Dear Friends,
I love to laugh. It says in Proverbs 17:22, “A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.” Anybody out there feeling a little bone-crushingly oppressed recently? Maybe if you’ve tried to get an appointment with a doctor, and the best you could do was next July, or maybe if you’ve ever seen the news at any time, or followed election polls. We’re all feeling the crunch, and in need of some good medicine. Do you suppose God ever laughs? I feel sure that God has an awesome sense of humor if you look at some of the wild things that happen to us in our lives. For instance, I always tell my Confirmation Class that they’d better study hard, because I dropped out of my own Confirmation Class, and now God makes me teach it! It even says in the Bible that God scoffs at our self-important folly: “The One who sits in heaven laughs,” writes David in Psalm 2. God loves and enjoys this crazy creation God had the audacity to call good. There’s no doubt that our sinfulness and the cruelty of the world make God weep at times, as Jesus did, but I’m convinced that God is also giggling and guffawing at our joy and silliness. After all, God created the laughter.
Science backs up the Bible when it comes to the notion that laughter is healthy. The body heals more quickly with laughter in the room. The same is true of our spiritual ills. We can be lifted above our pain and misery. Our circumstance may not change, but our ability to bear it will. That’s the promise of Christ, who doesn’t always remove our troubles, but does walk with us, enabling us to get through it.
With that in mind, I offer some actual bulletin misprints that I got from, of all people, a very serious theologian, Martin Marty (no relation):
Holy Trinity, one God, in You we lie and move and have our being.
We call on thy name and recant thy wondrous deeds.
In wilderness and dessert our tribe shall make its home.
My Gold, I love Thee.
Our quilt has been taken away.
The choir will resent a cantata on Palm Sunday.
Thanks be to God for holy humor, and thanks be to Christian Century magazine for today’s quotes. Follow God’s example; laugh at humanity’s follies. And the next time you find a misprint in your bulletin, have a chortle, and be grateful it doesn’t say, The minister and choir will be disrobed for the morning service.
Love and light,
Martin
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