“The Building Blocks of Eternal Life:

Generously Happy”

Acts 20:32-35

Rev. Martin C. Singley, III

Maybe it sounds way too simple, but the ultimate purpose of life is to be happy.

Too often we religious people miss this most basic message of the Bible – that God created us to experience happiness and to live in a state of joy. You know, we can quote Jesus’ teachings frontwards and backwards – about loving God and neighbor, about feeding the hungry and helping the poor – but most of us would be hard pressed to quote what Jesus said is the reason WHY he taught us these things.

Do you know?

Listen to Jesus in John 15:9-11: “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.”

Isn’t that a refreshing word? In a world where religion often produces nothing more than human misery and countless numbers of miserable people, these words of Jesus stand in stark contrast! God wants us to be happy! God wants to fill us with the joy that floods God’s own heart!

“I have told you this so that MY joy may be in you, and that YOUR joy may be complete!”

Our sermon series is about the building blocks of eternal life which is life as God intends it to be! The life of knowing God. The good life! The life that experiences God’s joy. And what we are discovering is not only that God TELLS us about this eternal life that is happy and good, and CALLS us to come and get it, but – most importantly – that God has actually pre-wired our bodies, minds and spirits with all sorts of happiness tools. Like the happiness muscle! That’s right, you have a happiness muscle!

Do a little experiment with me, okay?

Smile. Make a great big smile. Look around at each other smiling.

Now let me ask you, how does it make you feel when you smile? You feel good! You feel happy! This is a gift God has given you, and – in fact – think about all the things that God places in the world that make you smile! People – flowers – sunrises – chocolate! See, you’re smiling!

You’ve probably heard the old adage that it takes fewer facial muscles to smile than to frown. I don’t know whether that’s true or not but Dacher Keltner, in his book “Born To Be Good”, points out that one of the most dominant facial muscles God has given us is the orbicularis oculi which surrounds the eyes and when contracted raises the cheeks and pouches the lower eyelid causing us to smile and produce the most obvious sign of a happy person – CROW’S FEET! Dacher says the Botox industry knows not what it is doing by trying to wipe out this visible sign of human happiness. And one other thing about this amazing facial muscle God has given us – researchers call it “the happiness muscle!”

How wonderfully God has crafted our lives – body, mind and spirit – to possess muscles, and emotions, and behaviors that produce happiness!

The Lord wants you to have HIS joy, and he wants YOUR joy to be complete!

So today, I want to share with you another Jesus-teaching about how you can find more happiness.

GIVE. Giving produces joy.

People quite frequently say that when they give of themselves to another, it makes them feel good! And that should not surprise us because Jesus said giving makes us happy. In our second reading this morning, we heard Jesus say, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” And the word “blessed” means “happy.”

You will get more happiness from giving, than you will get from receiving.

Unfortunately, many of us have turned this Jesus-teaching completely upside down.

We have a problem in the Singley family. None of the other members of my family agree with me that this is really a problem, but I think it is, although I will have to admit that I am just as much a part of this problem as the rest of them. It happens every Christmas – every birthday – every moment that takes place when gifts are exchanged.

We “give” to each other exactly what the other person has told us they WANT TO RECEIVE – right down to the size, color, brand name, and sometimes even the store where it can be bought!

My family laughs at my hypocritical complicity with this because I happen to like chocolate covered cherries. My favorites are dark chocolate with cordial crème cherry centers. Mmmmm-mmmmm! But one year, someone gave me dark chocolate with LIQUID center cherries! And I made the comment that what I really wanted was chocolate covered cherries with CORDIAL CRÈME centers! Little did I know the hell I was creating with that comment!

So the next year, I open the nicely wrapped box of chocolate covered cherries to find they do have my favorite cordial crème centers!!! But they are MILK CHOCOLATE! My daughter Bethany says, “Dad, I couldn’t remember which ones you said you liked.” I replied, “These are okay. I just prefer DARK CHOCOLATE.”

Well, this opened up Pandora’s box! Now the whole family goes out and buys all the chocolate covered cherries on the East Coast – of every imaginable kind – just in hopes of getting it right! And the irony is that, even though someone will get it right – they’ll buy DARK CHOCOLATE with CORDIAL CRÈME CENTERS – I actually gave up consuming processed sugars several years ago and I don’t even eat them anymore! Now it’s more like my family’s quest to give me exactly what I want – whether I want it or not!

Do you know what I’m saying?

Many of us have lost the skill of “giving.” We have replaced “giving” with a “receiving-based” practice that is little more than an economic transaction or a financial exchange.

I want to show you a couple of gifts today. These are gifts that family members have given me in some of those rare moments when we Singleys have risen up above the fallenness of our need to receive and truly captured the art of giving.

Many of you have seen this before. It is a handcrafted representation of the passage in Isaiah where the lion lies down with the lamb.

My father made this for me. It was a year when we had decided as a family to not do a lot of gift-buying, but to make something of meaning for each other. My dad drew my name. And this is what he made with his own hands. I was in seminary at the time. The following November, he died. It’s the last gift he ever gave to me. It’s the only tangible thing of him I have anymore.

Then, last Christmas, my son Peter and his family gave me this gift. It is a picture of four generations of Singley men – my dad – me, looking older than my dad – Peter – and my grandson Ryan.

Now I want to say three things about these gifts. First, they are way better than chocolate covered cherries. Second, they are gifts that touch my heart with more joy than I can describe because they came out of a generosity of pure love. And third, when each of these gifts was given to me, there was a look of incredible joy on the faces of those who gave them. I can still see the smile on my father’s face as I opened the package and saw the lion and the lamb lying down together. I can still recall the almost breathless anticipation of my son and grandson as I unwrapped the picture – and their complete joy and pride when they saw how much I loved it.

“It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

Usually, we encounter these words at Stewardship time in the life of the church. And we are standing at the brink of our annual Trails Through Tellico Campaign which will begin in another week.

But as often as we have heard these words in the Church, seldom have we understood them. The great Stewardship sin in our church, and in many churches, is that we do not “give.” We do not GIVE. We make a financial transaction. We make an economic pact – the church gives me lights, air conditioning, great music, adequate sermons, the right kind of chocolate covered cherries, and all the things listed in the annual budget – and I give the church this amount of money to pay for what I get. It is not about giving. It is about receiving.

That’s not Stewardship. That’s Consumer economics. And the sad thing is that not only does this approach keep a church from doing all it can potentially do for God and others, it also deprives US of the joy of giving.

When I was a little boy in elementary school, our teacher had the class create Mother’s Day cards for our moms. The card I made for my mother had a watercolor painting on the front of it – a picture of me pumping gas into a car. On the inside panel, was a beautiful (I thought) watercolor painting of a blue dress. And on the message side of the card I had scribbled in crayon, “Dear Mom, Happy Mother’s Day! When I grow up, I’m going to own a gas station so I can buy you a new dress.”

My mother wept tears of joy when she read that card because she knew it came out of a heart that was overflowing with love for her.

And I…when I saw my mother’s joy…was happy!

The challenges I want to put out to you today are these three:

· First, give something to someone this week out of pure love, with no expectation of getting anything in return

· Second, when you are deciding what to pledge for the ministry God has given our church, give out of the generosity of your love for God and for others – this is the true measure of your faith

· And third, smile! Smile a lot every day! One of the great things about your God-given ability to smile is that not only does it make YOU feel happy, it also gives others the gift of joy!

It is more blessed to give than to receive!

Jesus told us this so that HIS joy will be in us, and OUR joy will be full!