Sermonette- April 1, 2019

These results caught my eye the other day and got me wondering. Once again, Finland has won and the United States has come in a sorry 19th place.

Finland is, officially, the happiest country in the world. Denmark is the second happiest. Norway is third, Iceland fourth, and the Netherlands is fifth. Go figure, huh? And these countries are all known for their cold winters and the kind of activities that go with the cold, like ice skating and cross-country skiing. Me, I would have figured that the tropical countries would be the really happy ones— Fiji, Jamaica, the Virgin Islands. But no, it is the cold places that make it to the top of the list. (It makes me wonder if North Dakota might vie for the happiest state.)

So, apparently, a nation’s happiness is not based on the climate. And it’s not based on the size of the military or the number of guns they own. Neither is it based on how low their taxes are. No, according to the World Happiness Report which was released by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network for the United Nations on March 20, their happiness quotient is based on six key variables that support well-being: income, freedom, trust, healthy life expectancy, social support and generosity.

Note that most of these variables have to do with relationships. It seems to me that the ones who are happiest, in other words, are those who live in graceful relationships with their neighbors. And this leads me to wonder even further.

Jesus tells a story about a father and his two sons (Luke 15:11-32), and the people who are happy at the end of the story are the ones who live by grace. The father is happy as the one who bestows grace and the younger son, who was once lost, is happy as the one who receives and accepts his father’s grace. It is only the older son who cannot bring himself to bestow grace upon his younger brother who is unhappy.

Apparently, happiness is a byproduct of grace. And this is not just a nice little object lesson that comes to us from the parable. It is a fact of life as borne out by the happiness study. Those countries are happiest whose citizens live by grace, who are generous, kind, caring, loving, gentle supportive of each other.

The citizens of the unhappy countries live by worry, fear, anger and sadness. The United States came in at 19th place, which is the lowest we’ve ever placed on the scale. We are, in other words, the unhappiest we have ever been as a nation according to the World Happiness Report. Since negative emotions such as worry, sadness, and anger were also measured for the study, it seems that unhappiness is a result of the increase of these negative emotions.

Yet, by bestowing grace and by accepting grace, by eating dinners with sinners (which was the occasion for Jesus to tell this parable to the religious leaders who were grumbling that he was eating with sinners (Luke 15:2)), we can be the authors of happiness, the builders of joy in our own lives and the lives of others. It is a lesson well learned as we move through Lent and on to the cross and, ultimately, to the resurrection on Easter morning. Glory be to God!