The Laughter of God

Psalm 126

            It seems a couple from Minneapolis decided to take a long weekend in Florida during one particularly icy winter. They both had jobs and their schedules made it difficult for them to arrange to travel down there together, so it was decided that the husband would fly down on one day and his wife would follow the next. After he made the trip and checked into the hotel he decided to open his laptop and send his wife an email. Unfortunately, he made a one-letter mistake in her email address and sent off the message without realizing his mistake. Meanwhile, in Houston, a widow had just arrived home from her husband's funeral. He had been a minister for many years and had been "called home to glory" following a heart attack. Expecting condolences from family and friends who had been unable to attend the funeral, she sat down at her computer to check her email. She opened the first message and fainted and fell to the floor. Her son heard the thud and ran into the room. He saw his mother unconscious on the floor, and looked at the computer screen where he read:

To: My loving wife.

From: Your departed husband

Subject: I've arrived!

I've arrived and have been checked in. I see that everything has been prepared for your arrival tomorrow. Looking forward to seeing you then! Hope your journey is as uneventful as mine was.

P.S. Sure is hot down here.

            I have heard of ministers who have a joke-of-the-week for their congregations, but I don't tell many jokes in sermons. The reason I give myself for that is that even though I like humor and even think I have a sense of humor, I think humor should somehow flow "naturally" in the sermon, whatever that means, and that a joke would have to be very important to a sermon in order to be included. I think that's my reason for not telling more jokes in sermons. It's a stylistic thing. I want whatever humor shows up in one of my sermons to be somehow "better" than just jokes.

            But I wonder if my avoidance of jokes per se is only stylistic. Maybe a part of me buys into the old suspicion that humor really has no place in sermons. One hundred and fifty years ago Charles Baudelaire wrote in The Essence of Laughter that "Laughter is Satanic." Even if we are not willing to go that far, we just might believe that sermons are about far too serious a matter for humor or levity of any kind to ever be allowed. Now, I don't really believe that and you don't either, I suspect, but even if you don't believe it, you know what I mean, don't you? Religion is not generally associated with fun. Religion is more about humor-less-ness than it is about humor. I can't forget the way John Steinbeck described one of his characters in East of Eden. He said,

He brought with him his tiny Irish wife; a tight, hard, little woman as humorless as a chicken. She had a dour, Presbyterian mind that beat the brains out of anything fun to do.

Even though that does not describe one single Presbyterian I know, and I know more than a few, Presbyterians do take a lot of flack for their "dour power," and for being God's "frozen chosen." But we all know it's not just Presbyterians, don't we? As far as I know, history has recorded no one, ever, at any time, as saying, "Wow, those Christians. That is one wild and crazy bunch."

It actually is little wonder that people like Steinbeck would think of someone who liked to "beat the brains out of anything fun to do" and relate them to a group of Christians. Listen to some of the things the Bible says about laughter. The book of Ecclesiastes is said to be written by Solomon, who was supposed to be the wisest man who ever lived. In that book we read,

"Laughter is foolish. What does pleasure accomplish?" (Ecc. 2:2)

In that same book Solomon also wrote, if you can believe these words came from a wise man, "Sorrow is better than laughter, because a sad face is good for the heart." (Ecc. 7:3) 

A couple of buffalo were munching prairie grass on their home on the range one day, out where the deer and the antelope play. A cowboy rode up, leaped off his horse, and looked one of the buffalo right in the eye, He said, "You are the sorriest excuse for a buffalo I've ever seen. Your eyes are bloodshot, your hair is all dirty and matted, and you stink." With that he jumped back on his horse and rode away. The buffalo turned to the one he was with and said, "You know, I think I just heard a discouraging word." Well, we just heard a discouraging word about laughter. Unfortunately, it's not the only one in the Bible. In the Book of Proverbs we read, "Even in laughter the heart may ache, and joy may end in grief," (Proverbs 14:13) reminding us that under every silver lining there is a big, dark cloud. And then there is all that talk in the New Testament of weeping and gnashing of teeth, and there is not one mention of Jesus ever laughing, or telling what looks to us like a joke.

Surely we have gotten it wrong. Surely our finding more dourness than joy in religion says more about us than it does about God. The eminent physician Sir William Osler said,

There is a form of laughter that springs from the heart, heard every day in the merry voices of children, the expression of a laughter-loving spirit that defies analysis by the philosopher, which has nothing rigid or mechanical in it... Bubbling spontaneously from the heart of child or man, without egotism and full of feeling…laughter is the music of life.           

Sir William Osler, if no one else, thought laughter was good, but if he is not a good enough source for us these days, in church, can we listen to Karl Barth, perhaps the greatest theologian of the last four hundred years? Barth said -- Barth, of all people!! --

Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.

Laughter, the closest thing to the grace of God? Where would Barth have come up with such an idea as that? Apparently not from the Bible. Surely in the right place and right time such an idea would have gotten him burned at the stake.

As Osler pointed out, there is within us a natural tendency to laugh. When we let it, laughter will bubble spontaneously from within us, the music of life. Since we are created in the image of God, where else might that have come from except from the laughter bubbling spontaneously from the heart of God?

Haven't you always really suspected that God had a tremendous sense of humor? Have you ever watched an ostrich running? Have you ever taken a good look at a duck-billed platypus? It looks like God was creating the world and had a few extra parts left over and said, "Hey! Let's just take this duck's bill and stick it on a beaver and see what happens! It'll be fun!"

            Take a look at some of the stories in the Bible. When we look at some of the stories in the Bible in the right way, they could only have happened because of God's sense of humor. For instance, God made a covenant with Abraham. God said to Abraham, "If you keep my covenant I will bless you and your descendants will be more numerous than the sands of the sea or the stars of the heaven." That's an incredible, wonderful promise. The only problem is, God made that covenant with someone who was childless -- at age one hundred. And his wife Sarah is ninety. Certainly that's a joke of some kind. God couldn't have made a covenant with someone, say, nineteen? Or did God plan to make a covenant with Abraham all along and just procrastinated for a century?  Whatever, when God sent special messengers to Abraham's tent to say, "Yup. That's right. Sarah's gonna get pregnant. Gonna have a baby," Sarah was the only one who got the joke. She heard what they said and she laughed and laughed. There she was ninety years old, standing outside the tent laughing so hard her sides were cramping up. And guess what. Sarah got pregnant. And had a baby. And they named him Isaac. "Isaac" means "laughter."

            At another time, in another place, God had a job for a man named Jonah. God wanted Jonah to go to a city called Nineveh and tell the people there to repent or God would destroy their city. The only problem was Jonah hated the Ninevites. The last thing he wanted was for them to repent of their evil ways. He wanted God to destroy them. So, Jonah had no intentions of going to Nineveh. Instead he got on a boat and tried to get as far away from Nineveh as possible. But he couldn't get away from God quite that easily. God still intended for Jonah to go to Nineveh. The problem was that Jonah was out in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. How do you get Jonah off that boat and back to dry land? God arranged it for Jonah to get thrown overboard, which hardly seems like much of a solution, except that then, the Bible says, God "prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah," and take him back to shore. The story of Jonah and the whale is really the story of Jonah hitching a ride on a taxi service God set up just for Jonah. Of course, Jonah got to spend three days in the belly of that great fish, or whale, or whatever it was, along with whatever else the fish had swallowed -- little fish, seaweed, jellyfish, squid -- in the dark, face squeezed into a tiny air bubble trying to breathe, thinking things over. And then Jonah got to be whale vomit on the beach, proving the old saying, "You just can't keep a good man down." And then he covered the three days' journey to Nineveh in just one day. And he told the people to repent or God would destroy their city. And they believed him. And they repented. And God spared their city. And Jonah was really mad. Do you see any humor there? I think it's hilarious! 

            And then, there is what may be the funniest thing that ever happened, God's sense of humor on full display, what some theologians have described as a great practical joke God played on the devil - the resurrection of Christ from the dead. The Son of God had come. Satan unleashed all the power of evil and it worked. The Messiah lay shattered and dead in a cold, stone tomb. Satan had played his highest trump card -- death -- and won. Death had always been the final victor. There was nothing left to say or do after death.  Surely Satan laughed and laughed. But suddenly, he's back. The power of God's love had conquered even death. "O death, where is thy sting, O grave, where is thy victory?" Surely the halls of heaven rang with laughter, and it was never more true than it was right then, "The one who laughs last, laughs best."

            The Bible really doesn't have an awful lot to say about laughter. In fact, the Bible doesn't have a lot to say about happiness. The Bible does, though, have a lot to say about something far more profound than happiness, about what causes laughter to bubble spontaneously from our hearts -- joy. The fruit of the spirit is, the Bible says, among other things, joy. (Galatians 5:22) Where there is joy, there will be laughter -- spontaneous, unending, eternal laughter.

            Have you ever wondered what heaven will be like? Have you ever wondered what heaven will sound like? I suppose we expect a lot of harps playing, and maybe there will be a few. But I don't think that's what we're going to hear most of all. I think when we are ushered into heaven, when we realize that we have set aside the burdens of life with all of its sorrows and all of its sadness and all of its tears and all of its death, when we understand for the first time just how truly marvelous is God's grace, when we experience for the first time the fullness of the joy God had intended for us all along, then we will find that the sound of heaven is the sound of the laughter of God, echoing in our throats, our hearts, and our souls.