How to synchronize or lock upon variables in Java?

That’s pretty easy:

class Sample {
    private String message = null;
    private final Object lock = new Object();

    public void newMessage(String x) {
        synchronized (lock) {
            message = x;
        }
    }

    public String getMessage() {
        synchronized (lock) {
            String temp = message;
            message = null;
            return temp;
        }
    }
}

Note that I didn’t either make the methods themselves synchronized or synchronize on this. I firmly believe that it’s a good idea to only acquire locks on objects which only your code has access to, unless you’re deliberately exposing the lock. It makes it a lot easier to reassure yourself that nothing else is going to acquire locks in a different order to your code, etc.