Carla Gregg
Living and Playing Joyfully
September 8, 2013
1 Chronicles 29:17-18
1 Chronicles 29: 17 I know, my God, that you search the heart, and take pleasure in
uprightness; in the uprightness of my heart I have freely offered all these things, and
now I have seen your people, who are present here, offering freely and joyously to
you. 18 O Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, our ancestors, keep forever
such purposes and thoughts in the hearts of your people, and direct their hearts
toward you.
In the 10th grade I had to write a book report for my psychology class and I chose a
book on happiness, astonished and delighted that I could read a book and
understand how to be happy. Clear that if I mastered this at 15 my life would be set.
Somewhere around chapter 3 I realized reading a book about happiness might not
be the key for me. I dutifully finished the book, wrote the report and went back to
my emotionally tumultuous teenage life. I returned to the genre this past week and
noted that there is no lack of books about steps to happiness or awakening joy.
There may be as few as two steps…find what makes you happy and do it. And none
of the literature I found suggested there was ever more than 12 steps.
Most of the books deal with changing how we think about the circumstances of our
lives and changing how we act. No surprise there. For example, fear less; love
more. A number are from a Buddhist perspective and the ways meditation can
reform the mind and change the chemical patterns in our brains to help us attain a
state of happiness that pervades and underlies all other emotional states. Or there
is Gretchen Rubin’s bestseller The Happiness Project that a number of my friends
have taken as guides in a quest for happiness and found very meaningful. But as I
picked up these sorts books in a local bookstore, I felt strangely unhappy about
reading books about happiness. And so I left and went to meet my daughter and her
friend at a park and when they saw me they both broke out into a run toward me,
smiles plastered on their face, homemade necklaces bouncing with every stride,
arms open wide. And I was flooded with joy. The idea of playing and living joyfully
was manifest in that moment.
In English the word joy is an intensified happiness – the Mirram-Webster dictionary
defines it as the emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune or by the
prospect of possessing what one desires. According to the dictionary, it sounds like
you MUST obtain or envision obtaining something in order to find joy. And many of
us can certainly attest to this type of joy. But the story in Chronicles gives us a
different perspective. An act of joy that is an offering and that flows from a heart
rightly directed toward God.
The book of Chronicles, in today’s musical terms is best described as a mash up. It
takes material from the books of Samuel and Kings and re-orders and reinterprets
those traditions as well as throwing in some original material. It is primarily
concerned with the reign of David and preparations for the building of the temple
and the worship that will take place there.
The passage we read today comes at the end of First Chronicles as King David offers
thanks for the gifts the people have joyously and willingly brought for the building
of the temple. Roddy Braun comments that this generosity and joy flow from fully
committed hearts. Thus, the writer of Chronicles invites us to consider where and
how our hearts are committed.
Some of us have known joy and generosity that flow from our commitment to a
marriage, a child, a friendship, or meaningful work. Sometimes that joy is sustained
over long years and sometimes it is fleeting.
But how and where can we know joy and generosity that come from our
commitment to God, that come from a heart whose delight is in being upright and
directed toward God? I’ll let that question sink in for a moment and invite you to
imagine your heart, the seat of the self, your inner compass turned toward God, and
bask in the love and the light, imagine yourself moving toward God and that
movement as sacred and holy. Could living and playing joyfully happen in that
space? Could joy and generosity flow? I hope so. What if at the beginning of
everyday for 5 min., for 2 min. for 1 min. we stopped and took stock of the
commitment of our heart. To whom and for whom will our life be directed?
Now this is not an exercise in happiness, far from it. In fact a heart directed toward
God might include more than it’s fair share of pain and suffering. When I did this
imaginative exercise this week, the first place my heart went was Syria. As we
grapple as a public with military strikes against Syria, chemical warfare, millions of
refugees, if our heart is directed toward God then our heart must be directed toward
the Syrian people, if our hearts seek to be upright, that is to respond to injustice
then we must respond to the plight of people of Syria. Doesn’t exactly feel like a
time for dancing and rejoicing. The thought of Syria does not flood me with joy. But
a heart directed toward God does flood me with a deep hope and desire for joy in
Syria. A hope and desire that the people of Damascus and Hama and Aleppo will
also have a chance to live and play joyfully. A hope and desire that you o God will
somehow and in someway make us instruments of your peace.
We lift up our hearts and sing out our joy not because we are happy but because we
know war is not the only or the last word, because we know you have called us to
and given us a way of life that demands tender compassion and active peacemaking,
because your promises are good and your love endures despite our failures. Our joy
is made of pain and sorrow of hope and desire of family and strangers and most of
all, of a heart committed to you O God. May we one day be lifted to that Joy Divine.
Amen.