The Church Where People Laugh..........Holy Humour Sunday

[Betty]

Holy Humour Sunday
The Church Where People Laugh

The late Erma Bombeck relates an incident about being in church one Sunday.
She was intent on watching "a small child who was turning around smiling at everyone."

She reports that... ...he wasn't gurgling, spitting, humming, kicking, tearing the hymnal, or rummaging through his mother's handbag.
He was just smiling.
Finally, his mother jerked him about and in a stage whisper that could be well heard said, "Stop that grinning! You're in church!"
With that she gave him a belt on his hindside, and as the tears rolled down his cheeks she added, "That's better," and returned to her prayers.

Erma Bombeck continues:
Suddenly I was angry.
I wanted to grab this child with the tear stained face close to me and tell him about God.
The happy God. The smiling God. The God who had to have a sense of humor to have created the likes of us....and his mother, I wanted to tell the child I've taken a few lumps in my time for daring to smile at religion ....What a fool, I thought.
Here was a woman sitting next to the only light left in our civilization, the only hope, our only miracle, our only promise of infinity.

If a child couldn't smile in church, where was there left to go?

The answer to her question ought to be, a United Church, that's where!

We need to create the kind of religious and spiritual climate in our churches where we have the freedom to smile and laugh at ourselves, as well as to be serious about real issues and ethical dilemmas, and to be able to do both in the same service, and not just once a year.

A young mother and her 7 year old son spent many Sundays visiting different churches.
They were not very pleased with any of them.
When the mother asked the young boy if there was one he would like to go to the boy said,  "Yes, can we go back to the church where people laugh?"

That's what I'd like you to do with me this morning, to take a few minutes to laugh at ourselves and to do it in church.

As it says in the Book of Proverbs, "A merry heart doeth good like a medicine."
And so this morning I invite you to "jest for the health of it," to engage in some holy laughter to make one whole.

I begin with a story about a man who died and went to heaven and St. Peter was showing him around.
They passed by a big room and inside were a bunch of people at a banquet feasting on delicious meats and other food.
"Who are those people?" asked the man. St. Peter said,
"Oh, those are the Catholics. They always had to fast on Friday and during Lent so they get to make up for it here."
They came to another room in which people were drinking wine and beer and hard liquor.
They were reeling from it and also were dancing wildly the more intoxicated they got.
"Who are those people?" asked the man again.
"Those are the Baptists", said St. Peter. "They couldn't drink or dance on earth, so they get to make up for it here."
Finally, they came to a third room and looked in, and there was the saddest-looking group of people you ever saw.
They were all moping around with long faces and looking terribly depressed. "And who are they?" the man asked.
St. Peter said, "Oh, those are the United Church people. They've already done it all."

United Churches like to take pride in the fact that their ministers are educated and preach intellectually stimulating sermons.

Not everyone looks at it that way as one layman learned who was much impressed with the new minister they had just called and could hardly wait to tell his skeptical Maine farmer neighbor about him.
"He's got a B.S., an M.S., and a Ph.D.," he told him proudly.
"Well,” the farmer said, “I'm not much on these educated preachers" We all know what B.S. stands for. M.S. means 'More of the same' and Ph.D. means 'Piled higher and deeper or that he has a degree in Post Hole Digging.'"

Sometimes you get strange requests as a United Church minister.
A woman once called on the United minister in town and asked if he would perform a funeral for her dog who had just died.
It being a busy week and all, and his not wanting to take on another task, the minister begged off by saying, "I don't usually do funerals for non-church members. Why don't you try the Presbyterian minister down the street."
She answered, "All right, but could you give me some advice. How much should I pay him--would five hundred dollars be sufficient?"
The minister suddenly perked up and said,
"Hold on, I didn't know your dog was a United Church dog."

As United Church ministers we know that personal stewardship is important for the well being of the church.
An agent of Revenue Canada Service called the minister of a church and said, "One of your church members has put down on his tax return that he had made a contribution of $3,000 to your church. Is that true?"
The minister thought a minute and then replied, "Well, if he didn't, he will."

United Church ministers are usually not very good at the old “hell-fire and brimstone.”
Heck, I don’t even know what it is.
I’m too young to have experienced it.

So this for a closing humorous tale:
A Presbyterian minister was pounding on the pulpit and expounding the Gospel to his parishioners.
He said, Lest ye be born again, ye shall be thrown into the hell fire where there will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.
At which time he looked down at an old man sitting near the front who obviously had no teeth and said, “And as for you my brother, teeth will be provided.

There are not very many verses in the Bible that refer to laughter in a positive sense or imply that maybe God had a sense of humor when he created creatures like giraffes and human beings.
The closest we come to it is in the Book of Genesis when Sarah laughs at the Lord’s messengers who declare that in her old age she will consummate her relationship to Abraham and give birth to a son.
She laughs to herself and says,
“After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?”

When confronted with the fact that she did indeed laugh, she denies it, saying, “I did not laugh.” But the Lord says to her, “No, but you did laugh.”

The joke is that the Lord has the last laugh. Sarah rediscovers pleasure with her husband and has a child in her old age.

I would like to think that God does indeed have a sense of humor and that human beings and the deity can play jokes on one another.

There is certainly an awful lot to cry about in life, and much of our tears are brought upon us by ourselves because of our all too human nature.

To get through it all we’d better learn to laugh at ourselves and others, not in derision, but in holy healing humor that restores hope and sanity to our crazy lives in this crazy world.
Human beings are the only animals that can laugh.

Perhaps laughter, even more than reason and intelligence, is what sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom and makes us akin to god.

Robert Frost wrote: Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee/ And I’ll forgive Thy great big one on me.
If all this seems silly then be aware that the word silly derives from the Hebrew word “seleg” meaning blessing.

And so I close this silly sermon with this silly blessing:

Jest for the health of it.
A ho-ho-holistic view of holy laughter to make one whole.
He or she who laughs, lasts and lasts.
A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.

May this medicine of mirth heal your soul so that, in the words of the Psalmist, "our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy."

And may this church ever be a place where you can share unashamedly both your laughter and your tears and never question whether one is any less important than the other. 

Prayer:

Teach us to laugh, O God. Laugh at us and with us. Let the medicine of thy mirth heal while it stings. Dispel the humidity of our self-concern. When our thoughts grow tiresome, teach us to laugh with thee, until we shatter the tinkling goblets of our ego and pride. Amen.    (Author Unknown)