Happiness: The Old Wisdom Calm in the Face of Foes
by Ken Wilson
Sonja Lyobomirsky lists 14 things research says enhance happiness. Avoiding overthinking. Defined as "thinking too much, needlessly, passively, endlessly and excessively pondering the meaning, causes and consequences of your character, feelings, problems."
On Friday at 5pm you get an email from a co-worker complaining about something you did or didn't do, putting a spin on it that makes you look bad; half the office is copied on the email. Overthinking is what you do over weekend: ruminating, fuming, composing multiple responses in your head, fussing, worrying, etc. A happy weekend?
Key to happiness: staying off the overthinking express in the face of perceived threats from someone rummaging around in your cabbage patch. What the Bible, unvarnished, calls foes.
Ps. 3 "Lord, how many are my foes,/many who rise up against me./Many who say of my life,/God will not rescue him!"
During Lent, consider the life of Jesus from his 40 days in desert up to his crucifixion, in preparation for celebrating Easter; today, consider Jesus out in that Judean desert facing down his foes. How'd he do it, so his foes didn't ruin his weekend?
Matthew 4: 1-11 Who is Jesus facing out there? Our worst nightmare in the foe department. "the devil": Gk. diabolos; malicious, slanderous; "the satan': Gk. satana; hostile opponent.
Bible remarkably sparse in detailing the ontology of diabolos--the nature of his/its being. Most of what we think we know is sheer speculation. So let's consider what we do know….
We know what our brains would be up to if such an adversary challenged us: The limbic system (the emotional center of the brain) would kick in; the amygdala signaling the hypothalamus, alerting the body with a release of "fear, fight and flight" chemicals.
(What part of the brain do you think fires up when you get that nasty email from your co-worker at the end of the day on Friday?)
But Jesus, I think, was calm. Outwardly, for sure; inwardly too.
The question is: what was his secret? What was he doing in the Judean desert that prepared him to face his foe with such serenity, such equilibrium, such "the-opposite-of-freaking-outittude"
No fair saying, "His secret was he was the Son of God! He was, Divine!" That's a distortion of the mystery of the incarnation: God in flesh appearing. Jesus wasn't superman. He was son of Man. God coming in human weakness & vulnerability to rule over his foes.
His secret is something available to us.
Otherwise he isn't good news for us.
Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. (Mt. 4: 1-2)
Jesus was on retreat in Judean desert. God drew him out there. He didn't eat out there. What did he do? He prayed a lot. He didn't have a TV, radio, ipod, iphone, an x-box, or a wii to while away the hours. He had three things: God, himself, and time.
Much of the prayer of a man of his times and tribe, much of Hebrew prayer that is, was occupied with meditating on words of Scripture. Storing the words in his heart. Pondering the words. Inhabiting the words. Allowing the words to become a portal into the heart of God.
Because the written Bible is so readily available to us, we forget how the Bible was used by Jesus and the people of his time. He didn't read it much at all. (Less than you.) Too hard to come by. The hometown synagogue didn't even have an entire set of scrolls.
He listened to scriptures being read on the Sabbath. Heard the words repeated by others who had committed them to memory; around the campfire; in the home; along the way. In the songs his people sung.
The text came to him in context of community; the Scriptures came in
a patchwork, a quilt, a mosaic of human voices.
So out in the desert, he didn't pull it up on his blackberry to scan it like a John Grisham page-turner.
He meditated on those portions of Scripture that had been planted in his heart by a form of meditation called memorization.
40 days and nights out there alone! What do you do with your mind out there to keep from going mad? You ponder words of Scripture. You might spend an hour on a single verse: The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures…..
Time would pass without an awareness of it's passing. You would come to, and take a long walk to another spot and sit there for a while. Meditate some more. Why? Because it was a way be with God.
As words which had been inside the heart of God were pondered inside your heart, you would experience closeness with God.
Word-to-heart closeness.
What was the occasion for his being out there? He was on a vision quest, having been baptized by John, and having become aware of God's favor resting on him; knowing the start was near.
By this time, Jesus must have known that he was meant to lead the people of Israel out of exile into the promised land. They had returned from the Babylonian exile, but the foreign occupiers were still in charge. And God wasn't in the temple like he once was.
Jesus knew by then that he was to lead his people back to his Abba-Father, and his Abba-Father back to his people. He knew it was going to be messy because the powers that be were already agitated. He saw how the Jerusalem elders reacted to John, his cousin, the baptizer. Angry, upset, threatened. He saw Romans sending more soldiers to watch the crowds. Herod's paranoia was growing as well.
He was out in the desert getting himself ready to enter the fray.
When he was all prayed up at the end of those 40 days, when he was outwardly weak, but inwardly strong, he encountered his foe: the malice behind every malevolent meeting.
The tempter came to him and said, "If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread." Jesus answered, "It is written: 'People do not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'" Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. "If you are the Son of God," he said, "throw yourself down. For it is written: " 'He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.' "Jesus answered him, "It is also written: 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.' " Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. "All this I will give you," he said, "if you will bow down and worship me." Jesus said to him, "Away from me, Satan! For it is written: 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.'" Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him. (Mt. 4: 3-11)
[BTW, if you're asking, "Whoa! Did this happen literally?" Stranger things than this have happened literally, but I think this has all the marks of visionary experience. But that's neither here nor there.]
For our purpose today, less interested in what diabolos had to say. More interested in understanding what was going on within Jesus.
What was his relationship to those words he used? How did those words become a kind of Kevlar vest, guarding him from the dread of the foe? How did he come to inhabit the words?
The words became a Kevlar vest, guarding him from the dread of the foe, through meditative prayer over the words. During those 40 days.
Each of the words is from the book of Deuteronomy.
The Hebrew title for this book is simply, "These are the words"
Setting of the book; the 40 years in the wilderness--after freedom from Egypt, but before entrance to the promise land--are drawing to a close. Under a new leader, Joshua, they will cross the Jordan and enter the land, at long last.
Jesus, during his 40 days may have been meditating his way through the 40 years. Jewish understanding: through celebration and meditation we participate in the events that led us to this place.
End of the 40 days would have led him, in meditation, to the end of the 40 years of his people in the desert. Awaiting a new leader, who would be challenged by his people's foe. Through the new leader, God would bring them all the way back home, but that homecoming would be contested, as homecomings often are.
His first response: from Deuteronomy 8: 1-3Be careful to follow every command I am giving you today, so that you may live and increase and may enter and possess the land that the LORD promised on oath to your ancestors. Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that people do not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD
When the adversary appeared--when he got the devil's nasty email--he not only knew what to say, but he spoke from within those words.
His second & third response from Deuteronomy 6. Get context: These are the commands [title of the book] decrees and laws the LORD your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the LORD your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life. 3 Hear, Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the LORD, the God of your ancestors, promised you.
Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
When the LORD your God brings you into the land he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give you—a land with large, flourishing cities you did not build, houses filled with all kinds of good things you did not provide, wells you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant—then when you eat and are satisfied, be careful that you do not forget the LORD, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
Fear the LORD your God, serve him only and take your oaths in his name. Do not follow other gods, the gods of the peoples around you; for the LORD your God, who is among you, is a jealous God and his anger will burn against you, and he will destroy you from the face of the land. Do not put the LORD your God to the test as you did at Massah. Dt. 6: 1-16
You don't need to catch the details except to realize how fitting these words were to the situation he found himself in: getting ready to lead the people back to God and God back to the people.
Knowing it would upset a whole boatload of people. He would be getting plenty of nasty emails at the end of the working day on Friday to stew on over the weekend…
So to prepare, he inhabited sacred words from the sacred writings of his people. Words that fit the occasion.
He meditated on these words, savored them, ruminated on them, rather than on the emails to come…..and when he met the foe, he spoke from behind the words. He spoke from the place where God was close to him in the words. And he was calm.
Had he been hooked up to an MRI, a neurologist would see that the quiescent system of his brain was being activated. The calming part, to counteract the fear-fight-flight part. By the end of 40 days he had himself pickled in peaceful assurance. So when the adversary appeared, he could readily go there, where all was indeed well.
One of the classic marks experientially of God's presence and of his speaking through sacred text is this: a kind of presence settles around you. In the old sitcom, Get Smart, it was the cone of silence.
Time loses its tick-tockiness. Life loses it's edgey-stressiness. The person experiencing God's presence feels peace. Calm. Assurance. With or without words.
Through his meditations in the desert Jesus had been inhabiting that place a great deal. The words were dwelling in him, he was dwelling in the words.
Words are powerful that way, are they not?
We dwell in each other through words, do we not? First time I got a letter from Nancy in which she wrote the words, "I love you." I looked at them in the privacy of my room, and I savored them….I daresay, I inhabited those words. Mmmmm…..
That's what I'm talking about.
But enough talking about it. Would you like to try it?
If you'd like, we'll take about five minutes in silence to meditate on a text of Scripture. (I'll show you in a minute.) [Offer out]
Play some background music, so you don't have to worry about your stomach growling and drawing attention.
I'll place a text for your consideration the screen above me. If you wish to jot it down, to hold it before you, you can do so. [3X5 cards]
From Psalm 4 one of the "O Lord, my foes are bothering me again!" psalms. Read to get context….
"In peace, all whole, let me lie down and sleep./For you, Lord, alone, do set me down safely." (Ps. 4:8)
I'll walk you through this, with some simple instructions.
First, take a minute to close our eyes (if you like) and relax.
Can we have that music?
Now, take a deep breath, and simply focus on your breath in and out, for a minute, to relax. Breath being important in the Bible as some-thing that connects us to God. God, in the beginning breathed on or into us, and we became living beings. Hebrew word for breath and spirit are the same word. So breath is important. Just take a minute to notice your own as it goes in and out.
Now, aware that we all have foes, we're all threatened by people who don't know what they're doing….people out to get us, inconsiderate people, flat out enemies, focus on the ONE who stands between you and your foes, who sets a table for you in presence of our enemies.
Take your focus off the foes and place it on these words of the psalmist focused on God. As you attend to the words, God comes into the foreground, the foes, goes into the background.
We'll take a few more minutes to simply do that. Focus on the words. If you find your mind wandering, which it will, once you notice it wandering, just return your focus to these words. That simple
After a few minutes [I'll keep track of time] Mike will lead us in communion. Let this be a preparation, to come to the table.