Urban Legends: Jesus wants you to be happy!

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In our current sermon series of Urban Legends we are looking at statements that Christians often accept as fact and biblical teaching. As a result we accept them as true and live our lives based on them being true. Today we look at the Urban Legend: Jesus wants you to be happy. That legend is important to deal with in our life. It is difficult to destroy this legend because many times Jesus talk about being blessed which is often translated happy. Jesus spoke to his desire to have his disciples filled with his joy. The Apostle Paul mentions that we should rejoice in the Lord always. The challenge is to understand the word happy and how we achieve that happiness. When watching TV or reading magazines or newspapers we are given prescriptions for happiness. However they are not prescriptions that will really make us happy. They are prescriptions that will make us unhappy. That is because there is a superficial or passing happiness and there is a deep and abiding happiness that we could call blessedness.

The text before us today in our gospel lesson reveals how many people at the time of Jesus misunderstood who Jesus was and what the purpose of his ministry was and what he was promising to his disciples.  In our text Jesus was giving his disciples the opportunity to declare what they believed about Jesus, the Christ. This title, Christ, was in great danger of being misunderstood. It was a common opinion that the role of the promised Christ (Messiah) was to establish an earthly Jewish kingdom, hence the prohibition issued by Jesus warning the disciples to tell no one of his true identity. For, as he soon reveals to them, his true role as Christ is to suffer and die on the cross.

This is the first of three predictions that Jesus makes concerning his death and resurrection. He refers to himself as the Son of Man to emphasize his true human nature. Luke reports no reaction from the disciples to this prediction, but from Mark 8:31–33 we learn that Peter led the protests against such an ending to the life of Jesus.

The Urban Legend: Jesus wants you to be happy. This text brings a great challenge to that statement: “Then he said to them all: ‘If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. 24  For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.’” Luke gets right at the implications that the message of the cross has for the followers of Jesus. Following Jesus means self-denial. It means the sacrifice of one’s own will for the sake of Christ. “Cross” here does not refer to the afflictions and troubles that commonly come in life to Christians and non-Christians alike. Rather, a believer taking up the cross means to accept whatever suffering might result from a sincere commitment to Christ and his kingdom. For many of the disciples, their confession of Christ would mean death.

Jesus makes it plain, however, that a life bent on personal survival is a life lost whereas a life lost for his sake is a life saved. Gaining the whole world by forfeiting life is not worth the price. “Life” here means more than what is only physical. Jesus is talking about life in a double sense: earthly and eternal. He makes a direct connection between a person’s denial of him in this earthly life with what will happen on the day of judgment: the Son of Man will be ashamed of the person who is ashamed of Jesus and his words.

For the disciples this talk about suffering and death sounded strange and foreboding. Up to this point, Jesus had been tremendously successful in drawing appreciative crowds. But now there is the disclosure of the cross. This same chapter will find Jesus “resolutely set out for Jerusalem” (verse 51).

Yet the end is not the cross; the end is the kingdom of God. The end is victory and glory. Jesus concludes his talk with a beautiful promise: “I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God.” Seeing the kingdom of God can mean many things. It can mean eternal life or the second coming of Christ. But because of the way Jesus here speaks of disciples who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God, we need to think of the glorious unveiling of God’s kingdom after the resurrection of Jesus as reported in the book of Acts. Peter and many other disciples who did take up the cross and follow Jesus saw the fulfillment of this promise. It is a fulfillment that we continue to behold today as we witness the spread of the message of Christ’s cross to all nations. This is the kind of kingdom over which Christ is ruler, the kind of kingdom he won by his death and resurrection.

As you read through the Gospels you’ll see plenty of promises of joy, but none of happiness. And they are infinitely different things. Happiness comes from the Latin word hap, which means luck. Happiness is based on circumstances going well for us, things falling into place, the dice rolling luckily, our cards falling fortuitously. But what God promises us is far deeper than that.

Joy comes from knowing we are doing the right thing, from being who we were created to be and doing what we were created to do. Only the wealthy, healthy and well-fed can know happiness. But even the poverty stricken and the persecuted can know joy (Matthew 5:3, 11).

What competes with the joy that comes from the Word of God?  Jesus doesn’t hold back from naming names. They are “worry, riches and pleasure” (Luke 8:14), or as Mark puts it “the deceitfulness of wealth and the desire for other things” (Mark 4:19). Elsewhere (Matthew 6:19-24), Jesus clearly tells us that there is only room in our hearts for one Lord: either God or money (and the things money can buy; together called ‘mammon’). Jesus is so up-front about how toxic these competing ‘Lords’ are, it’s staggering that so that many Christians are still falling for health, wealth and prosperity ‘gospels’!

So how do we deal with the statement: Jesus wants you to be happy! The Christian life is an adventure. It is many times action packed. The disciples on the Sea of Galilee were in a boat being rocked by the wind and waves and Jesus rebuked them for their little faith because he the Son of God who later calmed the wind and waves was with them. Jesus the Son of God who wiped out your sins of lack of faith and faithfulness is with you as you follow him. We can rejoice in the Lord Jesus each day because we have the deep seated contentment we know that he is in control even when we are not. Jesus asks us to follow him in a life that may be filled with persecution, mockery as we carry our cross for Christ. Remember who Jesus is and why we follow him for now and eternally. Keep your eyes on the prize of eternal life with Jesus that begins now by knowing him.