(Thoughts About the Beatitudes, Part 1)

Over the past couple of years I have heard at least three sermons on joy and/or happiness. A key feature of these messages was the distinction that the speaker made between being joyful and being happy. In general, the argument relies on a somewhat valid analysis of our tendency to desire happiness – which the sermonizer describes as a temporary emotional state that arises from fortuitous circumstances – over joy, which comes from God and that endures whether we are living high off the hog or subsisting on the scraps.

To be sure, preaching on joy is an excellent rhetorical and pastoral approach. We humans do focus on “what’s life (or God) done for me lately?” We can fall prey to a kind of sine wave existence, up or down depending on the strength or weakness of our perceived fortunes. But I’ve begun to think that there is a scriptural view of what it means to be happy that corrects the temporal or personality-based understanding of the word.

Where does this supposed notion of happiness reside in the Bible? What does it mean to be joyful AND happy? To me the answer lies in two contrasts. The first is (obviously) in the difference between joy and happiness. The second is a little bit hidden among the different words that both the Hebrew and Greek writings use for “blessed.” Beginning with a joy vs. happiness comparison, then, I would offer this thought. The Old Testament has a passel of expressions that we translate as joy. When we look at them, their predominant features are, first, a recognition of God’s goodness; second, an experience of positive emotion; and, third, (usually) a physical manifestation such as singing, dancing, or shouting.

In the New Testament, there are fewer words for joy, but they mean essentially the same thing. So, whether in Hebrew or in Greek, joy or gladness are not dependent on circumstance or our emotional state, but they very much involve a subjective response to objective truth. Joy transcends personal trials, trouble, and woe because it connects, by faith and hope, to the Lord, his works, his truth, and his promises.

Then what about this idea of being blessed and our happiness? Without going into too much depth, I will simply mention three Old Testament and two New Testament expressions. In the Old Testament: Barak, which indicates the bestowal of good and the giving of gifts; mehullal, which has a meaning of praise or honor, being well-known or having others speak highly of someone; and ashrei, which signifies something like an experience of life being consonant with God’s purpose. In the New Testament: eulogetos, which is similar to mehullal, meaning honored; and makarios, which is parallel to ashrei (in fact the Greek translation of the Hebrew ashrei is makarios).

I have subjected us to such a long philological thread to introduce my next 10 or so posts, which will consider Matthew 5:3-12, a section known as the Beatitudes. The Beatitudes are 8 statements declaring that human beings are blessed when certain conditions are evident in their lives. The word for blessed here is makarioi (the parallel to ashrei). As I look at these verses over the next couple of months, I am going to translate makarioi as “happy” (a few versions of the Bible do this, but most stick with “blessed”).

Why am I insisting on emphasizing happy? First, doing so takes away a variety of issues with the work “blessed.” For example, in the secular world, blessing has become part of the vague spiritual vernacular that divorces God’s language from the connection with him that is necessary to give words their true meaning. Second, for others, blessed carries a distinctively “religious” feel. This means that using the word immediately disqualifies it from consideration as a serious discussion topic. The combination of overuse in our society and the counter-objection that blessed should be relegated to the province of church-speak robs the word of its power and proper effect. It’s a typical no-win proposition.

Third, and most importantly, the use of happy counters the idea that a disciple’s life is tedious or unattractive. I would like to rescue the word from what I like to call “Volga Boatman” Christianity. The author of a recent local newspaper article* noted that certain “fundamentalist” Christians would react to too much positivity at church as “feel-good religion.” Yes, there are spiritual doctrines and philosophies that lurch into a kind of happiness heresy. But believers too often are suspicious and even dismissive of the word to the detriment of our witness in the world.  As counter-intuitive as it may be, the Bible presents following Jesus as simultaneously profoundly challenging and transcendentally elevating.

So before I launch into the Beatitudes themselves (next week), I want to ask one question to set the stage: What is the main thing the passage is aiming to reveal? I think it is this: That the Scriptures have a vision of how we live that is desirable, noble, even glorious. That living for the Lord is a reflection of who he is, a completion of being created in his image and likeness. That the disciple’s path is not tedious or unattractive. That Jesus is the embodiment of this God-formed life – not just as a model, but also as the source.

Both the Old and New Testament writings give us this kind of vision. In the former, Psalms 1 describes the happy person focussed on God’s law to the exclusion of habits of wickedness, scoffing, or sin. In the latter (our beatitudinal verses), Jesus presents a portrait of himself, full of humility, meekness, patience, and mercy. Taken together, these passages depict what it is to be truly happy. It’s as countercultural as it gets, but once we accept the cost to our pride and the dashing of our hopes for success as the world defines it, it’s worth every wound that we experience in the fight.

 * “Making a Megachurch,” in the December 2017 Issue of the Ann Arbor Observer, p. 37.