Hallelujah! Come On, Get Happy
Sermon
All About the Kingdom
Cycle A Sermons for Proper 24 Through Thanksgiving Based on the Gospel Texts
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."
At the entrance to Disneyland is a sign that reads: "Disneyland -- the happiest place on earth." Millions of people have come from all over the world to visit and partake of the happiness it was designed to create. Happiness is something that humans seek naturally. We are all on a pleasure hunt. We Americans even wrote the pursuit of happiness into our constitutional rights. Yet the more earnestly we pursue happiness, the more elusive it becomes.
June Callwood, in her article "One Sure Way to Happiness" (Reader's Digest, October 1974), tells us that the historian Will Durant wrote how he looked for happiness in knowledge and found only disillusionment. He then sought happiness in travel and found weariness; in wealth and found discord and worry. He looked for happiness in his writing and was only fatigued. One day he saw a woman waiting in a train station with a sleeping child in her arms. A man descended from a train and came over and gently kissed the woman and then the baby, very softly so as not to waken him. The family drove off and left Durant with a stunning realization that happiness is a by-product of our simplest activities.
Jesus goes beyond Durant and indicates in this Matthew passage that happiness is possible even in the midst of negative experiences. If that is possible, it is certainly something we need to hear -- we who must deal with the loss of loved ones, the loss of a job, or the loss of property. What do these words of Jesus mean?
For one thing, from the illustrations he used, I think Jesus was pointing out that happiness is related to the attitude we bring to the experience. "Blessed," he said, "are the poor in spirit..." The word that is translated "blessed" is translated as "happy" in many of the more modern translations. Those translators wanted to use a word that would be more in keeping with the way we speak today. I will follow their lead and use "happy" in place of "blessed."
Somehow we have been taught to believe that to be happy we need to be in control. I saw a cartoon in which a fellow was bowed in prayer. He was saying, "God, can you help me, but sort of make it look like I did it all myself?" If we can't be in control we certainly want it to look like we are in control. But to be spiritually poor means to recognize that there are many areas in which we are not in control. Robert Schuller, in his book The Be-Happy Attitudes (Waco, Texas: Word Books, 1985, pp. 33-34), tells of being raised in an Iowa farm family where there was always plenty of home-baked bread, butter, pies, and other desserts. As a consequence, he says, he has always had a problem with weight. He eventually decided to eat only lean meats, vegetables, and fresh fruits for dessert. One night a few years ago someone took him to dinner and raved about the fresh warm bread as he spread it with butter. Schuller had some. "You must try the steak with bernaise sauce," said the host. Schuller followed the advice. After the steak, the host continued, "They make the best pie here, with a chocolate crust. You can't pass it by." Schuller had a piece. He calculated in that one meal he took in about 3,000 calories. That night he was depressed and filled with remorse that he did not have the strength to get rid of his fat. He says he prayed asking Jesus to help him. As long as he felt that he could safely eat a little here and a little there and still remain in control, he was doomed. But when he cried out for help and admitted that he couldn't control his appetite by himself, he was freed from his addiction. Alcoholics Anonymous operates on the same premise. Persons addicted to alcohol find help only when they acknowledge their own helplessness and reach for help beyond themselves. Happiness can come in the midst of our misery when we acknowledge that we have a need and we are spiritually poor.
"Happy are those who are meek," says Jesus. The word "meek" means humble. We have been taught by our experiences that it is important to be right. In a Peanuts cartoon Peppermint Patty says, "I need some good advice, Roy. What do you do when something you had really counted on doesn't happen? This thing I really believed would happen didn't happen. What do I do?" "Well," says Roy, "you could admit you were wrong." "Yeah," says Peppermint Patty, "besides that, I mean." As long as we nurture our pride, it keeps us from growing, learning, and becoming all we are capable of becoming.
Fritz Widmeyer, a United Methodist minister in New York, seems to have captured the meaning of Jesus' words in a letter he wrote to the editor of the United Methodist Reporter (date unavailable):
When I was in college and seminary, I discovered that I was only an average student. And now I've discovered that I am only an average minister. There are better preachers than I am; better teachers, better visitors, better administrators. I keep making dumb mistakes and sometimes I don't know how to rectify them. I can only beg forgiveness and promise not to do that again. However, I've also discovered that my talents, limited though they may be, are useful. I have a place in the church and the world. No, I'll never be Number One, but that's okay as long as I do the best I can with what God has given me.
He found happiness in his humility. Those who are not filled with pride and concerned with who gets the credit can be very useful in extending Christ's kingdom. Their happiness comes from being useful.
"Happy are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness," says Jesus. These are people who want to do God's will. We have been subjected to the idea that happiness involves being able to do pretty much as we please with little concern for how it affects others. I recall a line in the movie Three Days of the Condor that describes many people in to-day's world. Robert Redford shakes his head as he confronts a CIA bureaucrat and says, "You guys think that not getting caught in a lie is the same thing as telling the truth!" The comment could be applied to much of the business world or any other sector of life about as accurately as it could be applied to the CIA. Much of modern American society decides whether or not a thing is wrong by trying to figure out if they are likely to get caught and not what effect it will have on others. They are concerned only about their own will, not God's will.
Over and over Jesus taught and demonstrated that God's will for us involves helping others and that in our helping we find happiness. In his book Generous People (Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon Press, 1992), Eugene Grimm reports the testimony of a woman who was standing in a long line of people waiting in the snow outside a funeral home as they sought the opportunity to pay their last respects to Walter, a neighbor who had died.
"I only met him once," commented the young woman shivering from cold, "but he changed my life. I came to town with my husband and three children. I hadn't been here three weeks when my husband took off and left me and the kids alone. I was so scared I thought I'd die. I was unskilled and hadn't planned to work until the kids were older. One of my neighbors called Walter on the telephone. Walter sent word that he had a job for me the next week. He also offered an apartment where my children and I could live rent-free. It was four months before I could even begin to pay rent.
"Two years later, I went to make arrangements for payments on back rent, and you know what he said? He looked over the top of his reading glasses and said, 'Thank you but I never intended you to pay for those months. You just go out there and find somebody in need, and help them.' That is exactly what I did. I asked my pastor if he could suggest someone who needed help. And it felt so good to give instead of receive, I just keep on helping them. Walter taught me how good it feels to give."
She learned the happiness of focusing on others.
"Happy are the pure in heart," says Jesus. Purity of heart means sincerity, having unmixed motives. I read recently that the Iroquois Indians attributed divinity to developmentally challenged children. They gave them a place of honor in the tribe and treated them as gods. It was felt that in their lack of self-centeredness, they were a transparent window into the Great Spirit. It is interesting that in their ancient culture those early Native American people learned to think of people without mixed motives as divine. Jesus says those without mixed motives, those whose hearts are pure, will see God. Those without mixed motives find happiness because they have no hidden agenda, they are genuinely pleased with the advancement of others, and they have no secret resentment that the interests of others have been advanced. They are made happy by the good fortune of others.
Not only do these words of Jesus suggest that happiness is related to attitude, they suggest that it is also the result of certain actions. Jesus says, "Happy are those who mourn." It seems unlikely to us that happiness and mourning go together. Certainly we would not expect one who is mourning a loss to feel happy, but mourning touches the deepest that is within us and helps us to identify with others, to be compassionate. In The Human Comedy (New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1966), William Saroyan wrote:
Unless a man has pity he is inhuman and not yet truly a man, for out of pity comes the balm which heals. Only good men weep. If a man has not yet wept at the world's pain he is less than the dirt he walks upon because dirt will nourish seed, root, stalk, leaf, and flower, but the spirit of a man without pity is barren and will bring forth nothing.
When we mourn, we learn to have compassion for others.
A class in seminary was discussing Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan. A young student confessed an incident, of which he was not very proud, which had occurred the evening before. He was hurrying through the door of his apartment headed for the laundry room with a basket of dirty clothes. He scarcely noticed the neighbor lady who lived alone across the hall. She was struggling to get a grocery sack of trash up a flight of steps to the trash container. She was quite crippled and put the sack down on each step as she labored to get both feet up on that step. It was an awkward, painful process, but as he didn't know her well he paid no attention. It wasn't until he was loading the washing machine that it occurred to him that his behavior completely betrayed his sense of who he was as a Christian. He confessed to his class that he was ashamed of his failure to act on behalf of another. It is safe to say that had that student ever known such infirmity or experienced such hardship, his concern or mourning would have been sharper and more alert. One of the godly uses of our own sorrows, hurts, and sufferings is the way in which we can thereby be trained to understand and mourn the hardships of others.
Jesus goes on to say, "Happy are the merciful." Something inside of us prefers revenge over mercy for those who have wronged us. The nineteenth-century German writer Heinrich Heine once wrote:
My nature is the most peaceful in the world. All I ask is a simple cottage, a decent bed, good food, some flowers in front of my window, and a few trees beside my door. Then if God wanted to make me wholly happy, He would let me enjoy the spectacle of six or seven of my enemies dangling from those trees. I would forgive them all wrongs they have done me -- forgive them from the bottom of my heart, for we must forgive our enemies. But not until they are hanged!
(quoted in "Revenge," Resource Service, 3/89-4/89)
One cannot help but feel that whatever satisfaction Heine would have received from such a sight, it would not have produced any long-term happiness.
It is when we return good for evil that we show whose people we are. There is a stunning picture of forgiveness in The Great Hunger (Whitefish, Montana: Kessinger Publishing Co., 2004) by Johan Bojer. The lead character, Peer Holm, had a rude and crude neighbor with a vicious dog. One day, even though Peer pleaded with the neighbor to keep the dog chained to no avail, the huge beast attacked and killed Peer's small daughter. The dog was killed by the townspeople, and thereafter the village ostracized and shunned Peer's neighbor. In the spring, when the neighbor plowed his field, the merchants in the little village refused to sell him any grain. His field lay bare. One moonlit night, however, Peer took a half bushel of his own grain to his neighbor's field and sowed it. When the crops grew in the neighbor's field and there was a bare spot in Peer Holm's field, the townspeople could see what had happened. "Why did you do it?" they asked Peer. He answered, "I did it in order that God might exist in our community." What Peer knew was that in the long run happiness lay not in revenge, but in mercy and forgiveness.
"Happy are the peacemakers," continues Jesus. Contemporary wisdom advises us to mind our own business and let others look out for themselves. When someone else has a problem, the rest of us feel we will be a lot happier if we don't get involved. But the reality is that we cannot have peace if others do not have justice. Justice works on the principle of fairness for all. Where the rights of others are ignored, abused, violated, or taken away, the seeds of bitterness and hostility are sown and there will not be peace for anyone.
Peacemaking means getting involved in the struggle for justice and making that struggle our own, even if it temporarily unsettles our peace. As Harriet Beecher Stowe sat through long nights in her home in Ohio watching the struggles of a dying child, she began to think of slave mothers who were parted from their children by slavery. There was born within her the desire to move the conscience of the country to end slavery. She set about to write Uncle Tom's Cabin to illustrate the evils of slavery. She saw all people as children of God and recognized that as long as the well-being of one part of the family is based upon the misery of another part, there cannot be happiness for either part. Happiness is the result of certain actions.
One more thing these words of Jesus suggest is that our happiness is not dictated by our circumstances. He illustrates this by saying, "Happy are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake." Righteousness means doing what God requires. Most of us have learned to do what is expedient: don't make waves, blend in, go with the flow.
To act on principle certainly can be costly. President John F. Kennedy, in his book Profiles in Courage (New York: Harper, 1955), relates the story of Edmund G. Ross, the senator from Kansas whose vote back in 1868 decided the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson. Johnson courageously tried to carry out Abraham Lincoln's policies of reconciliation after the Civil War. The mood of the country, however, was to impeach the untactful Tennessean who had succeeded to the highest office of the land only by the course of an assassin's bullet. The House of Representatives speedily passed the articles of impeachment, and it seemed the Senate would handily amass the two-thirds vote necessary for conviction. It was thought that Senator Ross, who had an expressed dislike for President Johnson, would vote for the president's removal. And if he had followed his likes and dislikes, he probably would have. But the obscure senator from Kansas searched his soul for the right thing to do. To the dismay of most of his colleagues, and the majority of his supporters in his home state, he voted against impeachment. "I looked down into my open grave..." he said, but he did what he thought was right even if it meant his political death -- which it did.
It doesn't sound like the decision produced happiness for Ross, but he later wrote: "Millions cursing me today will bless me tomorrow for having saved the country from the greatest peril through which it has ever passed, though none but God can ever know the struggle that it has cost me." The decision to do what he felt was right was costly, but there was the happiness of knowing he had done what he felt was right.
What are the circumstances that we face? The loss of someone who gave life meaning? The loss of a job that provided for home and family and gave us fulfillment? The loss of health and independence? Are we to pretend that these things are unimportant -- that they don't affect our happiness?
These words of Jesus do not suggest our circumstances do not cause us pain. If we are human, if we love someone or enjoy something, we will eventually know loss and that will produce pain. If there is anything called happiness, it will be in spite of our difficulties and not because we have managed to avoid them. Some of our difficulties will create happiness in the long run because they will change our attitude from focus on ourselves to focus on others. Some of our difficulties will create happiness because they will cause us to act on behalf of others. Some of our difficulties will create happiness only when we recognize that God has a plan for the world, which has been advanced a little because we have sought to identify with it.
In every one of these beatitudes Jesus concludes that God will have the last word, but he also promises that that word will be good. Therein lays our hope.
At the entrance to Disneyland is a sign that reads: "Disneyland -- the happiest place on earth." Millions of people have come from all over the world to visit and partake of the happiness it was designed to create. Happiness is something that humans seek naturally. We are all on a pleasure hunt. We Americans even wrote the pursuit of happiness into our constitutional rights. Yet the more earnestly we pursue happiness, the more elusive it becomes.
June Callwood, in her article "One Sure Way to Happiness" (Reader's Digest, October 1974), tells us that the historian Will Durant wrote how he looked for happiness in knowledge and found only disillusionment. He then sought happiness in travel and found weariness; in wealth and found discord and worry. He looked for happiness in his writing and was only fatigued. One day he saw a woman waiting in a train station with a sleeping child in her arms. A man descended from a train and came over and gently kissed the woman and then the baby, very softly so as not to waken him. The family drove off and left Durant with a stunning realization that happiness is a by-product of our simplest activities.
Jesus goes beyond Durant and indicates in this Matthew passage that happiness is possible even in the midst of negative experiences. If that is possible, it is certainly something we need to hear -- we who must deal with the loss of loved ones, the loss of a job, or the loss of property. What do these words of Jesus mean?
For one thing, from the illustrations he used, I think Jesus was pointing out that happiness is related to the attitude we bring to the experience. "Blessed," he said, "are the poor in spirit..." The word that is translated "blessed" is translated as "happy" in many of the more modern translations. Those translators wanted to use a word that would be more in keeping with the way we speak today. I will follow their lead and use "happy" in place of "blessed."
Somehow we have been taught to believe that to be happy we need to be in control. I saw a cartoon in which a fellow was bowed in prayer. He was saying, "God, can you help me, but sort of make it look like I did it all myself?" If we can't be in control we certainly want it to look like we are in control. But to be spiritually poor means to recognize that there are many areas in which we are not in control. Robert Schuller, in his book The Be-Happy Attitudes (Waco, Texas: Word Books, 1985, pp. 33-34), tells of being raised in an Iowa farm family where there was always plenty of home-baked bread, butter, pies, and other desserts. As a consequence, he says, he has always had a problem with weight. He eventually decided to eat only lean meats, vegetables, and fresh fruits for dessert. One night a few years ago someone took him to dinner and raved about the fresh warm bread as he spread it with butter. Schuller had some. "You must try the steak with bernaise sauce," said the host. Schuller followed the advice. After the steak, the host continued, "They make the best pie here, with a chocolate crust. You can't pass it by." Schuller had a piece. He calculated in that one meal he took in about 3,000 calories. That night he was depressed and filled with remorse that he did not have the strength to get rid of his fat. He says he prayed asking Jesus to help him. As long as he felt that he could safely eat a little here and a little there and still remain in control, he was doomed. But when he cried out for help and admitted that he couldn't control his appetite by himself, he was freed from his addiction. Alcoholics Anonymous operates on the same premise. Persons addicted to alcohol find help only when they acknowledge their own helplessness and reach for help beyond themselves. Happiness can come in the midst of our misery when we acknowledge that we have a need and we are spiritually poor.
"Happy are those who are meek," says Jesus. The word "meek" means humble. We have been taught by our experiences that it is important to be right. In a Peanuts cartoon Peppermint Patty says, "I need some good advice, Roy. What do you do when something you had really counted on doesn't happen? This thing I really believed would happen didn't happen. What do I do?" "Well," says Roy, "you could admit you were wrong." "Yeah," says Peppermint Patty, "besides that, I mean." As long as we nurture our pride, it keeps us from growing, learning, and becoming all we are capable of becoming.
Fritz Widmeyer, a United Methodist minister in New York, seems to have captured the meaning of Jesus' words in a letter he wrote to the editor of the United Methodist Reporter (date unavailable):
When I was in college and seminary, I discovered that I was only an average student. And now I've discovered that I am only an average minister. There are better preachers than I am; better teachers, better visitors, better administrators. I keep making dumb mistakes and sometimes I don't know how to rectify them. I can only beg forgiveness and promise not to do that again. However, I've also discovered that my talents, limited though they may be, are useful. I have a place in the church and the world. No, I'll never be Number One, but that's okay as long as I do the best I can with what God has given me.
He found happiness in his humility. Those who are not filled with pride and concerned with who gets the credit can be very useful in extending Christ's kingdom. Their happiness comes from being useful.
"Happy are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness," says Jesus. These are people who want to do God's will. We have been subjected to the idea that happiness involves being able to do pretty much as we please with little concern for how it affects others. I recall a line in the movie Three Days of the Condor that describes many people in to-day's world. Robert Redford shakes his head as he confronts a CIA bureaucrat and says, "You guys think that not getting caught in a lie is the same thing as telling the truth!" The comment could be applied to much of the business world or any other sector of life about as accurately as it could be applied to the CIA. Much of modern American society decides whether or not a thing is wrong by trying to figure out if they are likely to get caught and not what effect it will have on others. They are concerned only about their own will, not God's will.
Over and over Jesus taught and demonstrated that God's will for us involves helping others and that in our helping we find happiness. In his book Generous People (Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon Press, 1992), Eugene Grimm reports the testimony of a woman who was standing in a long line of people waiting in the snow outside a funeral home as they sought the opportunity to pay their last respects to Walter, a neighbor who had died.
"I only met him once," commented the young woman shivering from cold, "but he changed my life. I came to town with my husband and three children. I hadn't been here three weeks when my husband took off and left me and the kids alone. I was so scared I thought I'd die. I was unskilled and hadn't planned to work until the kids were older. One of my neighbors called Walter on the telephone. Walter sent word that he had a job for me the next week. He also offered an apartment where my children and I could live rent-free. It was four months before I could even begin to pay rent.
"Two years later, I went to make arrangements for payments on back rent, and you know what he said? He looked over the top of his reading glasses and said, 'Thank you but I never intended you to pay for those months. You just go out there and find somebody in need, and help them.' That is exactly what I did. I asked my pastor if he could suggest someone who needed help. And it felt so good to give instead of receive, I just keep on helping them. Walter taught me how good it feels to give."
She learned the happiness of focusing on others.
"Happy are the pure in heart," says Jesus. Purity of heart means sincerity, having unmixed motives. I read recently that the Iroquois Indians attributed divinity to developmentally challenged children. They gave them a place of honor in the tribe and treated them as gods. It was felt that in their lack of self-centeredness, they were a transparent window into the Great Spirit. It is interesting that in their ancient culture those early Native American people learned to think of people without mixed motives as divine. Jesus says those without mixed motives, those whose hearts are pure, will see God. Those without mixed motives find happiness because they have no hidden agenda, they are genuinely pleased with the advancement of others, and they have no secret resentment that the interests of others have been advanced. They are made happy by the good fortune of others.
Not only do these words of Jesus suggest that happiness is related to attitude, they suggest that it is also the result of certain actions. Jesus says, "Happy are those who mourn." It seems unlikely to us that happiness and mourning go together. Certainly we would not expect one who is mourning a loss to feel happy, but mourning touches the deepest that is within us and helps us to identify with others, to be compassionate. In The Human Comedy (New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1966), William Saroyan wrote:
Unless a man has pity he is inhuman and not yet truly a man, for out of pity comes the balm which heals. Only good men weep. If a man has not yet wept at the world's pain he is less than the dirt he walks upon because dirt will nourish seed, root, stalk, leaf, and flower, but the spirit of a man without pity is barren and will bring forth nothing.
When we mourn, we learn to have compassion for others.
A class in seminary was discussing Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan. A young student confessed an incident, of which he was not very proud, which had occurred the evening before. He was hurrying through the door of his apartment headed for the laundry room with a basket of dirty clothes. He scarcely noticed the neighbor lady who lived alone across the hall. She was struggling to get a grocery sack of trash up a flight of steps to the trash container. She was quite crippled and put the sack down on each step as she labored to get both feet up on that step. It was an awkward, painful process, but as he didn't know her well he paid no attention. It wasn't until he was loading the washing machine that it occurred to him that his behavior completely betrayed his sense of who he was as a Christian. He confessed to his class that he was ashamed of his failure to act on behalf of another. It is safe to say that had that student ever known such infirmity or experienced such hardship, his concern or mourning would have been sharper and more alert. One of the godly uses of our own sorrows, hurts, and sufferings is the way in which we can thereby be trained to understand and mourn the hardships of others.
Jesus goes on to say, "Happy are the merciful." Something inside of us prefers revenge over mercy for those who have wronged us. The nineteenth-century German writer Heinrich Heine once wrote:
My nature is the most peaceful in the world. All I ask is a simple cottage, a decent bed, good food, some flowers in front of my window, and a few trees beside my door. Then if God wanted to make me wholly happy, He would let me enjoy the spectacle of six or seven of my enemies dangling from those trees. I would forgive them all wrongs they have done me -- forgive them from the bottom of my heart, for we must forgive our enemies. But not until they are hanged!
(quoted in "Revenge," Resource Service, 3/89-4/89)
One cannot help but feel that whatever satisfaction Heine would have received from such a sight, it would not have produced any long-term happiness.
It is when we return good for evil that we show whose people we are. There is a stunning picture of forgiveness in The Great Hunger (Whitefish, Montana: Kessinger Publishing Co., 2004) by Johan Bojer. The lead character, Peer Holm, had a rude and crude neighbor with a vicious dog. One day, even though Peer pleaded with the neighbor to keep the dog chained to no avail, the huge beast attacked and killed Peer's small daughter. The dog was killed by the townspeople, and thereafter the village ostracized and shunned Peer's neighbor. In the spring, when the neighbor plowed his field, the merchants in the little village refused to sell him any grain. His field lay bare. One moonlit night, however, Peer took a half bushel of his own grain to his neighbor's field and sowed it. When the crops grew in the neighbor's field and there was a bare spot in Peer Holm's field, the townspeople could see what had happened. "Why did you do it?" they asked Peer. He answered, "I did it in order that God might exist in our community." What Peer knew was that in the long run happiness lay not in revenge, but in mercy and forgiveness.
"Happy are the peacemakers," continues Jesus. Contemporary wisdom advises us to mind our own business and let others look out for themselves. When someone else has a problem, the rest of us feel we will be a lot happier if we don't get involved. But the reality is that we cannot have peace if others do not have justice. Justice works on the principle of fairness for all. Where the rights of others are ignored, abused, violated, or taken away, the seeds of bitterness and hostility are sown and there will not be peace for anyone.
Peacemaking means getting involved in the struggle for justice and making that struggle our own, even if it temporarily unsettles our peace. As Harriet Beecher Stowe sat through long nights in her home in Ohio watching the struggles of a dying child, she began to think of slave mothers who were parted from their children by slavery. There was born within her the desire to move the conscience of the country to end slavery. She set about to write Uncle Tom's Cabin to illustrate the evils of slavery. She saw all people as children of God and recognized that as long as the well-being of one part of the family is based upon the misery of another part, there cannot be happiness for either part. Happiness is the result of certain actions.
One more thing these words of Jesus suggest is that our happiness is not dictated by our circumstances. He illustrates this by saying, "Happy are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake." Righteousness means doing what God requires. Most of us have learned to do what is expedient: don't make waves, blend in, go with the flow.
To act on principle certainly can be costly. President John F. Kennedy, in his book Profiles in Courage (New York: Harper, 1955), relates the story of Edmund G. Ross, the senator from Kansas whose vote back in 1868 decided the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson. Johnson courageously tried to carry out Abraham Lincoln's policies of reconciliation after the Civil War. The mood of the country, however, was to impeach the untactful Tennessean who had succeeded to the highest office of the land only by the course of an assassin's bullet. The House of Representatives speedily passed the articles of impeachment, and it seemed the Senate would handily amass the two-thirds vote necessary for conviction. It was thought that Senator Ross, who had an expressed dislike for President Johnson, would vote for the president's removal. And if he had followed his likes and dislikes, he probably would have. But the obscure senator from Kansas searched his soul for the right thing to do. To the dismay of most of his colleagues, and the majority of his supporters in his home state, he voted against impeachment. "I looked down into my open grave..." he said, but he did what he thought was right even if it meant his political death -- which it did.
It doesn't sound like the decision produced happiness for Ross, but he later wrote: "Millions cursing me today will bless me tomorrow for having saved the country from the greatest peril through which it has ever passed, though none but God can ever know the struggle that it has cost me." The decision to do what he felt was right was costly, but there was the happiness of knowing he had done what he felt was right.
What are the circumstances that we face? The loss of someone who gave life meaning? The loss of a job that provided for home and family and gave us fulfillment? The loss of health and independence? Are we to pretend that these things are unimportant -- that they don't affect our happiness?
These words of Jesus do not suggest our circumstances do not cause us pain. If we are human, if we love someone or enjoy something, we will eventually know loss and that will produce pain. If there is anything called happiness, it will be in spite of our difficulties and not because we have managed to avoid them. Some of our difficulties will create happiness in the long run because they will change our attitude from focus on ourselves to focus on others. Some of our difficulties will create happiness because they will cause us to act on behalf of others. Some of our difficulties will create happiness only when we recognize that God has a plan for the world, which has been advanced a little because we have sought to identify with it.
In every one of these beatitudes Jesus concludes that God will have the last word, but he also promises that that word will be good. Therein lays our hope.
