Are You Joking? Revelation 1:4-8; John 20:19-31 Holy Humor Sunday, April 3, 2016 Mary Taylor Memorial United Methodist Church, Milford, Connecticut The Rev. Dr. Brian R. Bodt, Pastor I hope you ve come with joy in your heart this morning. If so, I hope you ll share it. If not, taking a line from pastor and inspirational speaker Tony Campolo: Stick around. We can help you with that. In other words, if you re struggling to find joy I pray you ll catch it from this observance of Bright Sunday, in more recent years called Holy Humor Sunday. The joy we know as a resurrection people is that we believe that God, by overcoming death with Jesus resurrection, has had the last laugh on evil, sin and death. For some, the longer we live the greater we risk losing that joy. Death, illness, betrayal, discouragement or just life s grind weigh us down. Many children have a contagious joy from which we could benefit. Here s a quick quiz. Before you take it, know that 80% of kindergartners answered correctly compared to only 17% of a class at Stanford University. First one to call the correct answer gets a prize: What is greater than God, more evil than the devil; The poor have it, the rich need it and you die if you eat it? The answer.nothing! Nothing is greater than God, nothing is more evil than the devil; the poor have nothing, the rich need nothing and you die if you eat nothing. Yes, we might argue the rich and poor business from a spiritual point of view, but that s another sermon. Go easy on me and I ll go easy on you. And go easy on Thomas. Every year on this Sunday we hear the story of Thomas. Doubting Thomas we sometimes call him, forgetting how he became believing Thomas with his declaration in verse 28: My Lord and my God. Thomas doubt is a universal doubt, our human tendency to react to good news with it s too good to be
true. The pundits say: If it s too good to be true, it probably isn t true. We say: Are you joking? Seriously? You don t fool me. But God has fooled us. God fools us if we live as if death and sorrow and defeat are the end. They aren t. Resurrection is outlandish, but true. We all have stories like that. Of them we often say You can t make this stuff up. Here s one of mine. Many of you have met my grown sons, Dan and Adam, both of whom worshipped with us last Sunday. When they turned 16 they both got their learner s permit to drive. Right, that s not funny. One night, though, Dan wants to go to a friend s house and asks if he can drive. I say sure and we back out of the driveway. Now it s 8 p.m. so it s dark. We get to the end of the driveway and Dan goes to put it into drive and he can t see the console to put it into gear. Because he hasn t turned on the lights. So he leans way over the console to see the shift display. I finally say, It s easier if you turn on the lights. He says, You know, I wondered how you do this so easily. You can t make this stuff up. That s resurrection! Tertullian, a leader of the church in the first century, declared: It is by all means to be believed because it is absurd. How absurd? Well, let s recall the great musician, Beethoven. Beethoven was buried in a church cemetery and a few days later the church sexton heard some strange noises coming from the area where Beethoven was buried. Alarmed, the sexton got the priest. The priest heard the sound, too, as some faint but unrecognizable music coming from the grave. Alarmed, the priest went and got the church organist. The church organist bent down, listened for a few moments and then said, Ah, yes, that s Beethoven s Ninth Symphony being played backwards. Listening a while longer he said, There s the Eighth Symphony and it s backwards, too. Most puzzling. He kept listening. The Seventh the Sixth the Fifth
Then he brightened. No worries, friends. It s just Beethoven, decomposing. Enough with music. How about the mathematicians, engineers and medical professionals, with a few other professions thrown in as well: Ratio of an igloo s circumference to its diameter: Eskimo Pi 2,000 pounds of Chinese soup: Won ton Time lapse from a slip on a banana peel and smacking the pavement: 1 bananosecond. Weight an evangelist carries with God: 1 billigram 365.25 days of drinking low-calorie beer: 1 lite year Half of a large intestine: 1 semicolon 453.6 graham crackers: 1 pound cake 1,000 cubic centimeters of wet socks: l literhosen 3 statute miles of intravenous surgical tubing at Yale-New Haven Hospital: 1 I.V. League George Goldtrap has said: If we expire when we die, shouldn t we inspire while we live? Of course! Easter is the season when the Lord laughs out loud, laughs at all things that snuff out joy or pretend to be powerful like cruelty and madness and despair and death and sweeps them away with resurrection laughter. How about us? Do I mean to make light of the tough times that we face? No. Any of you who have come to me for pastoral counsel know better. Today s lighter touch of a message is not avoidance of life s hardships. Mostly you do not hear of mine here, resisting the tendency to, as the old preachers called it, bleeding on the pulpit. But I have faced them and it is faith in the resurrection, believing tough times don t last and that the worst thing is not the last thing, that sees me through, too.
This was surely the belief of the writer of Revelation. The Christians at the end of the first century were persecuted for not worshipping the emperor as God. The writer himself was exiled on the island at Patmos. I have been there and today it is a beautiful, if mountainous, Mediterranean island with a Greek Orthodox monastery; but back then it was a Roman Alcatraz. Yet John called the resurrected Christ the ruler of the kings of earth, the Almighty and the Alpha and the Omega (the beginning and the end). Of us, John declares that we are a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father. Heady stuff. Few of us will be imprisoned for our faith. But we will all face trials. In these times we turn to God in prayer. We hope our prayers are confident in God s wisdom. But sometimes they are a bit more selfish. One woman, stressed beyond belief with life s trials, prayed O God, I need relief. I ve always wanted to go to Hawaii but I m afraid of flying and get seasick. Could you build a bridge to Hawaii? God laughed Outrageous! Think of the logistics. How would the supports ever reach the bottom of the Pacific Ocean? How much concrete? How much steel? Your request is very materialistic and a bit disappointing. It s hard to justify such a worldly request. Take more time and consider a prayer that will help heal human hearts. The woman paused, took a deep breath, and said, Lord, perhaps my stress is because I can t settle down. The men in my life say I don t care and that I m insensitive. So help me understand men. God replied: You want two lanes or four on that bridge? A bridge is not such a bad idea. Not to Hawaii, but a bridge to God and bridges to one another. God bridges the gap when doubt and fear block us. God s bridge to us is, Okay, Thomas, if touching the scars is what you need to do, do it. So despite my earlier comment, a personal story in two parts. Part one: when I had my first neck surgery in 1994 for two herniated discs, I
had a significant scar here (point to front of neck). It was very stiff and I felt it every time I turned my neck. I described this to my physical therapist who said You have to manipulate the scar. I recoiled, since I didn t even want to touch my scar. Physiologically, the reason is that the layers of skin fuse together unless you manipulate them to slide back and forth as they are meant to do. Spiritually, our life scars become hard and rigid unless we manipulate them with prayer, faith and the encouraging words and listening ears of fellow disciples. Part two: when I had my second neck surgery in 2007 for a third herniated disc, my surgeon said that because of scar tissue from the first surgery he would have to move my vocal chords to get at the damaged disc. He thought his assisting surgeon might have to hold my vocal chords out of the way for 5-10 minutes. In actuality it was an hour. Dr. Sabshin told me before the surgery that he was confident I would be able to speak again. When I asked him if I would be able to sing, he said, I can t guarantee it. We ll have to wait and see. So I am blessed to sing today, and if from time to time you find me blithe and a bit loud, you will understand that I have a certain urgency borne of having almost lost something very precious. Still, one day my voice will be silent. But no matter. In the words of Isaac Watts, God still has the last word: I ll praise my maker while I ve breath; and when my voice is lost in death, praise shall employ my nobler powers. My days of praise shall ne er be past, while life, and thought, and being last, or immortality endures.* *Isaac Watts, 1719, I ll Praise My Maker While I ve Breath The United Methodist Hymnal (1989), #60