Sermon Prepared for Messiah Lutheran Church

3^rd Sunday in Advent, Traditional Services – 12/17/00

by Gregory S. Kaurin

Associate Pastor for Spiritual Care and Development

 

Go to: sermon menu – or – archive – or – home page

 

Texts: Psalms 126, Zephaniah 3:14-20, and Philippians 4:4

 

The Sermon:

Joyous Crescendo!

 

Philo was a Hellenistic Jew, a theologian who was teaching about the same time, or shortly after Jesus’ ministry.  He once said: “God is the creator of laughter that is good.”[1]  God is the creator of laughter.

More recently, David Sacks, an executive producer and writer for the TV show 3^rd Rock from the Sun, wrote a piece titled “The Holiness of Humor.”  Here’s an excerpt:

One of the surprising things I learned when I started studying Torah was the central focus our religion puts on happiness.  As Rebbe Nachman once put it, people are sad because nothing is going right for them—but what they don’t realize is that nothing is going right for them because they’re sad!  “For you shall go out with joy” (Isaiah 55:12), the Kotzker Rebbe explains.  “The beauty of joy is that it has the power to extricate man from all troubles.”

From a comedy perspective, the surest way to get a laugh is by juxtaposing the expected with the unexpected.  Thus, when we’re convinced that the world is one way and the opposite happens—something that puts us in touch with how great and marvelous the world really is—the result is laughter.

Psalm 126 says that in the Messianic era “our mouths will be filled with laughter.”  Why?  Because laughter in its highest and holiest expression is our reaction to the realization that the world is so much bigger, deeper, and more beautiful than we ever gave it credit for.[2]

 

David Sachs quoted the 126^th Psalm.  Take out your red pew Bibles and turn to page 584 in the Old Testament.  Let’s read the Psalms 126 together:

When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,

we were like those who dream.

Then our mouth was filled with laughter,

and our tongue with shouts of joy.

Then it was said among the nations,

"The Lord has done great things for them."

The Lord has done great things for us,

and we rejoiced.

Restore our fortunes, O Lord,

like the watercourses in the Negeb.

May those who sow in tears

reap with shouts of joy.

Those who go out weeping,

bearing the seed for sowing,

shall come home with shouts of joy,

carrying their sheaves.

 

“Our mouth was filled with laughter.”

 

In 1855 Charles Baudelaire said, “Laughter is satanic, and, therefore, profoundly human.”  It reveals our assumed superiority, but really is a sign of our infinite wretchedness before God and a sigh of our infinite grandeur before animals.[3]

…Charles Baudelaire was a doofus.  My wife tries to teach her students the “principle of charity,” that you should carefully listen to or read what the person says, try to understand it from their side, get behind what they say, before dismissing it.  So I took a step back and reread, tried to understand, and finally came to this conclusion: Charles Baudelaire was a doofus.

Laughter is not satanic.  It is music.  Yes, it is human and related to our humility, but it rises above humility and connects us to the forgiven saints.  And no matter how silly, goofy, loud or soft, laughter is music—like that of angels over a field of sheep and smelly men singing, “Gloria in excelsis Deo; Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace!”  Laughter is music—like the song of a young girl, pregnant and full of joy singing, “My soul rejoices in the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my Savior!”  We Christians can be so sure and full of joy that our laughter is—far from being a sign of infinite wretchedness—but our laughter is sure of God’s love for us and, because of that love, sure of our place before him.

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his book Life Together, called for joy, laughter and stories around the dinner table: “God cannot endure that unfestive, mirthless attitude of ours in which we eat our bread in sorrow, with pretentious busy haste, or even with shame.  Through our daily meals He is calling us to rejoice, to keep holiday in the midst of our working day.”[4]

And George Buttrick, one of my favorite preachers once claimed, “a profound book on laughter might be almost a final theology.”[5]

Laughter is a gift from God.

 

“Wait a second, Pastor Greg!  What about off-color humor and laughter?  You’re not suggesting that kind of laughter is a gift from God?”

 

There was an old man from Darjeeling,

Who boarded a bus bound for Ealing,

He saw on the door:

“Please don’t spit on the floor,”

So he stood up and spat on the ceiling.[6]

A man once complained that women have no sense of humor.  Mrs. Patrick Campbell replied, “Do you know why God withheld the sense of humour from women?  That we may love you instead of laughing at you.”[7]

With some off-color humor, I would much rather hear the laughter, than see people nodding in agreement.  Laughter is a gift from God that, like most gifts from God, can be misused terribly, cruelly.  But God meant it for joy and community.  It is almost sacramental in the way it can pull families and people together.

“Humor is one of God’s most marvelous gifts…humor makes our heavy burdens light, and smoothes out the rough spots in our pathways.”  Humor gives us the ability to see more clearly, gives a better perspective.  It can simplify the complex; it may deflate the pompous, or chastise the arrogant.  Humor may give a moral and adorn, or finish, the tale.[8] 

The tale ends with laughter.  The greatest story of all ends with laughter.  The Christian story ends with joyous, full, powerful, deep and Godly laughter and joy!

 

Today (in spite of the seriousness of John the Baptist’s preaching in the gospel lesson) has been traditionally called Gaudete Sunday.  Everyone say, “Gaudete.”  It means, “Rejoice!”  This is a Joyous Sunday.

It is more obvious why this is a Sunday of Joy when you read the first couple of lessons.  Look again at the words of Zephaniah, especially the verbs: Sing aloud!  Shout!  Rejoice and exult with all your heart!  Do not fear.  And why?  Because God is in your midst.  God will rejoice over you; he will renew you in his love.  God will exult over you with loud singing!  Can you imagine God singing in joy, over you?

The Old Testament prophet Zephaniah and the New Testament prophet John the Baptist have some similarities in their preaching.  This is the only place in Zephaniah’s prophecy that calls for rejoicing, and it occurs right at the end of his book.  This is after Zephaniah has spoken of doom and judgment, God’s winnowing.

But out from those exhortations, rises a song of promise, a shout of good news.  Out from the grace that teaches my heart to fear, comes a grace that all my fears relieves.  So, the Apostle Paul in our second lesson—looking at Jesus Christ born among us and coming again as victorious King—Paul says, “Rejoice in the Lord always.  Again, I will say, rejoice!”

 

Gaudete, Joyous Sunday.  This Sunday rises up out of Advent, out of the dead of winter.  Like the evergreen, Advent joy is living and green against the dead and gray.  Like the Yule log, Advent joy is warm and bright against the cold and dark. 

Part of our Advent preparation in anticipating the King, maybe the most important part of preparing, is joy.  Lent is a season that becomes more and more somber and reflective before suddenly breaking open the tomb with the boisterous song and joy of Easter. 

But Advent is an anticipation and joy that crescendos each day until it reaches that place of joy and presence with God that defies all words, when God literally comes among his people: a child out from the womb into human hands and arms, and a bed of straw.

Wide-eyed, a man and his wife will look into a manger.  There they will see the Laughter of God …in the flesh.  Jesus Christ—the Child King and the victorious King of Salvation—is the Laughter of God …in the flesh.  Amen.

 

Go to: sermon menu – or – archive – or – home page

To send comment or question (please put sermon title “Joyous Crescendo” in subject line): mailto:[email protected]