What
Makes God Laugh?
Sermon preached by the Reverend Patricia Farris
August 21, 2005
Scripture:
Genesis 18:9-15
It’s
great to be back from vacation and see all your beautiful faces. It
was refreshing to have some time off, to get away a bit, to do a hundred
projects around the house that there’s never time for, to read
lots of books and watch far too many disappointing Dodger games. One
of the things I’ve done this week since being back was to read
Brad and Larry’s sermons. Since they tackled all the hard topics
that you submitted for us—and really well, I might add, I decided
to take on one of my favorites from your list: “What makes God
laugh?”
I
guess we must first ask ourselves if we think God does laugh, if we’ve
ever pictured God laughing in our mind’s eye. From the Bible,
we know God rages when very upset with his people. God rages at injustice
and oppression and we know that God weeps for his children. The great
teacher of our time, writer and holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel, once
asked a panel of speakers to name the unhappiest character in the
Bible. One said Job, because of the trials he faced. One said Moses,
who was denied entry into the promised land. One said Mary, who witnessed
the crucifixion of her son. Wiesel himself thought God was surely
the unhappiest biblical character, because of the pain he must feel
in seeing his children fight, abuse and kill each other in his name.
If
you watch or read the news, you can come up with an all-too-long list
of all the things going on in this world that must make God very angry
and very often break God’s heart.
So,
our God can be angry. Our God can be heartbroken. Can our God be happy?
What would make God laugh?
The
Bible doesn’t help us too much on this one, except indirectly.
Frederick Buechner, the wonderful Presbyterian writer, says that “quantitatively
speaking, you don’t find all that much laughter in the Bible,
but, qualitatively, there’s nothing quite like it to be found
anywhere else.” I just read a few verses from Genesis, the very
first book. In it, God promises Abraham that if he keeps the covenant
with God, his descendents will be more numerous than the sands of
the sea or the stars of the heaven. It’s a great promise—but
Abraham was 100 and laughed “till he fell on his face,”
it says when he heard it. And Sarah, his nearly 100 year-old wife,
when she learns that she’s going to have a baby, she laughs!
(continued...)
"What
Makes God Laugh?" by Rev. Patricia Farris, August 21, 2005
Maybe she’s laughing with delight because she thinks this is great
news—or maybe because she thinks God’s crazy! And then when
God hears her, she’s embarrassed or maybe afraid to have laughed
at God—but God clearly loves it! “You laughed, oh yes you
did,” says God. Can’t we just imagine God laughing, too,
the two of them sharing a joke, a joke that will bring life to generations
and generations of faithful people? Sarah laughed, and I’m sure
God laughed at the thought of it, too. When this miraculous baby was
born, Abraham and Sarah named their boy Isaac, whose name in Hebrew
means “laughter.”
Surely,
God laughs like a parent laughs, at the play of children. Summer vacation
brought time to sit in our beautiful backyard and read and that means
overhearing the kids next door when they play outside. They’ve
both been born in these years since we’ve lived there, and we
have been delighted to frequently overhear big sister and baby brother.
You can’t help but hear their happy voices on the other side of
the fence and sometimes the things they say make us laugh out loud.
Things they say to their parents, their puppies and now to each other.
All you parents and grandparents know exactly what I’m talking
about. Everyone who got to enjoy our fantastic production of Peter Pan
on Friday knows, too! Kids can be so funny in the things they do and
say and they make us laugh.
How
we celebrate this gift of life and laughter on the day of the baptism
of our new baby brother, Alex. God laughs, like a parent laughs, at
the play of children. God laughs spontaneously, from the heart. God
laughs in joy and God laughs out of deep, deep love.
God
has created us in God’s own image - that the Bible tells us loud
and clear. And so I suspect that all the things that make us laugh make
God, our Creator laugh too. God must take great delight in all creation,
as do we. Another great thing about backyard time for us has been a
couple of blue jays who visit us each morning and each evening, and
throughout the day when we’re in and out. Now we’ve got
their baby jay growing up and fluttering about as it learns to fly,
looking pretty awkward as it flutters and fumbles up to a perch. The
jays make us laugh, and surely God laughs, too. At puppies and kittens,
and at that sea lion who swam all the way inland to the Orange County
civic center last month.
God
made this world and all that’s in it and in that same book of
Genesis, at the very beginning, God called it all “good.”
Surely God laughs with joy in the delights of creation. That’s
why we sang “Joy to the World” this morning. I know some
of you thought I’d lost it and forgot that it’s August and
not December! But, really, it’s OK to let “heaven and nature
sing” in the summer as well as at Christmastime. It’s how
God created all things to be—singing and laughing in joy.
This
joy, this laughter from the heart of God, is sprinkled all through the
Bible. It was in King David when he danced before the ark of the Lord
in 2 Samuel. It’s what the psalmist sang about in Psalm 126: “When
the Lord rescued Zion, then our mouth was filled with laughter.”
Psalm 98 which is what our “Joy to the World” is based on:
“Shout with joy to the Lord, all the earth; break into song,
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"What
Makes God Laugh?" by Rev. Patricia Farris, August 21, 2005
sing praise; let the rivers clap their hands, the mountains shout
with them for joy, before the Lord who comes, who comes to govern
the earth, to govern the world with justice and the peoples with fairness.”
It’s the joy of the prophet Isaiah who promised: “the
desert and the parched land will exult; they will bloom with abundant
flowers, and rejoice with joyful song. The glory of Lebanon will be
given to them…they will see the glory of the Lord, the splendor
of our God.”
It’s
the laughter that rings in the rafters when the Prodigal Son comes
home and his father throws a big party and as the Bible says, “they
began to make merry.” It’s the holy laughter that Jesus
promises to all the little people, the outcasts and the broken-hearted
and the unloved when he said: “Blessed are you who weep now,
for you shall laugh.”
The
great German theologian Karl Barth once said: “Laughter is the
closest thing to the grace of God.” It is that spirit of laughter,
that gift of grace, that creates us in joy, gives us birth and shepherds
us through this wonderful, crazy life, all the way to our old age,
along the way surprised often by joy, as were old Abraham and Sarah.
It is that spirit of God’s laughter that carries us all the
way to life beyond the grave, laughing even into the face of death,
to life fulfilled beyond our imagining.
A
friend of mine died this last week. Rev. David Tinoco was superintendent
of the Riverside District when I was superintendent of the San Diego
district and we went through some really tough times together in that
work. But no matter what was going on, whenever I’d greet David
and ask “How are you?”, “Como estas?” he’d
reply, with a beautiful smile: “mejor que nunca”—better
than ever. I know that now, at home with his God, he would light up
with that smile and say the same to me: “mejor que nunca, Patricia.”
For now he has entered into the sounds of heavenly laughter, setting
aside the sorrows of this life. Now he truly understands—as
will we all one day--just how marvelous and amazing is God’s
grace. On that day we will enter into the fullness of joy God has
intended for us all along and we will know that the sound of heaven
is the sound of God’s laughter, the laughter that loves us into
life in the beginning and will rejoice to love us home.
Notes:
Elie Wiesel quote from The Christian Century, June 28, 2005, p. 6.
Buechner, Frederick. Peculiar Treasures: A Biblical Who’s Who.
New York: Harper San Francisco, 1979.
“The Laughter of God”, St. Paul Community Church, Oct.
6, 2002.
©Patricia
Farris , 2005. Permission is given for brief quotation with attribution.
All other rights reserved. |
