Sermon 77 - BBC and Comedivergent
Genesis 21:6
Sarah said, "God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me."
Ecclesiastes 3:4
a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance
Today we are going to talk about grief and death and pain and other fun stuff like that. [Okay there's a little nervous humour over there in the corner; we can work with that.]
I figured that Port Alberni, of all places, would appreciate Black Bitter Comedy. After all when I got here I found out that the way you guys like your coffee is black and bitter. People elsewhere talk about coffee being paint stripper or battery acid. In Port Alberni it isn't acceptable as coffee unless it'll take off the paint and then start eating into the fibreglass underneath. In Port Alberni it isn't coffee unless the stainless steel table top starts getting etched from the spills or drops of coffee from the cups. If you like black bitter coffee maybe you'll like Black Bitter Comedy!
Okay it isn't going to be completely black and bitter in the sermon today. Recently I wrote another sermon on Bibliodivergence, pointing out that God does actually want us to look at the world differently. Paul definitely says that in Romans, that what we think is wisdom is actually not. We have to look at the world differently than we are used to looking at the world.
And the impetus to do this sermon, as it very often happens, was from a conversation about (now for?) something completely different. I was talking to somebody about the Reconciliaction Meetings. I was inviting him to attend and I told him that he could attend as long as he didn't tell any of his jokes. He tells really terrible Dad jokes. And if you know what Dad jokes are, you know that they are bad puns and packaged stale humour. And if you have had discussions with First Nations people for any length of time, you know that their humour is not like that. Their humour is more like stand-up comedy. It is taking situations, any situation, and finding the humour in it. Sometimes you have to look at it upside down, or inside out, or back to front, to find the humour in it.
First Nations are really good at taking their pain, and even the pain of the world, and transmuting that pain into comedic gold, and laughter. They see the world upside down. And the world is better for it.
As I said I see the world differently from other people. A shrink thinks that I have some form of autism. Sometimes this difference is useful and sometimes it can be a little bit difficult. It definitely gives me a different sense of humour than most people.
We tend to be afraid of these differences but we shouldn't. The differences can definitely help us. As I say, I am quicker to find unusual solutions to complicated problems than other people. So we should be looking at the world differently whenever we can.
Jesus said that we had to come to Him as a little child does. Often people think that that means that we have to have a simplistic faith. Well maybe we should have a simplistic faith, but I think that there's pretty good evidence that Jesus is also telling us that we need to see the world differently.
And even though we over-spiritualize things, it must have been funny the first time that Jesus did it. They are arguing about who is the first in the Kingdom of God, and Jesus takes a toddler and plunks him down in the middle and says, "Here! This is what you have to be like to be first in the Kingdom of God."
Gloria had this really intuitive and unique sense of how children, and particularly infants, viewed the world. She always said that you should try, as often and as much as you possibly could, to see the world the way children saw the world. Seeing the world the way children saw the world was your only opportunity to see the world in a new way. (She was right.)
Talking to kids is funny anyway. Of course sometimes they don't realise that it's funny, which makes it even funnier. But you have to be careful not to hurt their feelings if you start laughing at something that they don't consider to be funny.
All of my grandchildren got used to the fact that Grandpa had a weird sense of humour. Ask any of them; they'll tell you that Grandpa's default response to any tragedy or emergency is inappropriate humour.
Like I say, they got used to it. I have video of my oldest grandson wearing a jester's hat with bells on it. (He was very young, at the time.) On the video, I ask him to jingle the hat for me, and he shakes his head to do it. Of course, shaking your head that way is the same way that we say no, so on the video you can hear Grandpa saying, "No, you're not going to do it?" and then there is this amazing sequence of expressions on his face as he first is disappointed that I didn't realise that he was trying to comply with my request, and then realises that he did, and that the shaking of the head indicates no, and that it was yet another of Grandpa's very weird jokes. (Resulting in a very big smile :-)
I have mentioned elsewhere about the men's retreat that really took offense at the assertion that you can't serve God and capitalism at the same time. The Bible does have very good business advice. It's actually surprising to see how great it is at giving business advice. Those directives on how to run your business keep being rediscovered by business management types about every twenty years or so. (I keep finding that hilarious.) But the Bible does seem to indicate that God really doesn't have any desire for efficiency. This would seem to say that we need to see business differently as well.
Hey, it's easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich person to get into heaven? You don't really mean that, right? I mean it's just an image, just an illustration, just a metaphor, right? Well Jesus didn't back down when they asked!
Take the story of Deborah, Barak, Sisera, and Jael. Deborah goes to Barak and says that God said you are the person to drive out Israel's enemies. Barak is a little nervous about doing this. Deborah says that because he hasn't been wholehearted about it, he has lost the glory that he would have gotten from capturing the enemy general. Anyway they start fighting and Barak is winning the battle and Sisera runs away. He goes to the tent of Jael, who is supposed to be the wife of an ally. Jael says that she'll hide him and gives him some kefir to drink. We all know that milk products tend to make you sleepy. When he's asleep she takes a tent peg and drives it right through his head, really nailing him to the ground.
(Okay the fact that I find *that* funny is possibly proof that I *am* a sick, twisted, bitter person.)
And then there's the valley of the dry bones. Not only is that an unexpected twist ending but it's a rather cartoonish image. I mean that deliberately and literally. An awful lot of cartoons have used that same image of the bones coming together, forming a body and then standing up and doing living things.
Job does have a really nice turn in sarcasm. But it's not just him, and it's not just Jesus who makes jokes. In the book of Job at the end it's God who is speaking when he talks about trying to put Leviathan on a leash. He finishes up by saying, "Try it once. You will *never* do it again!"
Sarcasm isn't confined to Job. Paul, who is constantly troubled by the circumcision party, suggests that its members should go all the way and castrate themselves.
And it isn't confined to the Bible, either. There's the ironies of everyday life. Shortly after Gloria died I started adding scriptural passages to the beginning of my sigblock, the piece of text attached at the bottom of every email message that I send. This is a series of passages of scripture, quite lengthy now, which basically makes up a kind of a biography of the latter part of my life. It shows that my wife is dead, that I feel alone, without friends, and unsupported. Everyone who has received an email message from me in about the last four years has received this at the bottom of every message. Almost nobody has commented on it, and those few who have basically just said, "What are these words and numbers at the bottom of your email message?"
I have a friend. I've had this friend for over 40 years. He is a friend and colleague in the technical realm. He's a big name both in terms of technology, the Internet, and information security. He is much, much more important than I am, but we're still friends. We have only ever met once and, because of the fairly extreme difference in our situations, our conversations, when we do discuss things, tend only to have to do with our career in information security. In all the time that I have known him I have never seen any single piece of evidence that he believes in God. He is an atheist.
He is the first person in four years not only to understand what the string of scripture passages refers to but to have replied with a scripture passage of his own. Philippians 1:3-4: I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy.
Now *that's* funny.
Then there's the story of Jesus being asked by the disciples to tell them when the end times will come. This same story is in all three synoptic gospels. It's in Matthew (24), it's in Mark (13), and it's in Luke (21). And you can just picture it. The disciples hanging on Jesus' every word as Jesus says, "There will be wars and rumors of wars but the end is not yet!" And the disciples are going, "Yeah yeah, tell us when the end comes!" And Jesus says, "There will be earthquakes in diverse places!" And the disciples are asking, "The end! Tell us when the end comes!" Jesus warns, "Make sure that no one deceives you!" And the disciples are calling: "Yeah! Yeah! But the end!" And Jesus says, "And I'm not going to tell you! No man knows the hour or the day."
I mean, it must have been a bit of a letdown, but it's a good punch line.
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