Luke 6:17-26; Jeremiah 17:5-10

Grace, peace and love is yours though our risen Lord, Jesus Christ.

What do you want to be when you grow up? A question I hear often working with kids, especially as they start making choices in what subjects they learn and what they want to do after they leave school.

It’s a question I remember well from my earlier years…often it’s a question I still ask myself: What do I want to be [when I grow up]? I don’t know what your answer to that question was or is, but I found it a hard one. So I came up with an easy answer: that “When I grow up, I want to be happy.” Simple! And I don’t think I’m alone in that. I’ve heard from many parents when asked about what they want their kids to be…the common answer is, “I don’t mind what they do, so long as they’re happy.”

Happiness & wellness seems to be becoming a bit of an obsession in our society. At one end of the well-being spectrum you see it in things like our school’s well-being program. But as you move along the gamut of “well-being” that’s being promoted in our society, you start to see happiness being promoted online with health blogs and facebook promotions. You see it in magazine pages and newspaper articles. Self-help books and inspirational speakers aim to help us achieve goals that will help us achieve happiness. Instagrammers and celebrity magazines promote an ideal of blessedness and happiness that seems so idealised you wonder if it’s achievable. In a world of busy-ness and stress, we look for ways to promote our own happiness.

And if you buy into a lot of what’s out there, the beatitudes of our society might sound like:

• Happy/blessed are those who earn six figures
• Happy/blessed are the powerful
• Happy/blessed are those who don’t have
  anything to worry about
• Happy/blessed are those who are famous
• Happy/blessed are those who have the
  determination and ruthlessness to eliminate everything that hinders the
  fulfillment of their dreams.

If you look out there, Happiness seems to be a common desire. Yet, so few people seem to have true happiness – that true happiness tends to get put in the same category as four-leaf clovers and the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow – the elusive, the unattainable, the impossible. Happiness is a goal that we all strive for, but the problem is that when that goal is reached, we realise that there is always something more that we need to make us truly happy.

Probably all of us could think of something that we’d like to change in our lives in order to make us happier. So one can try to go about arranging – and re-arranging – the environment and circumstances – to create happiness. Equally, based on this premise, it could be assumed that, if a person is unhappy, it is because of their wretched old computer, this wretched body they’re living in, the wretched person they’re am living with… They believe that they will become happy by changing their lot in some way.

And it becomes a never-ending quest. Happiness, it’s assumed, must be fun and laughter and “doing our own thing” – free from suffering, sorrow and hardship. It’s no wonder that we can’t ever say that we have reached our goal – true happiness.

And look, I have to say that there is nothing wrong with the desire to be happy – it’s a natural goal. Where there is an issue – it’s the way we often go seeking it.

That’s exactly what Jesus is talking about today in his sermon one the plain. This is the woe he proclaims – a cry of pity – “Alas!” for those seeking their blessings in this snowballing pursuit of happiness. Alas for those seek their happiness and their blessings in wealth and fame and power and self-gratification. And well we might cry alas, because we come to realise that these things are fairly shaky ground to build our happiness on. As Jeremiah said,

“That person will be like a bush in the wastelands; they will not see prosperity when it comes. They will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives.”

Jeremiah 17:6

I once did an activity with a group of year 12 students and asked them to imagine themselves in a decade. I gave them a dozen cards or so and asked them to write down on each card something that they would consider important to them in their lives, things that would make them feel happy or blessed, things that would make life worthwhile and have meaning. And then we played the game of life. They had to start making choices about which cards to let go of or keep when various events happened. Sometimes cards were taken unwillingly as accidents happened or loved ones died. By the end of the game, few held more than one or two cards.

For many, that final card they held was the God card. When all other blessings had been lost due to circumstance and bad luck, God remained, unable to be taken away. That card helped them to reflect on the other words of Jeremiah:

“But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord,
    whose confidence is in him.
They will be like a tree planted by the water
    that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
    its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
    and never fails to bear fruit.”

Jeremiah 17:7,8

Suddenly we see that true happiness doesn’t have to be linked to what happens to us. Happiness starts to be linked with what blesses us.

In his sermon, Jesus is redefining happiness…what it means to be one of the blessed ones in society. Jesus’ definition of what it means to be blessed doesn’t depend on us and what is happening around us. True happiness is something deeper – it has to do with knowing God, belonging to God’s Kingdom, being a part of God’s family. This might not be the popular view of happiness we see on Instagram or in the magazines, [especially when worldly happiness depends so much on money, a house, the right car, and being free from sickness, death and anything that upsets our “happiness”]. But Jesus was one for getting beyond “conventional wisdom” – for seeing beyond the surface. True happiness is to be found in something that can’t be taken away from us – true happiness, true blessedness is found in God.

The fact is that we don’t find happiness by seeking happiness. The truth we discover is that we find God, and in so doing we discover a deeper level of happiness.

And actually, there’s more to it than that – in searching for God we actually discover that God has already found us.

He finds us in the midst of everything that goes on in our lives –

• when we are sad and upset;
• when we are despondent and depressed;
• when others reject us and ridicule us for our faith or for sticking up for what we believe is right;
• when we are trying to show mercy and love or bring about peace and we are told to butt out;

There God meets us, he strengthens us, he comforts, he helps us endure, he gives us the courage to move on. God promises us that we have the kingdom of heaven here and now as well as in the future. He reminds us that we were blessed the day God drew us into his family in the waters of baptism. And he continues to feed us and bless us with his presence in his Holy meal.

It is here that we discover the secret of true happiness – that despite all that may happen:

• Whether suffering a great deal from sickness;
• or persecuted for doing what you consider the right thing;
• you may be upset about your own sinfulness or the weakness of your faith;
• you may even be upset by those who have failed to show love toward you;

whatever the case, you can still “find happiness” – find your blessedness – in the knowledge that you are one of God’s precious children, that he sent his Son to die for you, and that when all is said and done, there is a place for you in heaven where there will be no more unhappiness.

This is the kind of “blessedness” or “happiness” that no happenstance, that no person or power can ever take away from us.

And so may the peace, the happiness and blessings of God which surpass all human understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.