Thank You for Me

Psalm 138   |   2/7/2010

Random acts of kindness? Don’t think so. The psalmist suggests that gratitude is a very intentional act.

It’s midwinter, and you have the seasonal doldrums. And today, you aren’t interested in the Super Bowl because your team ended the season with a 5-and-11 record. Or something. You aren’t happy.

But now you can be, thanks to Sonja Lyubomirsky’s The How of Happiness. Twenty years of psych research led Lyubomirsky to a scientific approach to our culture’s elusive pursuit of happiness. Slicing happiness up like a pie, she claims there are three major pieces to a cheerful makeup.

Fifty percent of our happiness comes from disposition in our DNA. We are Tigger or Eeyore based more on Mom and Dad than anything else. Like the thermostat on the wall, our temperament has a preset temperature.

Surprisingly, only 10 percent of happiness comes from our life circumstances. A raise at work. The kids’ good grades. Having a cute guy in the church group ask us out.

Looking at newlyweds and lottery winners, researchers have found that people almost always return to their genetic dispositional set points after life events spike their joy. Those kinds of events come and go, and they provide little lasting change in overall life temperament.

Lyubomirsky claims that we have control over the remaining 40 percent of our happiness. That huge slice of the pie represents our thoughts, attitudes and actions. And they can be managed through happiness-fostering habits.

University of Wisconsin researcher Richard Davidson concurs. After studying the brains of Buddhist monks, he found that people can show markedly higher reports of happiness after two weeks by merely thinking about kindness and compassion for 30 minutes a day.

But Lyubomirsky isn’t just taking another lap around the well-trodden path of the power of positive thinking. She adds the power of positive being.

Certain behaviors will lead to certain attitudes — or vice versa — and habits of both will increase and maintain our happiness over time. Lyubomirsky suggests 12 patterns that promote cheers over jeers, including forgiveness, avoiding social comparisons, nurturing deep relationships, taking care of your body and even practicing religion and spirituality.

Is science playing nice with faith?

Looks like it. At the top of Lyubomirsky’s research-proven list is Psalm 138. Well, not exactly. But this is where your sermon is heading.

Her number one happiness habit is being appreciative. Fostering an attitude of gratitude. Not just feeling but expressing thankfulness.

Writing a thank-you note to your favorite high-school teacher, telling who he or she helped you become. Counting your blessings and literally listing them until your haves overwhelm your have-nots. Calling the “How’s my driving?” hotline when a driver is courteous.

Lyubomirsky cites a study in which one group of people listed five things they were thankful for. They did this weekly for 10 weeks. Comparison groups in the study wrote different kinds of weekly lists — “five major events,” “five hassles this week,” etc. The “thankful” group reported more happiness and contentment than did the comparison groups. They even reported improved health in the form of fewer headaches and coughs.

Skip the doc. Just say “thanks” more.

In pay-it-forward fashion, people we intentionally thank will also experience increased happiness. Expressing gratitude is the stone thrown into the flat water. It creates a ripple that affects everything around it.

It appears that looking out for numbers two through 10 is really looking out for number one.

“Practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty” exhorts the fluffy, new-age bumper sticker.

“No!” Lyubomirsky would say.

Don’t make your acts random and senseless. Make them planned, intentional and habitual. Attach them to people around you so you can infect them with happiness also.

We can think of this as a halo of happiness. Gratitude first impacts its giver and then radiates through the receivers. Kindergarten teachers love to give out gold star stickers and smiley face stamps because of the joy that recognition creates in their kids.

Although God may appreciate Lyubomirsky’s science — “all truth is God’s truth” — God’s probably smiling a told-you-so grin. Gratitude is a mainstay of biblical virtue.

Research shows that expressing gratitude brings joy to the giver but also radiates happiness to people around them. The first two movements of Psalm 138 work similarly, and the poem ends with the justification for all the gracious gushing:

• David’s personal thanksgiving (vv. 1-3)

• Communal thanksgiving (vv. 4-6)

• Why God should be thanked (vv. 7-8)

Your sermon can capture those themes. Take David’s example and turn it into a very applicational and experiential sermon.

Who should I thank?

The Bible’s history books tell the psalm’s possible back stories. David was plucked from obscurity to be anointed king. God empowered David to kill the giant and become a military hero. David’s life was continually spared as he ran from Saul and his headhunters. He was given power and privilege — then unmerited grace when he abused them.

We could go on and on. Although scholars don’t agree on which experience verse 3 alludes to, the real point is that it could refer to a list of items longer than Santa gets at the mall each year. David had tons to thank God for.

But don’t we as well?

Perhaps you can lead people through a worship response after teaching the psalm. Supply pens and paper and give people five minutes of silence to list the things they’re thankful to God for.

Then whenever those things involved ways God provided through someone else, encourage people to come up with a plan to express that gratitude to them as well.

Another Lyubomirsky study found that people who wrote and delivered letters of appreciation to those they had never formally thanked caused their own happiness to remain elevated for as long as a month afterward.

Expressing gratitude is the new Guinness beer: “It’s not just good; it’s good for you!”

Who should we thank?

David calls for corporate praise of God. God’s words are worthy of celebration (v. 4). His ways merit joyous and emotive expression — songs of praise (v. 5).

Your worship pastor or music leader can use these verses to set up the singing for that morning. Work together to pick music with lyrics that reflect thanksgiving for the ways God has acted on our behalf.

The moments of worship that morning are an actual homily on this psalm enacted.

David was clearly praising God and not people, but it’s still appropriate to move our corporate appreciation toward the people God uses as his agents.

No, not you. Clergy Appreciation Day isn’t until October. Back to the grind until then!

We’re talking about volunteers.

Many well-intentioned Christians — valuing the appropriate sacrifice and modesty of service — miss opportunities to recognize, celebrate and thank those who are extending kingdom values inside and beyond our churches.

The greatest pay for a volunteer is recognition. A personal e-mail. A phone call. A real, old-fashioned personal letter. A mention in the sermon. Dinner at your house. Looking them in the eye or hugging them while honestly saying, “We couldn’t follow God effectively without you.”

Clergy Appreciation Day jokes aside, do you feel appreciated as much as you’d like to be? If so, pay it back. If not, pay it forward.

Create a culture of corporate praise in your church through your worship arts and through your community affirmation.

A bonus thought: Thanked volunteers are happier volunteers are more-retained volunteers.

So who do we need to be thanking in our churches?

How should we thank?

In a survey of 10,000 employees from the 1,000 largest companies, 40 percent of workers cited “lack of recognition” as a primary factor in their leaving the company.

Thank God that he doesn’t leave our churches over similar lack of recognition. While our songs and liturgies encourage words of gratitude, they don’t guarantee the inner condition of our souls, our hearts, our minds and our attitudes.

God is able to see into our heart attitudes. David knew that from experience (1 Samuel 16:7).

But David wasn’t just muscling his praise, giving thanks because he was supposed to. He seemed to have no other choice but to do so. Gratitude, praise, thanksgiving were so deeply rooted in David that they exploded into ecstatic, divine love poetry.

Psalms 7, 9, 18, 22, 26, 31, 34 … okay, Dave, we get it. You will extol the Lord!

How does that kind of gratitude make its home not in our hymns, words and nice notes but in our hearts and souls? How does the latter drive the former?

For David, and for us, praise practice makes perfect.

David’s life was a noble train wreck. It had moments of spiritual brilliance and moments of utter dullness. But God kept using and delivering David, both because of David and despite him.

When you see that kind of love of grace from God in your life, it just changes you from the inside out, from soul into words.

David says this brilliantly in Psalm 34: “Look to him, and be radiant; so your faces shall never be ashamed” (v. 5). Not look to your circumstances and fix them. Not look to your screw-ups and feel guilt.

Look to God. That will make you radiant.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said it this way: “Unless the outer life expresses the inner world, purity stagnates and intention decays.” Unless Sunday liturgies, hymns of praise and prayers before dinner radiate out of a heart of gratitude, they are just shells of concepts. Empty words. Decayed intention.

“Thank you.”

When it’s truly expressed to God and others, it both changes us and means that we have been changed already.


Participation Pointers:

• Beth Shafer Glass suggests that 3-by-5-inch cards be distributed at the beginning of the service. Worshipers can write the names of people for whom they are thankful, or share any other reason for being thankful, and put the cards in the offering plate. You could read some of these cards before the sermon.

• Ahead of time, invite selected individuals to write a psalm of thanksgiving or compose a song of thanksgiving. Then have them share these with the congregation.


Possible Preaching Themes:

• David seems to point to a missional aspect of thanksgiving in verse 1. How can being thankful Christ-followers “before the gods” lead to outsiders coming to praise God, as in verses 4-5?

• God’s purpose (v. 8) is still fulfilled, despite the troubles we walk through (v. 7). Preach a sermon on an eternal perspective in temporal difficulty.


Sources:

Heath, Dan, and Chip Heath. “Made to stick: Why companies should pave the way to praise.” Fast Company, September 17, 2008. fastcompany.com/magazine/129/made-to-stick-i-love-you-now-what.html.

Lyubomirsky, Sonja. The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want. New York: Penguin Press, 2007.

On Happiness in Monks: video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2487881303657847285.


FILM CLIP IDEA

February 7, 2010

The Text: Psalm 138.

The Movie: Facing the Giants, a 2006 film in which a losing football team finds faith in themselves through faith in God.

The Scene: In which the coach, Grant Taylor, tells his team that if they win, they’ll praise God and if they lose, they’ll praise God; that God is the coach, and they will honor him with their actions.