April 23, Holy Humor Sunday

Lesson: Psalm 100

Sermon Title: Make a Joyful Noise

(Back to Study Home Page)   (Back to Sermons for 2005-2006)
(Back to Sermons Home Page)   (Back to Shultz Home Page)

  1. Easter releases us from gloom and dreariness.

    1. We are to take time to celebrate and rejoice.

    2. Quotations from the ancients:

      1. "Risus paschalis - the Easter laugh," the early theologians called it. And the theme has echoed down through the centuries.

        1. St. Francis of Assisi advised: "Leave sadness to the devil. The devil has reason to be sad."

        2. Meister Eckhart, a 13th-century Christian mystic, wrote: "God laughed and begat the Son. Together they laughed and begat the Holy Spirit. And from the laughter of the Three, the universe was born."

        3. Martin Luther wrote: "God is not a God of sadness, but the devil is. Christ is a God of joy. It is pleasing to the dear God whenever thou rejoicest or laughest from the bottom of thy heart."

        4. John Wesley said: "Sour godliness is the devil's religion."

      2. The custom of Easter Monday and Bright Sunday celebrations may be rooted in the musings of early church theologians like Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa, and John Chrysostom that God played a practical joke on the devil by raising Jesus from the dead.

      3. FMC member Rev. Donald B. Strobe, former pastor of the First United Methodist Church in Ann Arbor, MI, describes Easter as "God's supreme joke played on that old impostor, death."

      4. Dr. Terry L. Lindvall, an authority on the wit and humor of C. S. Lewis, suggested that April Fools' Day should be put in the calendar of the Christian year.

        1. Wrote Lindvall:

          1. "There are two kinds of fools in the world: damned fools and what Paul calls 'fools for Christ's sake.' Paul himself is the one who legitimizes April Fools' Day for Christians.

          2. The cross is foolishness to those who do not believe; it is salvation, hope, love, and joy to those who do. It is a divine joke on Satan, the great deceiver.

      5. At Eastertide, wrote Protestant theologian Jurgen Moltmann, began "the laughing of the redeemed, the dancing of the liberated.

      6. Episcopal Bishop William C. Frey of Ambridge, PA, writes: "What, after all, is a joke? Isn't it something that turns the tables on the expected, something that hinges on the unpredictable or unreasonable? There's nothing more unreasonable than the resurrection of Jesus. And to believe in it is to be part of that huge practical joke that God plays on those who trust blindly in the sufficiency of human reason to unravel all problems and to answer every question."

"Easter is the morning when the Lord laughs out loud, laughs at all the things that snuff out joy, all the things that pretend to be all-powerful, like cruelty and madness and despair and evil, and most especially, that great pretender, death. Jesus sweeps them away with His wonderful resurrection laughter."

    1. Jesus loves a good party.

      1. He performed his first miracle at a wedding reception in Cana, turning water into wine.

      2. In the parable of the Prodigal son, Jesus tells us that the overjoyed father threw a big party for his returning son:

        1. But the father said to his slaves, 'Quickly, bring out a robethe best oneand put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found' And they began to celebrate, (Luke 15:22-24, NRSV).

        2. Don"t forget the response of the other son in Luke 15:28-30.

          1. 28 Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him.

          2. 29 But he answered his father, 'Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends.

          3. 30 But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!'

    2. One of the most important antidotes for over-seriousness is laughter.

(Top)    (Back to Study Home Page)   (Back to Sermons for 2005-2006)
(Back to Sermons Home Page)   (Back to Shultz Home Page)

  1. In her article, It"s No Joke: Humor Heals, Laughter may be jest what patients need, by Patricia Barry (1)

    1. "It is hard to imagine a more anxious scene: A child about to have a heart transplant waits with her anxious parents in a room at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City. But then a clown is invited in and makes a suggestion: "I think we need to perform a red-nose transplant."

      1. "The clown measures the parents' noses, then offers a selection of scarlet globes: 'OK go ahead and pick your nose.'

      2. Or, if one drops and rolls on the floor: 'Can't use that one - ifs a runny nose." The child laughs, the parents relax, the mood in the room lightens perceptibly.

    2. "The power of humor is at work, consoling and healing."

      1. "Or take another example: An 82-year-old patient at Morton Plant Hospital in Clearwater, Fla., who has suffered chronic hip pain for seven years, confides in her doctor that she's always wanted to be a clown.

      2. So he writes out a formal prescription: "Send this lady to Clown School."

      3. She takes the class and joins the hospital's volunteer comedy team.

      4. On one of her wig-and-makeup days, someone asks how she is, and she replies, "I feel no pain right now."

    3. Such scenes are slowly becoming more common as health professionals begin to accept the value of mirth as a vital force in care and recovery. A small but growing number of American hospitals, nursing homes and recuperation centers now bring in clowns, provide "humor carts' to distribute funny books and videos or send patients to "humor rooms" for daily doses of jokes and laughter.

    4. "Humor undoubtedly has positive health benefits," says Steve Sultanoff, a California psychologist and president of the 600-member American Association for Therapeutic Humor (AATH). "It changes our emotional state, our perspective on life and, through laughter, our physiological state."

    5. The idea is scarcely new.

      1. "A merry heart doeth good like a medicine," says the Bible.

      2. And lightening up makes anyone feel better.

      3. But it is only over the past decade that humor in medicine to the extent of joking around with seriously ill patients-has gained respectability.

    6. It is promoted by organizations like the AATH and the Humor Project Inc. through international conferences and training workshops. Journals, newsletters and Web sites are devoted to it. Lists of jokes are posted on the Internet.

    7. Now, with actor Robin Williams playing the true story of Patch Adams, a Virginia doctor who defied medical gravitas for three decades to make patients laugh, there's even a movie.

    8. Much of the impetus for today's humor advocacy began almost 30 years ago when writer Norman Cousins published 'Anatomy of an Illness,'

      1. (This is) an account of how he fought intense pain and beat a deadly disease by deliberately dosing himself with humorous books and reruns of "Candid Camera.'

      2. His story raised a new question: Can humor actually modify the effects of disease, and, if so, how does it do it?

    9. "Real understanding will not come until scientists have unraveled the complex biochemistry of emotions.

      1. But research by such pioneers as William F. Fry Jr., M.D., emeritus professor of clinical psychiatry at Stanford University, and Lee Berk and Stanley Tan of Loma Linda University, Calif., already suggests that "mirthful laughter" does much more than we think.

      2. It can:

        1. provide exercise by increasing the heart rate, stimulating blood circulation and breathing, and improving muscle tone. Fry found that he could double his heart rate while convulsed by Laurel and Hardy and calculated that 100 laughs equals, 10 minutes on a rowing machine. Cousins called it "inner jogging."

        2. reduce pain, probably by firing the release of endorphins, the body's natural painkillers. Several studies show that laughing lessens the need for medication and shortens recuperation time.

        3. reduce stress by lowering levels of cortisol, a stress hormone that can weaken the immune System.

        4. stimulate the immune system, probably in complex ways. Berk and Tan found "significant increases" of interferon-gamma, a hormone that fights viruses and regulates cell growth, in a group of healthy men while they watched a 60-minute humorous video-and that levels remained higher than normal 12 hours later.

        5. stimulate mental functions, such as alertness and memory, perhaps by raising levels of adrenalin and other chemicals that prepare the body for action. One study recorded a wave of electricity sweeping through the entire brain half a second after the punch line of a joke.

(Top)    (Back to Study Home Page)   (Back to Sermons for 2005-2006)
(Back to Sermons Home Page)   (Back to Shultz Home Page)

CONCLUSION

  1. It is no wonder that the writer of Proverbs wrote:

    1. A cheerful heart is a good medicine, but a downcast spirit dries up the bones (Proverbs 17:22, NRSV).

    2. Good laughing

1. 1Patricia Barry, Its No Joke: Humor Heals, AARP Bulletin, Vol 40. No. 4, Washington, DC (April, 1999)

(Top)    (Back to Study Home Page)   (Back to Sermons for 2005-2006)
(Back to Sermons Home Page)   (Back to Shultz Home Page)