Sermon: Holy Humor

“A Reason to Laugh” Cynthia O’Brien
Luke 15 April 10, 2005

This Gospel reading was straight from the version you have in the pew. But sometimes a different translation can help you understand it better.
For example, the story of the Forgiving Father… in the key of F.

“Melody in F”
The story of the Prodigal Son in the Key of F
from “Greatest Skits on Earth, vol. 2” by Wayne Rice and Mike Yaconelli

Feeling Foot-loose and Frisky, a Feather-brained Fellow
Forced his Fond Father to Fork over the Farthings,
And Flew Far to Foreign Fields
And Frittered his Fortune Feasting Fabulously with Faithless Friends.

Fleeced by his Fellows in Folly, and Facing Famine,
He Found himself A Feed Flinger in a Filthy Farmyard.
Fairly Famishing, He Fain would’ve Filled his Frame
With Foraged Food from Fodder Fragments.
“Fooey, my Father’s Flunkies Fare Far Finer,”
The Frazzled Fugitive Forlornly Fumbled, Frankly Facing Facts.
Frustrated by Failure, and Filled with Foreboding,
He Fled Forthwith to his Family.
Falling at his Father’s Feet, he Forlornly Fumbled,
“Father, I’ve Flunked.
And Fruitlessly Forfeited Family Favor.”

The Far-sighted Father, Forestalling Further Flinching,
Frantically Flagged the Flunkies to
Fetch a Fatling from the Flock and Fix a Feast.

The Fugitive’s Fault-Finding brother Frowned on
Fickle Forgiveness of Former Folderol.
But the Faithful Father Figured,
“Filial Fidelity is Fine, but the Fugitive is Found!
What Forbids Fervent Festivity?
Let Flags be un-Furled! Let Fanfares Flare!”

Father’s Forgiveness Formed the Foundation
For the Former Fugitive’s Future Fortitude.

_____________________________________________

Why did Jesus tell these outrageous stories? Why didn’t he tell about perfect families with brothers who get along with each other and who respect their father? Why did he tell about banquets where everything goes wrong, unjust judges and unmerciful slaves?

Maybe because God has a sense of humor. Read the Bible this way and you’ll get it. From the very beginning, people are being funny.

God told Adam " I could create you a partner, that will always adore you, serve you, never be angry and treat you as a King, the only problem is that you must give up an arn or an leg for it" Adam "Hmmm, I don’t know - what can I get for a rib?"

OK, that’s not in the Bible, but you see Eve doing exactly what she shouldn’t, then she cons Adam into it, then when they get caught, Adam blames Eve and God (it was the woman you gave me) and all of a sudden being naked is a bad thing. You can just imagine God slapping God’s forehead and saying, “OK, here we go.”

Abraham and Sarah.
(Frederick Buechner, The Gospel as Comedy)
They are laughing at the idea of a baby’s being born in the geriatric ward and Medicare’s picking up the tab. They are laughing because with part of themselves they do believe it. They are laughing because with another part of themselves they know it would take a fool to believe it. They are laughing because laughing is better than crying and maybe not even all that different. They are laughing because if by some crazy chance it should just happen to come true, then they would really have something to laugh about. They are laughing at God and with God, and they are laughing at themselves too because laughter has that in common with weeping. No matter what the immediate occasion is of either your laughter or your tears, the object of both ends up being yourself and your own life.
God asked about Sarah’s laughter, and Sarah was scared stiff and denied the whole thing. Then God said, “No but you did laugh,” and of course, he was right. Maybe the most interesting part of it all is that far from getting angry at them for laughing, God told them that when the baby was born he wanted them to name him Isaac, which in Hebrew means laughter. So you can say that god not only tolerated their laughter but blessed it and in a sense joined in it himself, which makes it a very special laughter indeed – God and man laughing together, sharing a glorious joke in which both of them are involved.

Jesus shares these kinds of stories.

Take the story of the prodigal son.
This isn’t a story about two brothers who get along perfectly and their successful father. If it were, it would be impossible for us to live with the brothers and fathers and sons that we have. But in the humor of this fractured family, we can find hope for our own families.

What about the apostles? What changed Jesus’ disciples after the crucifixion from a scattered, frightened band of fugitives into the most remarkable collection of human beings the world has ever seen?

Luke 24:51-52 “Now it came to pass, while Jesus blessed them, that He was parted from them and carried up into heaven. And they worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy.”

Sherwood Wliot Wirt says: “Joy was what changed them. .. Joy was the atmosphere in the early church. It was euphoria, hilarity, unspeakable gladness. The believers had become aware that the bars of nature had been broken through by Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.” [1]

Then Paul writes to the Corinthians about being fools for Christ.

1 Corinthians
“We are fools for Christ’s sake. God is foolish too. God is foolish to choose for his holy work in the world the kind of lamebrains and misfits and nit-pickers and odd ducks and stuffed shirts and egomaniacs and milquetoasts and closet sensualists as are vividly represented by us all.

Frederick Buechner:
“God is foolish to send us out to speak hope to a world that slogs along heart-deep in the conviction that things can only get worse.. He is foolish to have us speak of loving our enemies when we have a hard enough time just loving our friends… God is foolish to have us proclaim eternal life to a world that is half I love with death… God is foolish to send us out on a journey for which there are not maps, and to aim us in the direction of a goal we can never know until we get there. Such is the foolishness of God. And yet, and yet, Paul says, ‘the foolishness of God is wiser than men.’ ”


The followers of Jesus met regularly to share food, to celebrate, to worship. Sharing in the Lord’s supper was a grateful thanksgiving.

In the early Greek Orthodox tradition, an Easter custom developed, in which on the day after Easter, clergy and laity gathered to tell jokes and stories. The theology behind this was that they were celebrating the greatest joke of all, the joke God had pulled on the devil – the Resurrection. Theologians called it Riscus paschalis, the Easter laugh.

We can so easily miss our Easter joy. Once the comedian Groucho Marx was getting off an elevator and he happened to meet a clergyman. The clergyman came up to him, put out his hand and said, “I want to thank you for all the joy you’ve put into the world.” Groucho shook his hand and replied, “Thank you, Reverend. I want to thank you for all the joy you’ve taken out of it.” [2] How often do we go around looking like Easter never happened?

I learned from Jim Moiso that in 390, Chrysostom preached a sermon against it. He said, “This world is not a theatre in which we can laugh, and we are not assembled together in order to burst into peals of laughter, but to weep for our sins… It is not God who gives us the chance to play, but the devil.” [3]

But many Christian theologians through the ages have had a joyful point of view. Martin Luther, a very serious professor and reformer, was also a fun loving spirit and said that the Christian can and should be a joyful person.

Evangelist Paul Rader, pastor of Moody Church in Chicago in the 1920’s, said that laughter is from God. He said, “When God chooses a man, he puts laughter into his life. God is delighted to fill the hearts of men with laughter. The anointing oil that was poured upon the head of David put laughter into David’s life…. It is the oil of Jesus’ presence that makes holy laughter in life – not only in the disposition to laugh at a joke, but the ability to laugh at calamity, to laugh at death, to laugh at the victory which the devil thought he had won.” [4]

Do you laugh at death? Neither do I, but that’s not exactly what is being said here. It’s more of a life attitude, a confidence in knowing you are in God’s hands.

Last Thursday I was driving with Rachel and Laurel when a 4x4 truck hit us. The young man, driving without a license, made a quick turn, didn’t see me and my first view of him was the front of his truck coming right at my window. It was a terrible crash, glass everywhere, pushed us into the curb and totaled my 96 Taurus. This is where you ask me if we’re all OK. Yes, I got the worst of it but the doctor thinks I’ll be better in just a couple of weeks, and the girls are fine.
One thing that was odd is that I wasn’t hysterical after it happened. When the other driver came up to me and told me he was the one who hit us, the first words out of my mouth were “God bless you.” After that, he pretty much avoided me.

If there’s ever a legitimate time for cussing, that was probably it, but I missed the opportunity, maybe because I am just a different person. I’m not laughing, but I know that I’m in God’s hands, and my automatic response this time was thankfulness. If it had been worse, I don’t know what I would have done. But when there’s laughter in your life on a regular basis, when you are enjoying God, when you have the hope that God is good and that God loves you, you handle everything differently.

I am reading this book by Philip Yancey, “The Jesus I Never Knew” – the one we are going to have the study on Monday nights --

He talks about people who had hope. Like the slaves on the plantation, who could keep going because they had hope in God.

Yancey writes, “My wife, Janet, worked with senior citizens near a Chicago housing project judged the poorest community in the United States. About half her clients were white, half were black. All of them had lived through harsh times – two world ward, the Great Depression, social upheavals – and all of them, in their seventies and eighties, lived in awareness of death. Yet Janet noted a striking difference in the way the whites and the balcks faced death. There were exceptions, of course, but the trend was this: many of the whites became increasingly fearful and anxious. They complained about their lives, their families, and their deteriorating health. The blacks, in contrast, maintained a good humor and triumphant spirit even though they had more aparent reason for bitterness and despair.

What caused the difference in outlooks? Janet concluded the answer was hope, a hope that traced directly to the blacks’ bedrock belief in heaven. (Philip Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew)

Pope John Paul II was speaking in Trent, Italy, to a crowd of several thousand rain-soaked young people. After warming up the crowd with some jokes, he said,
“Don’t tell your colleagues, and above all the press, that the pope made jokes instead of making a serious meditation on the council… Being holy means living in profound communion with the God of joy, having a heart free from sin and from the sadness of the world.”

[1] Sherwood Eliot Wirt in More Holy Humor P. 175

[2] Joyful Noiseletter 4/2000, p. 7
[3] And God Created Laughter, p. 26
[4] Paul Rader, quoted by Sherwood Eliot Wirt, quoted by Cal Samra, More Holy Humor, page ix