Holy Joy, Holy Laughter

Psalm 150

Surprises give us the twin gift of joy and laughter, and today is a day for surprises. The Easter story is full of surprises, and as the weeks after Easter unfold, additional surprises pile up. Now, we don’t always like surprises, do we? It seems a few weeks back we might have talked about some of the kinds of surprises that we don’t really care for. But the revelations of Easter are the good kind of surprises, and they often bring the kind of joy and laughter as this story I heard last week:

Perhaps you’ve heard about the elderly woman who had just returned home from an evening of church services when she was startled by an intruder. She caught the man in the act of robbing her home of its valuables and yelled, "Stop! Acts 2:38!"
(Which reads, “Repent and be baptized, in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven.”)

The burglar stopped in his tracks. The woman calmly called the police and explained what she had done. As the officer cuffed the man to take him in, he asked the burglar, "Why did you just stand there? All the old lady did was yell a scripture to you."

"Scripture?" replied the burglar. "She said she had an ax and two 38's!"

Ba Da Boom. Welcome to Holy Humor Sunday!

I have another story for you:

There was a woman who was doing some baking for her Easter dinner on Holy Saturday. There was a knock at the door. She went to find a man, dressed in shabby clothes, and looking for some odd jobs. He asked her if there was anything he could do. She said, "Can you paint?" 
"Yes," he said. "I’m a rather good painter." 
"Well," she said, "Go into my shed - there are two gallons of green paint there and a brush, and there’s a porch out back that needs to be painted. Please do a good job. I’ll pay you what the job is worth."
He said, "That’s great. I will be done quickly."
She went back to her baking and did not think much more about it until there was a knock at the door. She went, and it was obvious he had been painting for he had it on his clothes. She asked, "Did you finish the job?"
He said, "Yes."
She said, "Did you do a GOOD job?" 
He said, "Yes. But lady, there’s one thing I would like to point out to you. That is not a Porsche back there. That is a Mercedes." 

It was only last year that I heard about Holy Humor Sunday, this particular designation for the Second Sunday of Easter.

When I first heard about it—I honestly thought it was a modern, creative solution to the after-Easter blues - For that “low” Sunday after Easter when the once full sanctuary is back to the regular crew, minus a few, who are on vacation; when the pastor, the organist, and the lay leaders are all beat from the activities of Lent, Holy Week and Easter, and people are just coming out of a chocolate Easter bunny coma…

I thought Holy Humor Sunday was another Easter surprise, a new way to lighten things up a bit, focus on something other than the Thomas story we hear every year, a way to remember the joy, exuberance and laughter with which we have greeted the Easter Good News:

                                      Alleluia! Christ is Risen!

                                                He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Well, I was wrong; At least about the ‘modern’ part.

It turns out that the Greeks started Holy Humor celebrations in the early centuries of Christianity, celebrations now being resurrected—pun intended—in American congregations.

For centuries in Eastern Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant countries, the week following Easter was observed as "days of joy and laughter" with parties and picnics to celebrate Jesus' resurrection.

For hundreds of years, churchgoers and pastors played practical jokes on each other during this week and on this Sunday, drenching each other with water, telling jokes even if nowhere near April Fool’s Day, singing and dancing.

The custom was rooted in the musings of early church theologians like Augustine who argued that God played a practical joke on the devil by raising Jesus from the dead.

Risus paschalis – “the Easter laugh," the early theologians called it.

So, one more time…..

A Sunday school teacher was teaching the Ten Commandments to her five and six year olds.

After explaining the commandment to ‘honor thy father and thy mother’, she asked, ‘is there a commandment that teaches us how to treat our brothers and sisters?”

One little boy shouted, “Thou shall not kill”

There you go, a taste of Holy Humor on this Sunday—to honor and celebrate the gift of joy and delight God has given to God’s people and, in the words of Augustine, a day to give thanks for the great joke God played on the devil when God raised Jesus from the dead.         

While we often turn to scripture with great seriousness and holy respect, both of which are appropriate, it’s also true that the scriptures proclaim and encourage joy and laughter and singing and dancing. Take our psalm reading from this morning, for instance.

It’s as if God knew we would too often take ourselves too seriously, and would need to be reminded from time to time, to let go, let God, and lighten up.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the words of Psalm 150, where the imperative is given to faithfully reflect God’s desire for joy and praise and adoration. – Hallel u Yah! Praise God!

This psalm draws the entire psalter to its conclusion –– through a dramatic call to praise that is unambiguous: it summons “everyone who breathes” to praise God.

Coming just a week after Easter Sunday, with the glorious sound of brass and bells and voices raised in song and “alleluia” refrains still fresh in our minds, Psalm 150 reminds us that the effects of the resurrection of Jesus remain and continue.

What joy this good news brings to us. Our gospel lesson assures us that Easter was not just a dream; the risen Jesus appears to his disciples and assures them that he has conquered death through his resurrection, and is still with them.

Jesus assuages the doubts of all of them, and finally of Thomas, that it really, truly is he, Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, who stands before them, still bearing the wounds of his crucifixion.

On this Sunday, Psalm 150, with its imperative to praise God, is paired together with that old story of doubt and faith while the unmistakable intention of God rings out over and over again through the repetition of this command at each the start of every line of the psalm: Praise God!

Praise God in his sanctuary; but not only in this sanctuary; Praise God in the mighty firmaments! The “firmaments” include everything under the dome of the sky for the Hebrew people – in other words, Praise God from every place throughout the entire universe!

The psalm plays out in four parts –

WHO is to be praised? God is to be praised.

WHY God is to be praised? Because God is mighty and God is of unsurpassing greatness.

HOW is God to be praised?

With unsurpassing brilliance of sound – from trumpet all the way to clashing cymbals, with every instrument then known to humankind, with great cacophony of sound, with enthusiasm and even with dance; God is to be praised. With our whole voice, body, brain, being, God is to be praised!

WHO is to DO the praising? The Scriptures reflect the Hebrew idea of completion here – the entire creation, for all that breathes, God is to be praised.

          Psalm 150 begins and ends with Hallel u Yah (in Hebrew, Praise YHWH). So, we remember that this praise is not about us – it is about God.

          Today we come together to praise God who is Creator, Comforter, Savior, and Sovereign. For that is how we experience this God whom we praise and glorify.

          For the beauty which surrounds us this day, the flowering trees, the greening grass, the singing birds, the rain-soaked fields, the deep, broad ocean, the vastness of the sky; we praise God who is Creator.

          For those of us who have experienced the unbearable loss of a child or a spouse, or a parent or relationship; for those who are facing medical or financial challenges yet cope by grace they cannot fully comprehend, God the Sustainer and Comforter is known and experienced in the deep dark night of doubt and fear. Ever-present, ever-sustaining God be praised.

          For all those times we have fallen short, have felt mired in failure, have known that on our own we can never “know enough” or “do enough” – and yet are loved to worthiness by Jesus, we praise God the Savior.

          And for the broad experience of our lives and of our world, for the gifts of creation, salvation, love and mercy, joy and laughter, we praise God as Sovereign over our lives and all that blesses us and besets us. 

Old Testament scholar and teacher Walter Brueggemann, reflecting on this psalm, writes, “the expectation of the Old Testament is not finally obedience but adoration.”

So it is that on this Holy Humor Sunday, in the lightness of our hearts, in the midst of laughter and joy reflected in our alleluias –we are invited to raise our praise and adoration to the eternally surprising God, the mighty and blessed one, who defeats evil and death, and reconciles the world to Godself through scarred and holy hands and feet, an empty tomb, and the message of the ages – Praise God.

We are invited to laugh at what once held us bound, knowing that in Christ we are now set free.

Each Sunday, our Easter celebration continues as we bask in the truth of the resurrection and we Praise God, knowing that the Good News of this day comes in the form of the ever-living God we can trust, who is faithful and just, who is the loving and redeeming Lord of all creation. Hallelu Yah! Hallelu Yah! Hallelu Yah!

The beauty of Psalm 150 -- which calls everyone and everything that breathes to praise God with trumpet, cymbals, and dance, in any and every way possible -- is that it frees one to praise loudly, with clanging and clashing, both in times of triumph and in the day-to-day challenges of life.

In humor and laughter, in joy and song, let the Easter refrain play on, for Alleluia! Christ is Risen!

He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Amen.

Amen.

           

           

Trickles to Gushes to Joy

Isaiah 35:1-10 ~ Advent III, December 15, 2013

I pray that your Advent journey this year has been blessed thus far, and that despite the busy-ness of the season you have found some time to sit a while and catch your breath, appreciating an oasis of calm amidst the frenetic activity of your days. I hope that you’ve found time away from all that shopping, decorating, cooking, or planning of menus and cleaning, interspersed among the normal everyday activities, work, schedules and appointments of our lives, which can make us all just a little bit crazy come mid-December. Throw in a snow day here or a nasty virus there, and this season of joy can quickly turn into one we just wish were over already.

I hope as you prepared to come to church this morning, that you felt a stirring of anticipation at what God’s Word would have to say to you today.

This Advent season, we have been looking at the Isaiah texts that this year’s lectionary cycle of readings has brought us. In the past couple of weeks, Isaiah has led us to imagine what transformed lives and a transformed world might look like, if peace and hope were to reign. We were invited into these texts to see what Isaiah saw in the visions God gave him of the creation that will one day be restored through divine love. And we were invited to imagine with him, what our transformed lives and world might look like, when God’s promises are fulfilled and God’s creation is brought to its fullness as the glory of the Lord breaks upon us. And we were surprised to see that there are signs of God’s in-breaking transformation all around us already – signs of God-like love spun as a silky web in the most unlikely of places.

Today our turn to Isaiah’s texts continues, in this truly beautiful passage that we heard just a short while ago, when (our lector) read these words, “The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing.” Words like these just make me want to dance. The sense of joy that leaps off the page is just that vibrant. Isaiah is describing bursting-at-the-seams joy in this passage. He is describing not just a reversal, but a transformation that will come when God comes to reign, and with God’s coming the health and wholeness of the creation will be restored. It’s hard to imagine, isn’t it?

This passage seems to flow naturally, following the texts that we have contemplated the past two weeks which lifted up peace and hope. But if you pick up your bible and read through Isaiah you’ll find that quite a lot has transpired between chapter 11, where we left off last week, and chapter 35, where we find ourselves this morning. And if you were to have read through those chapters, you will have found that in these words before us this morning, Isaiah speaks what Barbara Lundblad refers to as “a word out of place,” because they follow an indictment against the nations that have brought devastation to Israel and have taken her people off into exile and destroyed the temple and caused the people of God such despair and heartache and desolation. Now, in these verses, the text moves, without any real transition, from describing the judgment against Edom and the ecological disaster that follows, to these verses, where the wilderness and dry land are filled with gladness and rejoicing and rejuvenation.

Lundblad writes, “Isaiah speaks a word out of place. Amid chaos and destruction, against despair and apathy, Isaiah speaks a word of restoration. Against a deep, dark, soul-grating thirst, Isaiah describes water – not a trickle appearing in the midst of a lush forest, either, but water appearing as if a dam had burst, sending water gushing into a parched, dry, cracked, desolate landscape of our souls. Perhaps it was, at first, a trickle. Then a stream. Then a full-on gushing flood of life-changing water.”

I wonder if you can think of a time when you were really, truly thirsty. For most of us I imagine that we can conjure up a time when we really wanted a drink – maybe we had been sick, running a fever; maybe you found yourself on an outing and no one and thought to pack enough beverages to take along; maybe you went for an unexpected hike and realized too late that you hadn’t thought of that little necessity.  A few of us might have experienced serious thirst or been caught in situations a little more dangerous, without sufficient water.

I know that in times when I have been really truly thirsty, finding water became an obsession. Our physical need for water is so great and constant. Imagine that you were in the middle of the desert or in the wilderness and you had no access to clean water-it wouldn’t take long for thirst to overwhelm.

I read a book, Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand earlier this year. It’s is the true story of Louis Zamperini, a WWII bombardier whose plane crashed into the Pacific Ocean in 1943. The three survivors of the crash spent weeks on a raft in the middle of the ocean. Thirst was indescribable and brutal and even the slightest, briefest relief of it brought unimaginable joy. Parched, at times delirious, the men longed for, ached for and even dreamed of refreshing life-giving water to replace the death-dealing water that surrounded them day after day.

Imagine being in that raft in the middle of the ocean or on your hike or in your sickbed in a state of real, dire thirst and suddenly, receiving that first trickle of relief – that first trickle of water. And then the water flows more freely and you go from sipping to slurping to gulping it down, great torrents of cool refreshment and relief from the agony of thirst. What does it feel like to go from suffering real thirst to sudden refreshment and relief of cool, fresh, flowing water?

When our kids were little, they loved getting a quarter from us to use in vending machines – like old fashioned bubblegum machines, but when you cranked the handle on these machines, a prize would fall out below. I don’t even know if they make them anymore, but I remember that one of the prizes that might be delivered would be a tiny compressed piece of material, so small that it fit into a vitamin-sized capsule.

You would put this capsule in water and instantly the plastic covering would melt away, and the piece of material inside would begin to swell. It would absorb more and more water until it would double and then triple and quadruple in size until it became I don’t know how many times the size of the original piece. It was often the shape of a dinosaur or some other animal. This little blob of – whatever – was totally transformed by the water into something the kids could then enjoy.

I think of God’s promised restoration and transformation in this way.

God’s coming transforms that which is dried and shriveled and shrunken in on itself in utter lifelessness, and suddenly it comes to life, it will swells and grows and takes on shape and form.

Isaiah provides assurance that God’s coming will result not in the people’s destruction but in their salvation and renewal, health and wholeness – in their swelling and taking on the shape and form of the creator. What’s more, like the parched and dry land, like the burning sand, the weakest and most vulnerable will be not only restored but utterly transformed; “eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy”. They will go from being nearly invisible, shapeless, worthless scraps of material to being completely refreshed, rejuvenated, and transformed into the beautiful, ransomed people of God’s redeeming love.

God’s work among humanity is nothing short of radical, transformative, and restorative. When the LORD appears, strange and marvelous things happen, and like a word out of place, it instantly changes the world into which it h as come. The wilderness becomes a flourishing path with streams of water flowing abundantly. Dangerous highways become holy paths upon which the redeemed can walk with assurance. The blind see, the deaf hear, and the lame not only walk but leap for joy. The exiles return home. And there is unbridled rejoicing from the ransomed people of God.

This word is good news today for all those who languish in exile in this in-between time of waiting and watching. It is good news for those who wait in cancer wards and prisons; good news for the homeless and the voiceless. God’s bubbling, streaming, flowing word is good news for those who truly thirst in our world, for those who hunger in ways that we cannot even fathom, for those who find themselves with feeble knees and weak hands and fearful hearts. God’s refreshing word is good news for the depressed, for those who long for love and acceptance, those who hear voices that set them apart, those who, in their isolation hear no voices at all; for those who suffer addictions that control and destroy their lives, and for anyone who feels disillusioned and disenfranchised.

When the fullness of God comes among us, all of us, all of creation, and all of humanity will be transformed. In the meantime, God is already at work, and God’s word out of place is a balm for those who hear this word and seek to follow God’s mission, faithful to God’s command to love, and to build faith along the Way of peace and joy and hope.

God’s word out of place comes in the form of the outpouring of generosity from individuals, churches and organizations who come together to provide Christmas joy for families who would otherwise “have no” Christmas. God’s word out of place comes when we give to organizations that help provide clean sustainable water supply for a village in Columbia or Central America. God’s word out of place comes from food drives and blood drives and strangers helping strangers in their hour of need.

As we continue our Advent journey, may we be blessed by the images that God sends all around us to guide our way, to speak a word out of place and to prepare our hearts to receive the Lord Jesus Christ on Christmas. May we find trickles of God’s life-giving water turning to streams, washing and refreshing the people of God, reminding us of the great cleansing and new birth of our baptism. And may we be reminded of the words of the prophet, “And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.” May such joy accompany you on your journey to Bethlehem.

Amen.