The Secret of Happiness

Meditation on Ezekiel 37:1–14

First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown

Pastor Karen Crawford

May 19, 2024

Pentecost

The title of my message today is, “The Secret of Happiness.” I would love to know, right now, before I start preaching, does anyone already know the secret of happiness? Have you found it?

Do you want to share it with the rest of us?

Spoiler alert. This message is not going to provide all the answers to the question, “What is the Secret to Happiness?” But…maybe, with the Spirit’s help, it will lead us closer to the One who DOES have all the answers, who knows us better than we know ourselves, and has the power to heal and transform our hearts and minds.

At the beginning of the week, I was doing my exercises with our denomination’s program “Call to Health.” It’s an app for my phone—and it offers articles, videos and suggested activities to improve the well-being of pastors. It’s been around a while—though having it as an app might be something relatively new. And, up to this year, I have largely ignored it, until I decided that I wanted to earn enough points to be eligible for a 50% decrease in my health insurance deductible next year. Yes, I was motivated to save money!

So, with my less than enthusiastic attitude, I watched one of the healthy videos on Monday—and was surprised to find that it was more interesting and helpful than I thought it would be. Although I can’t seem to locate the video, anymore, I believe it was called, “The Secret of Happiness: Gratitude.”

Now we’ve been hearing about the power of gratitude for years—not just in the church for our faith, but popular psychology has been telling us that grateful people are happy people. Oprah Winfrey is one of the proponents of gratitude journals—this started back in the 1990s. Anyone ever keep a gratitude journal? They are still wildly popular today.

But it didn’t always work for Oprah. She says at her website, “For years I’ve been advocating the power and pleasure of being grateful. I kept a gratitude journal for a full decade without fail—and urged you all to do the same. Then life got busy. My schedule overwhelmed me. I still opened my journal some nights, but my ritual of writing down five things I was grateful for every day started slipping away.” [1]

A few years ago, when she came across a journal entry from 1996, she wondered why she no longer felt the joy of simple moments. Since that time, she had “accumulated more wealth, more responsibility, more possessions. Everything, it seemed, had grown exponentially—except my happiness,” she writes. “How had I, with all my options and opportunities, become one of those people who never have time to feel delight? I was stretched in so many directions, I wasn’t feeling much of anything. Too busy doing.”  The truth was, she was busy in 1996, too. But she had made gratitude a daily priority. She went through the day “looking for things to be grateful for, and something always showed up.”  

That’s what got me thinking that the problem with ascribing all the power for happiness, for Christians, into mustering up our own gratefulness, pulling us up by our gratefulness bootstraps, so to speak, no matter the changing circumstances of our lives, is that it leaves out the component of faith and fails to recognize the power of the Spirit to transform our hearts and minds. We can’t make ourselves be happy or grateful—not without the Lord’s help. The good news is that we can ask God for these spiritual gifts—for that is what they are. Love, joy, faith, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, thankfulness, self-control —all of these are gifts from God, poured into our hearts.

Yes—we should be looking for things for which to be grateful, as we ask in faith for the Lord to reveal them. And then we will experience the wonder and joy of God’s presence and recognize the hand of God in our lives, in a new way!

In the video that I watched on Monday, the interviewer met with about four people on camera separately—young and older, male and female. He asked them to think of the person who had made the greatest impact on their lives—the one who inspired them to be who they are today. They each named the person—a mother, sister, friend, and possibly a teacher, I can’t recall the detail. They were then urged to write that person a letter, expressing their gratitude. Some of them wrote long letters—though they might not have been the long letter-writing kind. Next the interviewer surprised them by saying, “Let’s call that person right now and read them your letter.”

 You can imagine how this stirred an emotional response in the writer and the one who listened on the other end of the phone—on speakerphone, so we could hear all the conversation. Something happened when those letters were read, when those beautiful, loving, grateful words were shared and received. Something happened—not only to the two people directly involved, but to the interviewer, whose mood was obviously lifted, and yes, to me, who just watched and listened to all this play out.

So, here we are on Pentecost, and I chose the Ezekiel reading to encourage us of the power of God’s Spirit—the very breath of God—present thousands of years ago when Israel was homesick and grieving in exile, losing all hope, and present right now, in this place, within us and in our midst today.

I chose Ezekiel rather than Acts because I have been visiting people going through life’s difficult transitions, longing for home. Some are grieving the loss of their own good health or mobility, despite modern medicine and prayer. Some have had to move out of the home where they lived for many years and accept that the old way of life is gone. For some, the move comes within years of losing a spouse, and this adds to the grief and loss. In this situation, how could anyone feel grateful or happy, if they are being honest? What are they going to write in their gratitude journals?

So, what is this promise from God through the prophet Ezekiel that was meant for the ancient Israelites and is relevant for us today? Here is what I want you to remember. The Spirit’s transformation doesn’t just happen—not in the Pentecost story in Acts and not in the dry bones story in Ezekiel. The Spirit comes after the church in Acts gathers for prayer and worship for days after the risen Jesus has ascended. Yes, it’s all about God and God’s power—the coming of the Spirit and the work of the Spirit, but we have to believe in it and we have to seek it, with all our heart and soul, mind and might.

In this familiar Ezekiel passage, the Spirit comes when the situation is bleak—when a miracle is truly needed. Hope is all but lost for the exiles. The prophet seeks God, and the Lord brings him not to a high, beautiful place. This is no mountaintop experience! God takes Ezekiel to a valley of dry bones. Death and decay are all around!  Theologian Amy Erickson says, “The tragedy here is not merely that these formerly living, breathing humans will never again have life, but that their bones are lying in a heap in some unnamed Babylonian valley, uncared for and haphazardly dispersed outside of a family tomb… Further, their bones are languishing outside the land of Israel.” [2]

In response to God’s question of can these bones live, the prophet says, “O Lord God, you know.”  This is something like our expression, “God only knows!” The Lord tells his prophet to preach to the bones! That’s just what every preacher wants to hear. Go and a share a message with the dead. But the Lord promises that there will be life when Ezekiel prophecies. Ezekiel does what God commands, “and breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.”

The whole house of Israel is like the dry bones in the valley, God explains to Ezekiel. But I will breathe new life into them. And I will take them home.

It was a Monday morning when I watched the video on gratitude—The Secret to Happiness—and I had chores to do, and I can’t explain why I felt such joy in hearing the conversation between the grateful one and the one who had made a big impact on their life. It occurred to me that they probably had no idea the difference they and their relationship had made in the loved one’s life.

Just like you and I have no idea whose lives we have touched and will touch in the future through our loving relationship with them and each other.

On Monday and throughout this week, I have thought of those who have made a big impact on my life—so many people!—and with these thoughts, I have felt joy and gratitude, the same gifts that God wants to give everyone to strengthen and support us in our lives of faith!

We don’t always have a mountaintop experience with the Lord. Sometimes, God brings us to the valley of dry bones where we look at a dark reality. We aren’t going to escape difficulties in this world, my friends. We didn’t become Christ’s followers to have an easy life. But we remember what the psalmist sings in 121,  “I lift up my eyes to the hills– where does my help come from? My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth.”

Shhhh. Listen. This is the Secret to Happiness. Here it is. The One who has put God’s spirit inside human beings at Creation, and came like a mighty, rushing wind in Jerusalem on Pentecost, and brought dry bones back to life in a Babylonian valley, is breathing with a fresh breath on us now to give us the power to live more abundantly.

The Spirit’s transformation doesn’t just happen while we go about our daily routine, checking off items on our to-do list. Don’t be too busy doing that you stop feeling and seeking the One who longs for a more intimate relationship with you. Take time to reflect. Take time to pray, wherever you are. Keep on looking for that which brings you gratitude and you will become more grateful and joyful, with God’s help.

Who are the ones who have made a big impact on your life? Can you think of one person who particularly inspired you? I encourage you to write them a letter—and share it with them by phone or in person, if they are still with us, because you need to hear their reaction—and they need to hear your words of praise and thanks. Because sometimes, you have no idea how much you are making a difference in someone’s life. You have no idea how dry their bones are feeling—and how life-bringing your Spirit-led, powerful words may be.

And it’s in your thanks and praise that you will find new life for your own dry bones, too.

Let us pray.

Holy Spirit, breathe on us now new life into our dry, weary bones. Lift us from desert valleys of discouragement onto high places of joy and peace. Help those who may be going through difficult life transitions and health challenges. Be with all of us, Lord, as we seek your presence and to be obedient, like Ezekiel, even if it seems like a crazy thing you want us to do. Empower us by your Spirit to draw others nearer to you and in so doing, grow in relationship with you who is our spiritual home. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit we pray. Amen.

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      [1] Oprah Winfrey at https://www.oprah.com/spirit/oprahs-gratitude-journal-oprah-on-gratitude

       [2] Amy Erickson, “Day of Pentecost (Ezekiel)” in Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Teaching, Year B., Vol. 2 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2020), 329.