Smile

May 17, 2009

I don’t know about you, but when I first read this Psalm I thought about Botox. Seriously! You all have heard of Botox right? Botox is a poison that is injected into the body for a whole host of reasons…the primary reason being to paralyze the nerves in the face that cause deep wrinkles. Botox is a cosmetic tool to look younger. Now anything related to Botulism, I tend to try to avoid. However, Botox is extremely popular. Not only that, it’s not just for erasing age lines anymore. Now it’s also for planting a smile on your face, literally. The primary cosmetic use of Botox is still by people who want to look younger, but it has also become the treatment of choice for a whole host of people who want to appear serene or happy no matter what they may actually be feeling. Deep lines and wrinkles in the forehead and around the mouth can suggest anxiety, anger, and unhappiness. Botox provides a little extra help in convincing others that everything is a okay.

"In the ruthless marketplace of capitalism, business and sales, letting your true emotion show can mean losing a sale, coming out on the short end of a negotiation, missing a job opportunity, or not prevailing when representing a client before a jury. So a growing number of lawyers, bankers, stockbrokers and salespeople are having Botox shots to shape their faces into poses of tranquility. With just a few injections, they are wiping away frowns, scowls and the appearance of weariness, and replacing them with effortless smiles. Those perpetually happy faces beam at arrogant bosses, annoying underlings, obstinate clients, resistant customers, skeptical juries and everybody else, even if the person behind the face is really feeling something quite different.

And apparently it works. After losing his job as an investment banker, 39-year-old Christopher Marre went to interview after interview without landing another position. Finally, an executive recruiter told him the problem wasn’t his résumé; it was his face. The deep lines in his forehead made him look angry, the recruiter said. So Marre hurried off to a plastic surgeon for Botox injections, and, with his new friendly face firmly in place, he landed a new job just two weeks later." ¹

Botox gives a whole new meaning to the song "Put on a Happy Face." The problem, of course, is that the appearance of joy is not the same thing as joy itself. With that said, smiling can make us feel good. Studies show that smiling is good for the health; that is will help lower blood pressure, and strengthen the immune system. Smiling is contagious and it is difficult to be negative with a smile on your face.

My daughter is not reading yet, however she has a favorite book. The book has babies and toddlers of all ages, shapes, sizes, with different expression on their faces. Some are crying, some look curious, some look sleepy, and some are smiling. It never fails, when Abigail sees one of those children smiling, she smiles and waves back at them. Even as a baby, she recognizes the power of smiling. Smiling often indicates joy, and who doesn’t want to be joyful?

There’s nothing wrong with poison induced smiles, or smiling as a technique to try to forget unpleasant things happening to you, or even as a motivation to do something to overcome the sadness, but that’s not quite the same as the smile that is a response to real joy. And this brings us to Psalm 98. The Psalm, or song, begins, "Sing to God, a brand new song. God’s made a world of wonders," and it continues in tones of joy all the way through.²  The joy of this song-writer is so overflowing that he’s not content to rejoice in God by himself; he asks his audience to join him singing a new song of praise. Even then, the Psalmist is not content, and thus adds that creation itself should join in the glee: "Let the sea and its fish give a round of applause, with everything living on earth joining in. Let ocean breakers call out ‘Encore!’ and mountains harmonize on the finale." But why is he so happy? Frankly, I believe it is because he knows what he knows. His joy is rooted in the steadfast love and faithfulness of God, the psalmist even mentions it in verse 3, and what the Psalmist knows is that because God has done marvelous things in the past, God can do them again in the present and the future.

Again and again throughout the Hebrew Testament, we hear stories of God’s love for God’s people. Psalmist and prophets alike refer to God’s creation of humanity and earth. Psalmist and prophets alike refer back to the exodus of the Hebrew people from Egypt as a mighty work of deliverance. And they attribute that deliverance not to the power of Moses or the weakness of Pharaoh, but to God. Since God did that in the past, nothing is impossible in the future.

Therein lies a great source of joy. If you believe that God did great things for you earlier, you’ve got a reason to at least lean toward optimism, right? If you know that God once intervened in the course of history for your benefit, you have to believe that God is at least capable of intervening again. Do you believe? If you believe God is in charge and will bring all things to the right conclusion at the end of your life, at the end of all creation, then you have every reason to flash a genuine smile. Smile to God a brand new smile.

Joy can be an ambiguous term. A lot of people link it with happiness, health, success, fame, wealth, pleasure, fun, or good fortune. In this sense of the word joy is attached to and dependent upon some external source. Such joy rarely lasts for long or is genuinely fulfilling, because it creates its own set of needs that can be hard to satisfy. We all know privileged people who enjoy the most fortunate of personal circumstances but who are never content and always unhappy, and, we also know those people who possess little but nevertheless radiate gratitude and joy. And which is sadder, that one could be so easily fulfilled by so very little like a new car, a bigger house, a better job; or that one can miss so much, the blast of the ram's horn, the spontaneous dance, or the shout from the rooftop?³

Genuine joy is more elusive, more subtle and more nuanced than happiness, pleasure or good fortune. You cannot earn it, buy it, or deserve it. It is a divine gift to receive rather than a selfish goal to pursue. It is the kind of joy that prompts the psalmist to write, "shout your praises to God, everybody! Let loose and sing! Strike up the band! On a side note, an earlier version of the text reads, "Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth; break forth into joyous song and sing praises." Isaac Watts based his hymn "Joy to the World" on this psalm.

Here’s the surprising thing about this Psalm: This psalm is included in a section of the book of Psalms (Book IV, Psalms 90-106) that was "shaped in part to respond to the crisis of exile and its aftermath." In other words, it wasn’t written for a celebration of a happy event; it was written for people who were in the midst of difficult and challenging times. The Psalmist is encouraging the people to sing praises, despite their circumstances. When we are in difficulty we don’t feel much like celebrating, like smiling to the Lord. But consider this: The hunger for joy is so persistent that it at least suggests that joy is more lasting than our troubles, that joy is connected to the great secret God has imbedded in the universe.

Psalm 98 commends a counter-intuitive piece of advice: don't take the bait of fear and pessimism. However accurate our modern cultural diagnosis of doom and gloom might be, however low the sociological trends and opinion polls sink, do not yield to the spirit of despair. Instead, choose the most radical of all political options today, the subversive act of genuine joy.

G.K. Chesterton wrote a century ago, something to the effect that although Jesus let his grief, sadness and anger show on his face, he had to restrain himself from smiling because he knew Christianity’s great secret, that the promise of the kingdom of God, of God’s love and justice, of the promise of deliverance is all true. In order to meet us where we were, Jesus had to restrain himself from breaking out in joy. Or as Chesterton put it, "There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when he walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was his mirth." When you know what you know, it makes all the difference. And it’s the reason to smile unto the Lord a new smile, a real smile. Thanks be to God. Amen