Why is religion so serious? Ultimately, shouldn’t we be having fun? Jesus is usually portrayed as a sorrowful or suffering character, but he has happy moments. You’ve probably seen an image of a fat and happy Buddha. I want a religion that calls us to joy.
watch a video of this worship service
We’ve been talking the last several weeks about the meaning of life.
I know, heavy stuff.
But finding meaning in life is one of the most important spiritual tasks.
What is life about? What is life worth? What is life for?
The nihilist would say that life has no meaning. There is no purpose or reason or goal. Do whatever you like. Nothing matters.
But I’ve never felt that to be true. Life feels meaningful to me. I feel that my life, and my choices matter. That every life matters. Not just the person, but the life, and what we do with it.
Even if we can’t exactly explain why, we behave as though life matters. We make deliberate choices. We choose between options thoughtfully. We set goals. We stick to a path. All this bother only makes sense if life matters. Only if certain actions are right and others wrong. Only if there are better or worse ways to live. Only if, as we live, we also learn and grow, and strive and achieve, because intuitively we sense we should grow in a direction toward some larger goal, not living randomly, but purposefully.
So as I did when we talked about another big spiritual question earlier this year, the question of identity, I’ve been spending the last few weeks exploring some of the many places where different people find meaning for themselves. These are options. Some of them may speak to you. Others may seem silly, or unimportant to you.
The question isn’t what is the meaning of life. But what is the meaning of your life?
For some, life’s meaning comes from the sense that the universe is an ordered place. And in particular, the order of the universe contains a moral order, as well as physical laws. This person intuits a strong sense of right and wrong. They strive to align their life with the moral order of the universe. To do the right thing.
For some, life’s meaning comes in being of service to others. These are the carers, and the helpers. The universe is composed of interdependent, mutually-supportive relationships. It feels good to help those in need, to comfort those who are suffering, to lend a hand to a neighbor. Serving others matters because by doing so we are honoring and celebrating the ultimate design of the universe.
For some, life’s meaning comes in noticing and celebrating and adding to the beauty of the universe. Beauty surrounds us. Beauty is everywhere. Physical beauty. But also the beauty of kindness and acts of selflessness and sacrifice. There is beauty, too in the logic of reason and mathematics. There is beauty is in the vast sky above us, and in the structure of the atom. The universe seems to prize beauty, so making beauty and enjoying beauty, aligns our lives with the universal desire.
Others see that the direction of the universe is toward increasing knowledge. The universe through the big bang, and the creation of planets and the evolution of life toward more and more complicated life forms, seems to have a goal of deeper, richer, conscious experience, through forms of life that have the ability to learn, to study, to explore. We find meaning in knowledge, leading eventually toward a deeper kind of knowledge called wisdom.
Last week I spoke briefly about a meaning that some people find in the quality of loyalty. If we can identify something worthy beyond ourselves, then we can make our own lives worthy by attaching ourselves firmly to that worthy thing: core values, guiding principles, non-negotiable words to live by, perhaps the principles and traditions of a religious faith.
Today I want to suggest joy as a source of meaning in life.
Why does it matter? Why does life matter?
Because life is full of joy. The meaning of life is to enjoy life, make life joyful, recognize the fun, pleasure, excitement, and adventure of life, merely because, and ultimately because it makes and increases joy.
Some live for righteousness, or charity, or beauty, or wisdom, or loyalty. Some live for joy.
We sang in our opening hymn this morning:
“Enter, rejoice, and come in.”
I always thought that line was slightly strange.
The line asks you to do three things. Right? You enter. You rejoice. And then you come in. But you already came in!
You enter. And you come in. And you rejoice.
So where are you supposed to be when you’re rejoicing? Inside after you’ve entered? Or outside, before you come in?
Or maybe the song thinks you’re going to enter a little way in, stand at the back of the sanctuary and go crazy with rejoicing, and then after everyone is done staring at you, you calm down and come in the rest of the way.
Or maybe the point is that we should be rejoicing everywhere, always.
“Today will be a joyful day.”
The song promises us, before the day has barely begun that today will be a joyful day.
“Today will be a joyful day.”
Maybe that means that we can experience every day as a joyful day, in some spiritual way, even the days that end up filled with hardship, sadness, or tragedy.
This is the difference between joy and happiness.
When I was a kid, I grew up in a Methodist Church and we used to go to church summer camp. I remember learning a camp fire song that went like this;
Oh I’ve got joy, joy, joy, joy, down in my heart.
Down in my heart
Down in my heart
Oh I’ve got joy, joy, joy, joy, down in my heart.
Down in my heart, today.
Joy comes from inside us. Joy is down in our hearts. Joy isn’t dependent on what’s happening outside in the world. Happiness comes and goes. Joy lasts. We don’t have joy when we have happy experiences and lose joy when we have sad experiences. Joy is not a response. It’s a perspective.
Our call to worship, describes how every day of creation is a joyful day. The earth itself shouts for joy. The morning and the evening shout for joy. The rivers filled with water is a kind of joy. The fields are filled with grain. The pastures are covered in dew. The hills are decked with wildflowers; that’s joy. The flocks on the meadows. The abundance of nature everywhere, every day, “they shout for joy.”
The world is made from joy. The world expresses joy because it is joy.
And then, speaking of the marvelous manifestations of nature all around us, the Psalm says, “they join us in song.”
We sing for joy, and the whole world sings along with us.
Because we are made from joy, also.
If you can claim, as some do, that the universe is an ordered place, or an interdependent system, or a beautiful thing, or a conscious mind, or a divine thing worthy of our worship and loyalty, well you could also say, certainly, that the universe is a joyful thing.
So why, then, does religion seem so often so sad, so boring, so dark and dismal and depressing?
Why is religion angry, and shaming?
Why do preachers lean over the edge of pulpit and condemn us all as filthy sinners destined for sin?
Why is religion the pursed lip, and the sneer, the up-tight, holier-than-thou, who on Sunday morning spoils all the fun of a Saturday night?
Why is religion somber and slow and heavy? Organ music and chants. As Martin Luther once said, “Why must the devil get all the good tunes?”
Where’s the joy?
Back in October in a sermon on transcendentalism, I quoted to you a line from Emerson’s speech to the graduating class of the Harvard Divinity School, July 1838.
Emerson was lamenting, just as I have been, the way that religion had gotten so dark and dull. Dry theology. Damp churches. Lectures that bury the faithful under dead words, instead of resurrecting their spirits. Meanwhile the real spiritual action is outside, as in the psalm, in the wildflowers and wildlife and the water running through the stream and the trees clapping their hands and the mountain shouting for joy.
So Emerson says, quoting a friend, “a devout person, [Emerson says] who prized the Sabbath, [saying] in bitterness of heart, “On Sundays, it seems wicked to go to church.”
There’s more of the divine joy outside the church than in.
“Exit, rejoice, and go out!” Emerson wants to sing, if you really want to have a joyful day.
But religion need not be that way.
We have a pretty good time around here on a Sunday morning, I say
I’ve always been curious about a particular image of the Buddha that you see now and then, that illustrates for me the joy in religion.
You’ve probably seen the guy.
He’s a fat, happy, guy. Usually dressed with his robe open to his waist so you can see his round belly. He’s got a big round head, and a double chin.
Usually he’s in a sitting pose, but he isn’t meditating quietly. His eyes are open. He’s engaging with the world and looking at you directly. Totally shameless. Totally unself-conscious. And he’s laughing. He’s a picture of delight. This guy isn’t dour and dull. His religion results in joy. And he invites you to share his joy in living.
That’s cool.
Well it turns out, this guy isn’t the Buddha after all.
So the joke’s on me.
Instead, this so-called “laughing Buddha” is an image of a 10th Century Chinese Monk named Budai. B U D A I.
His name literally means “cloth sack.” Budai was an itinerant monk who walked around from village to village, carrying a sack. His sack carried his few possessions, and so his sack was a symbol of contentment, “enough” while also being a symbol of everything one needs, thus abundance. He loved his food and drink. He loved people. He’s often pictured with children who seemed in particular to relate to his joy in life.
From China, the stories and veneration of Budai spread throughout Southeast Asia, and to Korea and Japan. It seems everyone appreciates a symbol of religious joy.
Now it isn’t entirely false to associate Budai with the Buddha. He was a Buddhist monk. And Budai himself claimed to be an incarnation of the Maitreya Buddha. The Maitreya Buddha is the future Buddha, the Buddha that will come to re-instate the Dharma when the Dharma has been forgotten on Earth. So Budai isn’t a re-incarnation of the Guatama Buddha, the one who meditated under the Bodhi tree in the sixth century BCE. Instead, Budai claimed that he was an incarnation of a sliver of the yet to be born Maitreya Buddha, who continues to sit in one of the heavenly realms waiting to make his appearance.
So Budai is not the Buddha, and his joy in life is his own, not strictly a Buddhist joy.
And what of other religions? Did Jesus ever tell a joke?
Well I think the answer is yes.
I don’t know of any pictures of a laughing Jesus, the way there is of Budai. Jesus is usually a pretty serene-looking guy, or sometimes an angry guy, as when he’s throwing the money-changers out of the temple. But I find many of Jesus’ sayings to be very funny. His parables have exactly the twists and turns and unexpected endings that you find in good comedy writing.
You’ve heard the one about, “Before you get all upset about the speck in your friend’s eye, take a look at the giant log that’s stuck in your own eye.” That’s pretty funny! That’s from Matthew, chapter 7.
There’s a funny story in the gospel of John, chapter 9. A blind man comes to Jesus to be healed. Jesus takes some mud, spits in it, and smears it on the guy’s eyes. Then he tells the guy to go away and wash it off. The guy does so and he comes back shouting (joyfully) “I can see! I can see!” Now the Pharisees, who are trying to catch Jesus in blasphemy say to the guy, “point out to us this fraud who does magic tricks in God’s name.” And the man looks around and answers, “How should I know who he is? I was blind until five minutes ago.”
That’s funny!
In Matthew again, Chapter 23, we get angry Jesus, but even when Jesus is angry, he’s funny. Jesus is berating people for being hypocrites who get all upset about the small details of religion but miss the big picture that religion is supposed to be about love and justice and mercy. So angry Jesus says, “you’re like a person having a cup of soup and you carefully strain out a fly, but leave in the camel.”
Like Budai, Jesus enjoyed life. And Jesus liked his food and his drink. In Luke Chapter 7 he points out that haters gotta hate. When John the Baptist arrived fasting and abstaining, critics said he must have a demon, but now that Jesus is here, eating and drinking, he’s called a drunkard and a glutton.
Oh well. You just have to laugh.
Maybe Jesus wasn’t the life of the party, but he sure was no Puritan party-pooper. He’s the guy who shows up after the food and wine have run out and he feeds the crowd from a loaf and fishes and turns the water into wine.
If we’re not having fun in our religion, I have to think we’re doing something wrong. I want a religion that delights in the world, not withdraws from it. I want a religion that encourages me to love the pleasures of the world, to appreciate the flavors and smells; that sings the best tunes, and sings them loudly and lustily. I want a religion that opens its doors to the wonder of nature, not sitting shut up in a dark and cold sanctuary.
I want a religion that laughs. That giggles. That chuckles. That guffaws.
That makes fun of the prissy and the mean, that can tell a good joke, and take one, too.
I want a religion that rubs its belly with pleasure, then looks for the next good thing, that carries joy around with it, like a cloth sack, filled with all that we have, and everything that we need.