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| Shaking of the Foundation Psalm 121:1-8
Now, I love to get clues as to how to improve our preaching-moment relationship. Bob Crawford said early on “but he still hasn’t told a joke.” I tell Bob I’m still looking. Now Pat Ameling loaned me a book this week that brings me closer to a joke. Here’s this story: The Scots, from the days of John Knox, and American Presbyterians generally, practice a rather dour, not too aesthetic, liturgical routine in their ceremonies. Oh, they have them all right! One stands out in my memory:-- In a little church in Springfield, Oregon, way back in the late 1950’s, I was a member of a team appointed by The Presbytery of Willamette to install a new minister. We entered with reasonable dignity, be-robed in forensic black, walked down the center aisle, and sat in the front of the sanctuary. Later I thought of the proverb: “Pride goes before a fall.” However as I awaited my turn, I was anything but proud of the slouchy posture and casual gait of some of my colleagues as they sauntered up to the rather meager chancel to carry out their assignments: prayers, scripture readings, and homilies. Having served in the military during World War II, and before that, as an officer in my High School ROTC, I resolved that I would approach the pulpit with erect posture, an even stride and make precise angled turns as I made my way. As I reached the stairs to the platform, a little rug slipped under my tread, and suddenly I was flat on my face. My wife, sitting in the back, feared I had suffered a heart attack. With arms and feet on the floor, I arched my body on all fours and arose, as from the dead, and proceeded carefully to my station. My assignment was to give the Charge to the new pastor. After minutes of laughter that reminded me of a Bob Hope and Jerry Colonna show I had attended at Orly Field, near Paris, in 1944. I reached the pulpit and looked straight at the new man, Mr. Gardiner. “Milt, I charge you, first of all, do something about that rug.” Then I went to my meticulously prepared notes and delivered them as proudly yet reverently as possible above the lingering giggles. When I finished I turned with all the dignity I could muster and started toward my seat below. Ah, but can you believe it, the same little rug at the foot of the stairs, took me down again! Now the giggles swelling to gales of laughter accompanied me as I made it to my place and sat down. It is the custom in this ritual, for the newly installed minister to close the service with a benediction. Later Milton assured me that he had chosen his well ahead of time. A towering figure, he stood and in his exceptionally mellifluous voice, soothingly recited what had always been one of my favorites. It is from the end of the one chapter polemic in the New Testament, St. Jude: “Now unto Him who is able to keep you from falling, and to present you, faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy; to the only wise God our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power for ever and ever. Amen” “Amen,” I whispered, with mixed feelings about this vaulting return to the Transcendental. It resonated with the essential dignity of the institution we were all trying to represent. Twenty years later, while I was living in the New York metropolitan area, the phone rang, and I heard that same music voice of Milton Gardiner. “Stan, I have just been called to be the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Troy, New York, and I wonder if you can serve on the commission to install me.” “Milt, you have to be kidding,” I answered. “Stan, this church has wall-to-wall
carpeting.” * * * * Now an amazing thing happened here two weeks ago. A member of this church, a lay person, not an ordained person, stood up and preached. Full of the spirit, she stated “mainline Protestant churches are in trouble. Some church analysts predict the end of denominations as we know them within 50 years.” And about this church she said that RUC has a “double identity challenge.” What is God’s call to us? And we are confronting the “seismic destruction” of our former identity. “Our relation with CMR (Community Ministries of Rockville) will never be the same.” “The church that was RUC is no more and no ‘fix it’ approach will supplant the need to discover and articulate our new identity and call.” A double challenge. Some churches seek a new call for its direction. But to seek and find a new call and a new identity is a double-dosed challenge. What I see as amazing and remarkable about that happening here two weeks ago when Lois Stovall preached is not so much what she said: Those shocking truths have been becoming almost common knowledge among clergy and lay people who think about and are simply observant of churches of our sort. What remains amazing is people here were overwhelmingly positive and accepting of Lois and her message. It’s one thing to hear hard truths. It’s another thing to know how to accept them, how to hear. I believe that one of the “callings” (if you will) of the Christian Church today would be just this. “We know how to hear bad news.” Of course, we like that Gospel means “Good News.” We like the U.C.C. banner the United Church of Christ slogan – from of all people, the comedian Gracie Allen – “God is still speaking.” But how about the slogan, “we know how to hear bad news”!? Wouldn’t some folks be curious to know what it was about us that warranted that claim? Especially since there is so much, so very much, bad news! If there were a pill that could help people know how to hear bad news I think Pfizer could make as much of a profit as they did off of Viagra. It is then amazing and wonderful that you all very much liked hearing Lois speak hard truths and some bad news. It is not too surprising to me that you all were enthusiastic and positive – mostly – because I know you all to be clear-headed, hard-headed, rationally alert and emotionally strong. And you care. So even if the hard truth is: RUC may not be in 50 years anything like what it is now, at least looking honestly at what is going on in the churches and the world gives all of us a fighting chance to shape our future some, and to define our actions a lot! (It is unique and good that this congregation has so many members who can rise up and speak as Lois Stovall did two weeks ago and Michelle Beadle three weeks ago. Michelle’s sermon, deserves your second reading not only because it was, and she was also, so well received, but because it contains a profound and useful understanding of sin (that other bad news) – both theologically and psychologically.) Knowing how to take, hear and respond, to hard news is an outstanding characteristic of this congregation and is a true marker of your character and faith. Now I may be wrong, but I attribute a lot of this to your clear-headed thinking about reality. I wonder if you all don’t also have a good hearted feeling for life. Because to take hard analysis requires not only the light of reason but some balance by which you, we, lighten the load, lighten up. Humor, laughter, jokes and fun. These are also ways to help us know how to hear hard news. In fact more and more many of us combine the two: hard bad news with light good humor. We watch the Jon Stewart show and get our news from “the Daily Show” on Comedy Central or “The Colbert Report,” or how about “The Onion”? Do you ever read that? We found our first copy on the Metro going to a Nats game. Lord, we had trouble not rolling in the aisles. And I must say the writers in the Washington Post are the funniest, punchiest, news writers I’ve ever read. I can hardly bear the New York Times now – it’s so serious. It’s so boring, there’s no human voice or heart of psychological irony. In the NY Times, it’s like the news the way people used to think God would tell it: in somber sonorous tones – because obviously God doesn’t have a sense of humor! Or was that not obvious to you?! Did you miss out on the lesson: “God is not funny!?” Well, I didn’t! I got that lesson. My dad never told a joke in the pulpit, although we used to finally explode our suppressed comic anxiety during after-dinner prayer and Bible study. My mother, sister and I just couldn’t hold it in any longer when my dad’s seriousness so conflicted with some reality that had come up at supper. And my dad’s parting advice to me and Nancy when he was 92 and last visited our house was, “You all have too much fun!” We’ve been trying to cut back! So how can Christians lighten up the load as well as be enlightened about the load. The load of bad news the world brings us? Well you look for the contradiction between reality as you want it and reality as it is. The logic of humor -- (and Funny guy that I am, I actually read a book about the logic of humor by Arthur Koestler) the logic of humor is putting together, side by side – one after the other – two things that the brain doesn’t expect to have, or go, together. All slap-stick is that. What’s funny about watching Rev. Barlow, Mr. Bean, or Steve Martin, or Chevy Chase – interesting name – walking and then falling down? Well, nothing is really funny about that, especially when it happens to us, or could, as we say, have serious consequences. But the definition of humanity is that we are the animal that stands upright (hence our chronic lower back problems) and we walk and talk. And if our walk turns into a fall it’s not what the brain expects to see and the energy released within the brain as it copes with its surprise produces laughter. Laughter, at least this is Arthur Koestler’s theory, is a psycho-motor release of an electro-chemical tension based on the brain experiencing an unexpected mismatch between reality as it is and reality as expected. Well, welcome to our world! Welcome to our potentially funny, funny world, because if there is anything that has risen to the top characteristic of our world it’s that reality and expectations meet less and less. Wars are a good example, unintended consequences only being part of the gap between expectations and realities. And then we can think of wars on poverty, wars on drugs, and on and on. The logical possibilities of humor multiply by exponents, no? Well, now. How about humor in the God house, church, the God business, ministry; the God book, the Bible? Well, slim pickens for sure. I bet you missed the little joke set up between the two Bible readings, Psalm 121 and Matthew 8:23. Anybody would. But because we put on anti-humor blinders about religion; without retraining with some humor goggles, we never will. But I’ve been doing some retraining. So here it is. It’s not exactly a joke but you can begin to see, in those Bible passages, how some eye for humor might both enlighten our thinking, and lighten the burden of truth. The hidden humor potential was this: In Psalm 121, the Psalmist says that God, the Lord, who will be our help, well, he neither slumbers nor sleeps. He who keeps Israel “forevermore” will not sleep. Well o.k., but make a little religious video and fast forward to Jesus, the Lord, out in a boat at sea. Have the camera pan the darkening sky. Show some waves picking up. Let the narrator’s voice complete the Psalm of the ever-awake God. Show the eyes of the frightened disciples. Now follow that fly as it buzzes around and then lands on Jesus’ nose! Jesus, the Lord, our Lord. Asleep! Asleep in the midst of the gathering storm. Well, it’s got comic possibilities, but because it seems so irreverent, sacrilegious, we barely dare picture the gap between God-awake and God-asleep. And of course, Jesus wakes up and he thinks it’s odd they are upset. His expectations and their reality, he takes, if not humorously, at least lightly. His tone is clearly, what are you so worried about?! He is not taking their anxiety seriously and he is the pastoral counseling model of “non-anxious presence.” Jesus, it seems, assumes that our faith not his awakeness, is what matters. Humor is a great adaptive strategy as we face anxiety producing problems. And it is adaptive strategies not problem solutions that will save us – as a church, as well as families and nations, because the problems out pace the solutions. So we need strategies to adapt not solutions that solve. Humor is not only a way of lightening the load of problems (hence a strategy for coping and changing) humor also helps enlighten our thinking. And since as a progressive church we are in a struggle with unenlightened fundamentalists, see how humor is a great way to beat them in the religious market place. They don’t think God or the Bible is funny at all! Now we need an adaptive strategy on how to deal with the hard news Lois gave us about the fate of churches such as ours. And I’m recommending humor as one of them. If we don’t have some adaptive strategies we’ll go crazy and burn out with problem solving. Humor is an adaptive strategy for a lot of our major challenges, as leaders seeking our new call and defining our post CMR-identity. And, also for our common situation of having a new minister. In the drama of a new minister, the mismatch of expectations and realities between the minister and the congregation – the mismatch both ways is so big, always, that the potential for humor is almost unlimited and unavoidable. We will need that. A wise man told me this week, “Expectations lead to resentment.” He offered a prayer. “May we lower our expectations and raise our hopes.” When expectations are lived as hopes, the “should-this,” “should-that,” “shouldn’t-this,” “shouldn’t-that” become heartfelt hopes, not imperatives, and we become mutual, not adversarial. With expectation comes anxiety. With hope comes urgency. Otherwise, when we fall down and fall short, we will only have blame and anger, scapegoats and blood-sacrifices. And we will all fall down. Amen.
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