As you can see, joy branches out into a lot of different emotions. I’m not going to get into all of them, but I want you to notice that Joy branches into happy, which branches off into being delighted and jovial. I will tell you that this is one of the times that I disagree with the emotion wheel and it’s specifically because of naming joy as a primary emotion. In fact, I almost went with a different emotion wheel because of my issue with joy, but there were bigger problems in the other ones.

So here’s the issue: In our modern world, joy and happiness are grouped together. In the ancient world, joy and happiness were two very different things and to explain the difference I want to turn to our scriptures from today. Normally, we only read the Luke passage on Christmas Eve, but it’s one of the best examples of joy in the Bible. In the story, there are a group of shepherds out in the fields tending to their flocks when an angel appears to them to tells them, “I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” Luke’s choice of words to describe Jesus’ birth is “good news of great joy.”

Now, as we can see in the emotion wheel, we often associate the word joy with an intense feeling of bliss or extreme happiness. You will often hear people say of their children both seriously and sarcastically, “They’re a bundle of joy.” What we mean by this is that our children bring us great happiness. So in our culture, joy and happiness have become synonymous with one another. But in truth, these words have very different meanings because they come from very different Greek roots.

The Greek word for happiness is Makarios and it was used by the Greeks to describe people in two different types of circumstances. The first type of circumstance is when a person is wealthy and able to enjoy a life free of the cares and worries of the average person. Since very few people had wealth in ancient Greece, this type of happiness applied to only a small fraction of the population. The second type of circumstance is when a person experiences a stroke of good luck, such as receiving money or good health. This type of happiness is much more universal and represents a feeling derived from unexpected good fortune.

The word ‘joy’, on the other hand, is derived from the Greek word Chairo, which means “culmination of being” or “the good mood of the soul.” The ancient Greeks believed that joy was something that was only found in God and comes with the accumulation of virtue and wisdom. To help you understand this a little more clearly, the Greeks believed that the opposite of joy was not sadness, but fear.

The difference between happiness and joy is that one is derived from external circumstances and the other is derived from something deep within our being. And I think it is very important that we do not underestimate the difference between these two words, because they actually have a huge impact on the way we live our lives. Happiness, as you probably noticed from my description, has to do with money, things and comfort. Happiness is the result of your external environment providing you with pleasure. Happiness as an emotion is very much temporary.

Happiness is what we find in our scripture reading from 1Samuel. When David returns from killing Goliath, the people are celebrating in the streets and singing David’s praises as warrior. This, of course, is a very temporary situation. The celebration, elation and happiness David feels as a result of his victory will last for a short period of time. However, eventually, that happiness will fade as the worries and cares of life creep to the forefront of his mind.

Interestingly, we are continuously encouraged by our society to constantly seek out the things that will bring us happiness and to get rid of those things that make us unhappy. If a relationship makes us unhappy, rather than work at restoring the relationship, most people will simply destroy the relationship. We will spend huge sums of money on material possessions so that we will improve our comfort or status or sense of well-being simply because those things make us happy. Indeed, I have watched people sacrifice everything that is dear to them, all in the name of happiness.

The problem is this is an elusive goal because constant happiness is unsustainable and so we are searching for something that does not exist. So rather than search for happiness to fill those empty places in our hearts, we should be searching for joy because joy lasts forever and joy is what these shepherds experience in Luke’s story. Think about it. On Christmas Eve, we don’t sing, “Happy to the world, the Lord is come.” We sing, “Joy to the world,” and that word ‘joy’ makes a big difference.

Remember, joy is something that affects you deep within your soul. Joy stays with you and is the result of your connection with God. I told you that Luke describes Jesus’ birth as “good news of great joy.” We sing joy to the world, because Jesus’ birth means that it is possible for all of us to have a deep connection with God. With Jesus in our lives, it is possible for us to find contentment in our souls so we don’t walk around with those dark, empty spaces in our hearts that we often try to fill with happiness.

In my experience, the way Jesus brings joy into our hearts is by helping us to focus on the things that truly matter. For instance, Jesus is very anti-materialistic. He is continually telling people to sell all that they own and give the money to the poor. He does this because, as we discussed earlier, we can mistakenly believe that material possessions will bring us long term happiness. When you remove material possessions from your life, then you can more easily focus on the things that matter.

And what matters most is our relationships with other people. The vast majority of Jesus’ teachings are designed to help us to navigate conflict and make good decisions that will make those relationships count, because joy is found in our relationships with others. Perhaps one of the greatest moments of joy in my life was meeting my wife, Courtney, at Rice University. We had a mutual friend through a Christian organization at Rice and we happened to go to his birthday party and sit near each other.

From the moment we started speaking to each other, I felt this deep connection with her. She was smart, beautiful and we immediately had this great rapport with one another. After 20 years of being together and going through all kinds of ups and downs, I can tell you that the one consistent thread in our relationship is that being around her evokes great joy in my heart. She gets me on a very deep level and I get her on a very deep level. We are connected in our souls.

Interestingly, part of where that connection comes from is our shared background that we didn’t even know we had until we had been married for several years. My grandfather’s family on my dad’s side are Hungarian Jews who emigrated to the United States in the early 1900s. Courtney’s grandfather’s family on her dad’s side are Hungarian Jews who emigrated to the United States in the early 1900s.

And yet, both of our immediate families were practicing Christians, but we had this Hungarian Jewish thing going on, which is kind of odd. Out of all the people at Rice who I could have been attracted to, the one person I feel this intense connection with, unbeknownst to me or her, comes from the same part of the world and has similar ancestry. Initially, I didn’t pay much attention to this connection, but when I was in seminary, I took a pastoral care class, which totally changed my perspective on how our genes can influence the way we view the world.

In the class, we were asked to research our ethnic background. There was an assigned book that everyone was supposed to use. It had all these different backgrounds and told stories about those backgrounds and how they influenced people. Of course, I turned to the Hungarian section. It began with a story about a young girl, who was 8 or 9 years old. She was getting in trouble at school for lying all the time. She was the definition of a compulsive liar and would construct these fantastical stories that were clearly not true.

Well, her parents take her to a psychologist to get a read on the situation and one of the first things this psychologist asks about was her heritage, which happened to be Hungarian. Now another aspect of this story, which is really important, is that her mother and father were in the process of getting divorced. After the psychologist spoke with the little girl, he sat the parents down and told them a little bit about the history of the Hungarian people.

He explained that the Hungarian people have almost never ruled over their own land. In fact, they were conquered again and again by different empires and have always lived under the thumb of foreign oppressors. As a result, because the Hungarian people never really had a national identity, they held onto their history through spinning magnificent tales about their ancestors.

In other words, the Hungarians became incredible story tellers and what this psychiatrist emphasized is that story telling became a coping mechanism for stress. Therefore, their daughter, who was under a great deal of stress because of the divorce of her parents, coped with that stress by creating an entire fantasy world. From her perspective, she wasn’t lying so much as creating stories where she was the hero, just like her Hungarian ancestors.

Reading this, I will tell you, just knocked me on the floor because it was like I was reading about myself. I told you all in the past that when I was a kid, I was a compulsive liar. But until reading this book, I had never really understood why I was so drawn to it. Like this little girl, I grew up in a very stressful situation in my home and I wove together these elaborate stories in my head. I’m amazed I made it through school at all because I was constantly daydreaming about different stories in my mind.

And it’s true, I love to tell stories. When you talk about something that brings me joy, something that is deep within my soul, it’s story telling. Whether it’s a sermon, a movie, a book or a podcast, the process of creating and telling that story is one of the greatest joys in my life. And now I know why because it’s programmed into my DNA thanks to my Hungarian ancestors.

In the same way, when I saw Courtney, there was something programmed into my DNA that called out to me: This woman has something that will bring you great joy. And it’s not just the fact that she’s got Jewish Hungarian DNA. It’s the fact that there’s something that’s a part of her soul that connects with my soul.

But, again, the way that I found that joy was by following Jesus’ teachings. I got rid of all the distractions and I followed Jesus’ advice on how to invest in relationships and as a result I found my passion—with her and with my story telling. That same joy is accessible to you in your relationships and your pursuits if you are willing to clear away all the distractions and focus on the things that really matter.

Indeed, joy is one of the most important ways that we get in touch with our spirituality because joy is really about touching on those things that are core to who we are as people. When you experience pure joy, you are touching your soul and that is something that can fundamentally change your posture towards the world and press you forward for years to come.

So I want to end my sermon today by posing the question: Are you focused on consuming happiness in your life or are focused on experiencing joy? If the answer is happiness, clear away all the clutter so that you can feel God’s spirit moving inside of you. May find the joy that is hidden deep inside of you. A joy that, unlike happiness, will never end. May you find joy in your relationships. May you find joy in your pursuits. But most importantly, may you know that your joy comes from a place that is beautifully connected to the lives of the ancestors that came before you and, thanks to you, that joy will be passed onto future generations who can experience it for years to come. Amen.