Readings for the Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany
Micah 6:1-8
Psalm 15
1 Corinthians 1:18-31
Matthew 5:1-12
This Sunday is the first of five Sundays in the Season after Epiphany in Year A in which the gospel lesson is from Matthew’s account of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. This might be a clue for us that the church scholars who put together the lectionary readings firmly believed in the importance of these teachings of Jesus as gathered together by Matthew from several sources. Matthew places the Sermon of the Mount very close to the beginning of Jesus’ preaching and teaching ministry. In chapters 3 and 4, Matthew tells of Jesus’ baptism by John, and of Jesus’ Temptation in the Wilderness, and a few verses on Jesus’ spending some time in Capernaum and calling his disciples, and teaching about God’s kingdom in the synagogues in Galilee and doing some healing. He was already pretty popular with the folks in the vicinity, and great crowds came from around the area to hear him. And Matthew says, “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.
Eugene Peterson, in The Message, translates it a little differently ⎯ more clearly, I think. He says: “When Jesus saw his ministry drawing huge crowds, he climbed a hillside. Those who were apprenticed to him, the committed, climbed with him. Arriving at a quiet place, he sat down and taught his climbing companions.”
I’ve had a couple of Sundays off from preaching, thanks to Allan Michaud, our Lay Leader and a lay speaker, and Curtis Larrabee, a lay speaker. During this time I’ve been looking again at the Sermon on the Mount ⎯ and especially this week, the Beatitudes, Jesus’ Introduction to his teachings, directed to his disciples who had “climbed with him.” It was an “Insider’s lesson” ⎯ and then when the crowd caught up, they were included. But that’s for another time!
What gave me pause for much thought was an illustration that Curtis used in his Reflections last week. He told of an interview that appeared on Oprah with a woman who admitted to having an affair with a married man. She said she was a Christian, and her rationale for making the whole “affair” OK with her Christian faith was that she believes that God wants us to be happy, and if having an affair with this man makes her happy, then it’s OK with God. That’s a second-hand quote from what I scribbled down as Curtis spoke. But I think it covers it. It seems to me ⎯ and hopefully to you ⎯ that she’s playing way out on the edge with both scriptures and Christian teachings!
Well, the reason this story struck me is because the Common English Bible New Testament we ordered had arrived the week before, and I was excited to read it and see how those many biblical scholars had translated and worded things. So I read Matthew 5. And even before I heard Curtis’s illustration last Sunday, I was surprised that the translators had chosen to use the word “happy” instead of “blessed.” My first thought was it was a bad choice of words because our society or culture does not understand “happy” in the biblical sense of “blessed.” “Happy” is what the woman on Oprah was all about ⎯ and what we are all about when we seek happiness in any place other than in God. You and I know those other places – money, possessions, prestige, worldly passions ⎯ “stuff” (to use my favorite term)! The word “happiness” is used so frequently, in so many different contexts, for so many different reasons, that it’s lost all definite meaning. Everyone wants to be happy, and this desire has been used to promote everything from products to politics to religious beliefs. This is sad, and more than a bit confusing. No wonder many people have trouble deciding if they are happy or not.
But it drove me to do some biblical translation research. First I discovered that of the 15 English translations of the Bible I could access on-line at Bible Gateway, only 3 of them used the word “happy.” The other 12 used “blessed are those . . .” or “God blesses those . . .” Bible Gateway did not have one of my favorite “modern” translations from back in 1958, The New Testament in Modern English by a man named J.B. Phillips. I bought it in the 60s when I was in seminary. It was quite controversial back then, but I loved his work. I’ve put a copy of his translation/paraphrase in your bulletin. (DON’T read it now, but study it later and compare it to Peterson’s Message and to the New Revised Standard Version) It seems to me that Phillip’s use of the word “happy” seems appropriate because of the way he paraphrases the rest of the context.
This problem we have with the words “happy” or “happiness” also drove me to do some research in that area ⎯ trying to answer the question What is true happiness? John Wesley was noted for his emphasis on strong belief in Christian happiness. Wesleyan scholar, Rebekah Miles writes:
"The elderly John Wesley, just a few months shy of his eighty-sixth birthday, asked a crowd of Irish Methodists gathered in Dublin a classic question from an unlikely source - the Calvinist Westminster Confession: “For what end did God create man?” One simple answer, Wesley insisted, should be “inculcated upon every human creature: “You are made to be happy in God.” . . ."Wesley then tendered advice to parents. Even when a child first begins to speak or to run alone, a good parent follows behind saying, many times each day, “He made you; and he made you to be happy in him; and nothing else can make you happy.”
"What is the happiness for which humans were made? Wesley insisted that just “as there is one God, so there is one religion and one happiness.” This one human happiness and true religion is the love of God and the love of neighbor. It is, “in two words, gratitude and benevolence; gratitude to our Creator and supreme Benefactor, and benevolence to our fellow creatures.” The active benevolence toward others that is born of our gratitude to God is for Christians the wellspring of the moral life and of human happiness. Happiness is impossible without this grateful love of God and benevolent, active love toward others. And the moral life is one with this happiness."1
Wesley makes a striking comment at the very beginning of his Explanatory Notes on the Sermon of the Mount. In Matthew 5:1-2 the translation Wesley uses reads, “And seeing the multitudes, he went up into the mountain: and when he was sat down his disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth and taught them…” Here is Wesley’s comment on the phrase “and taught them:”
"To bless men, to make men happy, was the great business for which our Lord came into the world. And accordingly He here pronounces eight blessings together, annexing them to so many steps in Christianity. Knowing that happiness is our common aim, and that an innate instinct continually urges us to the pursuit of it, He in the kindest manner applies to that instinct, and directs it to its proper object.Though all men desire, yet few attain, happiness because they seek it where it is not to be found. Our Lord therefore begins His divine institution, which is the complete art of happiness, by laying down, before all that have ears to hear, the true, and only true,method of acquiring it."2
Wesley seems to be arguing that Jesus gives the Beatitudes in order to map out for us the way to happiness. Wesley’s understanding here is so relevant to today. Many people are seeking happiness. . . Wesley invites us to read the words of Christ in Scripture as a model and a guide to finding happiness. He writes, “Though all men desire, yet few attain, happiness, because they seek it where it is not to be found.”3
In response to Wesley’s words, I would define happiness as “Joy that comes from deep in the soul.” It’s what allows us to sing with honesty, the old hymn, “It is well with my soul.” A poet by the name of Sri Chinmoy desribes it very well in these words:
The mind chases happiness.
The heart creates happiness.
The soul is happiness
And it spreads happiness
All-where.
~Sri Chinmoy
I love his word "All-where."
Retired newscaster, Hugh Downs, says, “A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes.”
A Sunday School teacher asked her young scholars if anyone could tell the class what the Beatitudes are. While the rest of the class thought about the possible answer, little Suzy raised her hand excitedly, fairly bursting with the answer. "Oh, teacher, I know, I know, I know! The Beatitudes are the attitudes we ought to be at!"4
Amen! So may we be at them!
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ENDNOTES:
1 Miles, Rebekah L. “Happiness, holiness, and the moral life in John Wesley.” The Cambridge Companion to John Wesley. Eds. Randy L. Maddox and Jason E. Vickers. Cambridge University Press, 2009. Cambridge. Collections Online. Cambridge University Press. 29 January 2011 DOI:10.1017/CCOL9780521886536.013
2 Watson, Kevin, "The Sermon on the Mount as the Key to Happiness." Posted on August 1, 2008 on-line. htp://deeplycommitted.com/2008/08/13-the-sermon-on-the-mount-as-the-key-to-happiness/
3 IBID
4 Galvan, Silverius F.,"Inner Peace," in "Preach!" On-line. Retrieved on 1/29/2011.
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Copyright: Carol J. Borland, Interim Pastor, Pastor Emeritus, West Danville United Methodist Church,
West Danville, VT. Epiphany 4, Year A. January 30, 2011
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