Are you happy? - Sept. 20, 2009
ARE YOU HAPPY?
Psalm 1
Proverbs 31:10-31
L’shanah tovah! For a good year! It’s the Hebrew equivalent of “Happy New Year!” I wish you this for two reasons: first, because today marks our return to the regular Sunday morning schedule and the beginning of a new year of church activities. second, because this weekend is Rosh Hashanah.
Rosh Hashanah, “the head, or the first, of the year,” began at sunset on Friday, September 19th, which on the Jewish calendar was the first day of the seventh month, Tishri, in accordance with God’s mandate recorded in Leviticus 23:23-25. “The LORD spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to the people of Israel, saying: In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, you shall observe a day of complete rest, a holy convocation commemorated with trumpet blasts. You shall not work at your occupations; and you shall present the LORD’s offering by fire.” The holiday began with the blowing of the shofar – the ram’s horn – and ends at nightfall today. It is the beginning of the ten-day period called the Days of Awe and the start of the Jewish year 5,770.
Rosh Hashanah is commonly known as the Jewish New Year, but there is little similarity between Rosh Hashanah, one of the holiest days of the year, and the American New Year with its late night drinking bash on December 31st and daytime football game on January 1st. There is, however, one important similarity. Many Americans use the New Year as a time to reflect on their lives to plan a better way of life, to resolve to change their attitude and/or behavior. Likewise, the Jewish New Year is a time to begin introspection, looking back at the mistakes of the past year and planning the changes to make in the year ahead.
Legend says that God opens the Book of Life on Rosh Hashanah. God judges each person and writes down his or her fate for the next year. For those who truly repent their sins, God shows mercy. The record is open until sundown on Yom Kippur, ten days later. That’s why Jews send cards to each other before Rosh Hashanah that read, “May you be inscribed and sealed in the Book of Life for a good year.”
On Rosh Hashanah people eat special sweet food. The festive meal usually begins with apple dipped in honey, a symbol of a sweet new year. The round, crown-like bread, challah, stands for the endless cycles of the year and for the eternal rule of God.
After the afternoon meal on the first day of Rosh Hashanah, many Jews gather at a nearby river or other body of running water. In a ceremony called tashlikh, Hebrew for “you shall cast away,” the people throw bread crumbs into the water, symbolically casting off their sins.
As I see it, Rosh Hashanah teaches us that a happy new year has nothing at all to do with noisemakers, confetti, champagne toasts, or football. A sweet new year, a good year, has everything to do with casting off sins, changing one’s life for the better, living in accordance with God’s will, and above all, acknowledging the sovereignty of God. The Bible says that it is the people who do these things that are truly blessed, which is just another word for happy.
Happy is what her children call the woman in Proverbs; and happy is the first word in this morning’s psalm. Psalm 1 is a gentle and confident wisdom psalm, with its own shape and imagery and meaning. But it is also the first psalm and therefore a kind of introduction or preface to the entire collection of the book of Psalms. Everything that can be said about Psalm 1 serves at another level as a kind of primer also instructing the reader in how the rest of the book should be read.
Psalm 1 opens the Psalter with a benevolent word to the wise; Book 5, Psalm 150 concludes the Psalter on a note of joyous praise. The psalms in between range across the spectrum of human emotion, communal life, theological reflection, and spiritual inquiry. What binds all the psalms together is outlined in the opening psalm.
Fittingly, the very first verse of Psalm 1 is a beatitude. A beatitude is a description of what it means to be happy or blessed. “Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers; but their delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law they meditate day and night. . . .” To anyone who heeds its advice, who devotes himself or herself to the law of the Lord, who orders and conducts his or her life in accordance with God’s will, Psalm 1 promises happiness.
Is that you? Are you happy? If not, what would you have to change in your life to be happy and blessed?
In an essay entitled “If I Had My LifeTo Live Over” that appeared in the very first volume of Chicken Soup for the Soul, Nadine Stair, age 85, wrote:
I’d dare to make more mistakes next time. I’d relax. I would limber up. I would be sillier than I have been this trip. I would take fewer things seriously. I would take more chances. I would take more trips. I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers. I would eat more ice cream and less beans.
I would perhaps have more actual troubles but I’d have fewer imaginary ones.
You see, I’m one of those people who live sensibly and sanely hour after hour, day after day.Oh, I’ve had my moments and if I had it to do over again, I’d have more of them. In fact, I’d try to have nothing else. Just moments.One after another, instead of living so many years ahead of each day. I’ve been one of those people who never go anywhere without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, a raincoat, and a parachute. If I had it to do again, I would travel lighter next time.
If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall. I would go to more dances. I would ride more merry-go-rounds.
I would pick more daisies.
It sounds to me like she’s saying, “I would enjoy my life as God intended, and I would be happier.”
Several research studies surveyed middle-aged and older adults about the topic of regret and found that the top areas in which people wish they had done differently were education, career, romance, family, health, self-improvement, finances, spirituality, and altruism. These last two were of particular interest to me. On spirituality most said they should have been more involved with their congregation. In regard to altruism they wished they had done more to help others. In other words, by serving God and by giving of themselves for other people, they would have been happier.
Helen Keller said, “Many persons have a wrong idea about what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.” God’s law or purpose for our lives – to which Psalm 1 calls us to devote ourselves – is summarized succinctly in both the Old and New Testaments: this way: love God and love neighbor.
It reminds me of a song written for the 1925 musical No, No, Nanette. It goes something like this: “I want to be happy, but I won’t be happy, till I make you happy too.” It could be our theme song. We want to be happy, and the way to be happy is to make God happy and the way to make God happy is to make others happy, too. All the psalms, in fact all the books of the Bible affirm this truth: Blessedness, true happiness, is to be found in faith and faithful living.
Samuel L. Clemens, (Mark Twain), however, had something very different to say about how to be happy. He once was seated at a banquet next to a very sad, melancholy man. “Brother, why are you so downcast?” asked Twain. “Oh,” replied his dour companion, “I can’t be happy when I realize that with every breath I take, some poor soul passes on into eternity!” “Well,” said Twain rather unsympathetically, “why don’t you try chewing cloves? That might make your breath less deadly.”
Not the answer the melancholy man expected, I imagine. But a better answer is to be found. In the promise and counsel of Psalm 1 God has shown us the way to true happiness. This weekend,
as the Jewish New Year starts and our new church year begins, is a very good time to reflect, to learn, to grow, to change, to orient our lives to God, to renew our commitment to God’s ways and to be truly happy.