.  In 1870 he married Olivia Langdon, a religious woman who expressed her faith simply through such things as grace at meals.  It is said, however, that Clemens so often scoffed at her simple expressions of faith that she gave them up out of deference to him.

Sometimes a person marries another who has very different attitudes about what is central in life:  one holds strong Christian convictions, the other is scornful of those values and, as a consequence, life for the Christian person is not simply compromise but capitulation.  The person who makes no place for God in his or her life is not going to be happy with someone for whom God is important.  The believer is not going to be happy with someone who puts down those things which he or she feels are important.

The other thing the Psalmist points out is that, in addition to these things that one who seeks happiness does not do, there are some things which the religious person seeking happiness does do.  For one thing, the Psalmist says, the one who wants to be happy delights in the law of the Lord.  That, too, sounds pretty far removed from the attitude of anyone in this generation, for law to us is not so much a delight as a drag.  As far as we are concerned, law restricts, denies, inhibits, and compels us--and we object to such disciplining.  A. E. Housman has given an almost perfect expression to our rebellious mood when he writes:

        "The laws of God, the laws of man,

         He may keep that will and can;

         Not I; let God and man decree

         Laws for themselves and not for me:

         And if my ways are not as theirs

         Let them mind their own affairs."

We do not delight in restrictions.

But when the Psalmist spoke of delighting in the law of the Lord, it was not a list of restrictions he was referring to, but to an attitude of cooperation with the laws that govern life.  Some of those laws govern the physical world, and when we cooperate with them they help us achieve those great moments of human history of which all people may be proud.  The film that was popular a few years back, "Apollo 13," helped us to experience life aboard a crippled spacecraft.  Knowledge of the laws that control human life made it possible to anticipate what was likely to occur and to find ways to preserve the lives of the astronauts and bring them back safely to earth.  Knowing the laws and cooperating with them promotes life.

It is the contention of the Bible that the law of God applies not only to the physical realm, but to the spiritual realm as well.  There are laws which govern conduct--and it is far better to work with those laws than to work against them.  And this is the sense in which the Psalmist uses his word "delight."

On a vacation trip to Hana, on the island of Maui, I met a young couple who had moved there from the mainland because they felt they could get more in tune with the spiritual dimension of life.  They felt that in those more primitive surroundings they were raising their antennae heavenward with less interference from the daily distractions of civilization, even as astronomers desire to build their observatories in less populated places in order to avoid the interference of smog and diffused light.  In this environment, they said, they had discovered a spiritual side of life in which God's nearness was part of their daily reality.  They delighted in the discovery of what they felt were spiritual laws.  That is what the Psalmist meant.  There are laws that operate in life; they are for our welfare, and when we learn to be attentive to them, they contribute to our happiness.

The other positive thing the Psalmist calls for is meditation on God's law.  Here is another lost art in our age.  Isaiah writes, "In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength." (Isaiah 30:15)  Paul stresses the value of the devotional life when he says, "Pray without ceasing." (I Thessalonians 5:17)  Certainly there is no person who can do nothing but meditate; neither is there a person who can really get on in life without any meditation.

In her beautiful book, Gift from the Sea, Ann Morrow Lindbergh deals with the problem of balance when she asks:  "How to remain whole in the midst of the distractions of life; how to remain balanced, no matter what centrifugal forces tend to pull one off center . . . . ?"  "One answer," she says, "is in the simplification of life, in cutting out some of the distractions.  But how?  Total retirement is not possible.  I cannot shed my responsibilities.  I cannot permanently inhabit a desert island.  I cannot be a nun in the midst of family life.  The solution for me, surely, is neither in total renunciation of the world, nor in total acceptance of it.  I must find a balance somewhere, or an alternating rhythm between these two extremes; a swinging of the pendulum between solitude and communion, between retreat and return."

I don't think any single statement, taken by itself, can contain the whole answer as to how to find happiness.  Life is too full of variables for that.  But the writer of this psalm felt he had a short lesson for religious people.

He concludes his description of the happy person by comparing her or him to a tree.  Unlike the chaff which is impermanent, without roots, useless, blown about by the winds of change, those who follow the Psalmist's advice avoid the wasteland of life that leads eventually to desolation.  Instead, they have put their roots down deep into life.  Their confidence is in God.  Storms come their way too, as they come to everyone, but they are prepared to face them.  And in due season it becomes obvious to all that these are the people who have found happiness--the happiness of a rooted life. Amen.