Holy Humor Sunday Sermon

“The Breath of Jesus: Balloons and Laughter”

The Rev. Dr. Leah D. Schade

April 27, 2014

Texts: John 20:19-31

“Laughter is the best medicine,” as the saying goes.  And there’s medical research to back that up.  “Over the years, researchers have conducted studies to explore the impact of laughter on health. After evaluating participants before and after a humorous event (i.e., a comedy video), studies have revealed that episodes of laughter helped to reduce pain, decrease stress-related hormones and boost the immune system in participants.  Today more than ever before, people are turning to humor for therapy and healing. Medical journals have acknowledged that laughter therapy can help improve quality of life for patients with chronic illnesses. Many hospitals now offer laughter therapy programs as a complementary treatment to illness.” (http://www.cancercenter.com/treatments/laughter-therapy/, accessed April 15, 2014)

What better place to employ this kind of medicine than church?  How many of us bring the pain of life into the pew with us and are seeking a few moments of relief?  And isn’t it wonderful that we have Jesus himself modeling laughter for us!  

Jesus’ breathing on his disciples could be thought of as the “holy laugh” that brings forgiveness and new life.  How good it feels to take in that air, feel it expanding our lungs, and expelling it in a physiological act unique to the human animal—laughing. 

They even use Laughter Clubs to treat patients dealing with cancer.  Patients put their fingertips on their cheekbones, chest or lower abdomen and make “ha ha” or “hee hee” sounds until they felt vibrations through their bodies. Let’s try it!

It is hard for people not to join in because laughter is so contagious.  According to one of the doctors who leads these Laughter Clubs, at the end of a laughter therapy session, patients have said things like "I didn't even think about cancer during Laughter Club," and "That felt great! Things have been so hard that we hadn't laughed in months." One eight-year-old daughter of a cancer patient who attended Laughter Club said afterwards: "I never thought about laughing every day, but now I realize I can. Like even when I don't feel happy, I can still laugh and feel better."

As I’ve said many times before, Jesus was a trickster, and he loved to make people laugh.  

Kids loved to be around him because he told humorous stories, poked fun at the stuffy religious leaders, and rode that donkey like a tricycle into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.  In a few weeks we’ll see Jesus fill the room of disciples with the rushing wind of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost. 

And today he’s appearing out of thin air, like a rabbit out of the magician’s hat, and breathing into that room like he’s blowing up a balloon.

[Kids pass out balloons] Now, everyone blow up your balloon, and just pinch the end.  Don’t tie it off – just hold it like that.  What do you notice about the balloon compared to before when there was no air in it?  How is it different?  (Changed shape, more colorful, pushing out our edges, expanded, we get filled up)

This is what happens when the breath of Jesus fills us.  We are changed, expanded, filled up.  We are not the same as we were.

Now, when I count to three everyone let go of your balloon.  What happened, what did you notice? 

(It takes off, things are in motion, it impacts someone else, you can't predict where it's going to go, it comes back to us, it can be done again.)

That’s what happens when Jesus releases us out into the world as his disciples.  Things take off.  People are in motion.  People’s lives are impacted.  And you can never predict where it’s going to go.

Who would have guessed that one year ago as we mourned the death of our beloved Rich Huff that new life would be breathed into our congregation through the Chinese and Silent Auction that has raised thousands of dollars for children and families in need in our area.  Talk about a breath of fresh air!

Who would have guessed that six months ago as Devon and Jindrah Kemper lay in intensive care, their bodies precariously balanced between life and death, and then facing months of therapy and recovery, that today they are dancing and laughing along with the rest of us!  Talk about a breath of fresh air!

What did you hear when we released those balloons into the air?  Noise, yes, and laughter. 

But also pffftt - when we do things in the congregation that are filled with the holy ruah breath of Christ, we can expect that some people will go ppppffftt.  Thomas certainly did.  What a tragedy that God’s comedic timing seemed off that day.  Thomas was not in the room when that breath of forgiveness and new life blew across his fellow disciples.  And so when he was told, he dismissed it: pffftt!  There are many Thomases in this world who see only the death and destruction around them and find no reason to rejoice, no reason for hope.

One of my favorite movies as a child was called The Red Balloon.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2Y1tRBOXfA

It was a 1950’s French short film about a boy who is befriended by a balloon that seems to be alive.  

It follows him everywhere, watches over him, accompanies him wherever he goes. 

The boy comes to love the balloon who is his companion in his lonely life.  It is a delightful story about wonder and joy.  But one day the bullies in the neighborhood set their sights on the boy and his balloon, chasing him through the city and attacking him.  

A mean child takes aim at the big red balloon with his slingshot, and a stone pierces the balloon.  

I literally felt myself deflate with sadness watching the balloon die, its shiny skin crinkling and shrinking as it fell to the ground.  It was one of the saddest moments I can remember as a child, the first time I watched a thing of innocence and beauty lose its breath of life.

But then, watch what happens (minute mark 30:30:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2Y1tRBOXfA)

I can imagine that this is how Thomas felt when he finally encountered the risen Christ for himself. 

Lifted up with hope and the breath of new life, we, too, are carried on the wind from God.  We are like all those balloons, sent to the ones who need to be filled with Christ's Spirit.  Freed from sorrow, at least for this moment, we can let loose with our laughter, blow our kazoos, sing Zippity Doo Dah, and dance around like holy fools! 

May God’s joke on evil and death tickle your funny bone!  May the laughter of Christ fill your lungs and your body with hope!  And May the balloon of the Holy Spirit lift you up and fill you with joy!  Amen! 

Ecotheological Commentary: Second Sunday of Easter, Holy Humor Sunday

Care for Creation Commentary on the Common Lectionary by Leah Schade

Second Sunday of Easter in Year A

Acts 2:14a, 22-32

Psalm 16

1 Peter 1:3-9

John 20:19-31

For a growing number of churches, the Second Sunday of Easter is celebrated as “Holy Humor Sunday.” In the early church, the Sunday after Easter was observed by the faithful as a day of joy and laughter with parties and picnics to celebrate Jesus’ resurrection. The custom of Bright Sunday, as it was called, came from the idea of some early church theologians that God played a practical joke on the devil by raising Jesus from the dead. Easter was God’s supreme joke played on death—risus paschalis—“the Easter laugh!” On this Sunday people dress in clown outfits, paint their faces, wear underwear on the outside of their clothes, men dress as women (and vice versa), and jugglers and jokesters add to the carnival of joy. As Campbell and Cilliers describe it: "Christian carnivals and other carnivalesque celebrations embody the new age—the new, inverted order—that has broken into the world in Jesus Christ” (Charles L. Campbell and Johan H. Cilliers, Preaching Fools: The Gospel as a Rhetoric of Folly, Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2012, p. 77).

Preaching on this Sunday might interpret Jesus’ breathing on his disciples as the “holy laugh” that brings forgiveness and new life. How good it feels to take in that air, feel it expanding our lungs, and expelling it in a physiological act unique to the human animal—laughing. Further, the image of the divine ruah, or breath of God, could be developed from an ecotheological perspective in terms of the breath of fresh air for which our planet, choking on pollution and climate disruption, longs. Like Ezekiel prophesying to the wind in the Valley of Dry Bones, the very Spirit of God enters into lifeless bodies and revives them. In a great rush the wind blows—the same wind that blew across the waters of creation; the same wind that parted the Red Sea; the same wind that will blow into an upper room in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost. This wind—the same wind that was first blown into the lungs of Adam—is blown into the lungs of the disciples bereft and grieving, and today is blown into our atmosphere longing to be set free.

Read more:
http://www.lutheransrestoringcreation.org/the-second-sunday-of-easter-in-year-a

Sermon: Maundy Thursday – “Those Who Wash”

THIS BLOG POST HAS MOVED TO PATHEOS.COM!

Maundy Thursday disorients us. On purpose. Think of the implications of what Jesus was doing. For those who wash, their status is lifted.

Click below for the reflection on Maundy Thursday:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/ecopreacher/2017/04/those-who-wash-maundy-thursday/

Sermon: Palm Sunday (The Tricycle Sermon)

The Rev. Dr. Leah D. Schade
Palm Sunday, April 13, 2014
Texts:  Philippians 2:5-11, Matthew 21:1-9

[Beginning from the back of the congregation]. Let’s rewind back to the beginning of our service.  Everyone stand up and hold your palm branches.  We began our story at Bethphage which is a little town right on the outskirts of Jerusalem.  And what happens?  Jesus sends two disciples into the town on an errand.  He says to go into the town where they’ll find a donkey, which they are to untie and bring to him.  And sure enough, they return with a donkey, which Jesus sits on and rides into Jerusalem.

Now we’ve heard this story so many times in our lives that this does not seem out of the ordinary to us.  But to the people who gathered along the roadside to welcome Jesus into Jerusalem, this was a ridiculous sight.  They called him, “Son of David.”  This means they regarded him as the rightful heir of the throne of Israel.  They thought of him as a king.  They knew the stories about Jesus’ power - the healings, casting out demons, bravely confronting the Jewish religious authorities.  To them, this was the Messiah, the Anointed One whom they and all of Israel had been hoping for since the glory days when King David ruled over Israel and conquered the surrounding lands in the name of Yahweh.

But does their king come riding into Jerusalem on a chariot befitting someone of his stature?  No.  Does he ride a fabulously decorated horse and regally trot through the gate?  No.  He’s sitting on a donkey.  This would be the equivalent of the Queen of England straddling a tricycle and pedaling into London.  

[Watch the sermon here:] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spCARi-MY1Q&feature=share

Wave your palms and shout, Hosanna to the Son of David! (ride tricycle down the aisle).  Wasn’t that ridiculous? 

(You can have a seat now.) Or think of President Obama making a triumphant trip into Washington DC.  How does the president get from country to country?  Air Force One - his own private military jet.  And how does he get to the Capital?  He rides in an armored limo surrounded by an armored motorcade that whisks him through the city. 

Now imagine if, instead of this stately motorcade, Barack Obama was riding in one of those little clown cars. All political jokes aside, this would be a comical sight, wouldn’t it? 

The humor in this situation would not have been lost on the crowds gathered along the roadside.  In fact, they might have been a little put off by what they saw.  What does he think he’s doing, riding a donkey into Jerusalem?  This is not befitting the king of Israel.  What’s going on here?

There they are, spreading their cloaks and palm branches in front of him.  This is their way of indicating how highly they regard Jesus.  It would be like laying out the red carpet at the Oscars only to have the movie star walk in wearing muddy boots and work clothes.  They are throwing down their cloaks and palms for this man they adore and he’s acting like a commoner.  Jesus is actually poking fun at himself, satirizing the pedestal upon which they are trying to place him.

The crowds seem oblivious to the joke.  Undeterred by the comic discrepancy, they begin shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David!  Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!  Hosanna in the highest heaven!”  Do you know what the word “hosanna” means?  It means, “save us, we pray.”  They are expecting Jesus to whip them into a frenzy of violent revolutionary upheaval, and to use his demonstrated power to wreak havoc upon the Roman military, drive the oppressor from their holy land, and go on to conquer the world in the name of Yahweh - just like King David.  But instead, Jesus is riding around on the equivalent of a tricycle.  What’s going on here?

 

Jesus is trying to open their eyes.  A few weeks ago, Jesus opened the eyes of a man born blind.  Today he’s doing the same thing.  He’s trying to get the crowds to see something that they are blind to.  What is it that they are supposed to see? 

According to the Jewish calendar, Jesus arrived in Jerusalem on the 10th day of the month of Nisan prior to the Passover.  “The 10th of Nisan was the day on which the Passover lamb was selected.  On this day Jesus symbolically presented himself to the people as Messiah intent on being the Passover Lamb,” (Horton, p. 437).  What Jesus is trying to get them to see is that he is not the Messiah they want him to be.  Jesus is not going to exercise his power through violence. 

Biblical scholar Stanley Horton explains:  “Jesus’ actions showed that he is not a king of violent or political force; rather he is a humble king, offering salvation and ruling with peace.  The Messiah foretold by the prophets was a direct contradiction to the popular expectations . . . In contrast to earthly kings who used horses, chariots and other symbols of war to show their might, this King distinguished himself by riding upon a donkey.  Donkeys were not used for warfare.  They were a simple beast of burden, used by the common person for transportation and carrying loads during times of peace.” (Horton, 439, 441.) 

Let me be clear here.  Jesus is not rejecting power, but only its use to dominate others.  He is not rejecting greatness, but is showing how it is to be used to be in solidarity with the needy at the bottom of society (Wink, 111).  He is trying to open everyone’s eyes to a different way to exercise power.  And the way he’s doing it is through humor, self-deprecation, and symbolism that is in accordance with ancient prophecy.  His donkey ride on Palm Sunday is at once comic and tragic, meant to jar us with its contrasts, and open our eyes to see things in a different way.

As I think of this man on a donkey, I think of other images that have entered into our modern consciousness that have shaken us up and gotten us to think in a different way.  The picture from the 60’s of the war protester putting a flower into the barrel of a soldier’s rifle.  

It is at once comic and jarring in its contrast of military power versus idealistic peace.  A flower is no match for a gun!  Exactly.

The picture from the 80’s of that lone student in Tienamen Square facing the phalanx of army tanks. 

It is at once comic and tragic in its portrayal of human rights versus military might.  A single unarmed man is no match for a powerful army.  Exactly.

And then I think of the story of Ashley Smith, a woman who was tied up in her apartment by an armed rapist and murderer.  She talked to him gently about God, family and pancakes, until he released her, and then gave himself up to authorities peacefully.  It’s at once laughable and terrifying.  A single unarmed woman is no match for a muscular criminal holding a gun to her head.  Exactly.

And yet what happened in all of these instances? 

The power of nonviolence seeped into the consciousness of domination and began to turn the tide.  The images and stories are so powerful that they become icons for what is possible when we begin to see things in a different way.

Later, after Ashley Smith was released unharmed, one of the police officers said, “It was an absolutely best-case scenario that happened, a complete opposite of what you expected to happen.  We were prepared for the worst and got the best.”

We are prepared for the worst, aren’t we?  We know what we’re heading into this week.   Jesus’ commitment to nonviolence will, ironically, lead to his most violent death.  A single unarmed man is no match for the government and the religious establishment; a single man hanging on a cross is no match for the power of death.  Exactly.

And yet, what is happening here?  Jesus is determined to open the eyes of someone -- even if it is just a few blind men and women along the way.  Even if it’s just your eyes that become open.  He wants people to see that having power does not give one the right to lord it over others by means of wealth, shaming or violence.  Power is not to be used to grab all you can and then do anything you can to protect what you’ve got. 

Jesus is giving us another way to see power.  And how are we supposed to see it?  No one says it better than Paul:  “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself, and became obedient to the point of death - even death on a cross.  Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

“Crown Him With Many Crowns,” we’ll sing in a moment.  But how can we crown a king who wants no crown or throne, and wants to ride around on a silly donkey?  We can do the same thing the crowds did thousands of years ago.  We can take our palms and say, 

“Hosanna” -- save us, we pray.  Save us from ourselves.  Save us from our blindness.  Open our eyes.  Let us see the truth.  Let us see how you want us to enact power in this world in God’s name.

And then with this prayer on our lips, we can have faith in our hearts that even while the world around us is preparing for the worst . . . we know that we can expect the best.  Amen.
     
Sources:    
     Horton, Stanley, The New Testament Study Bible, Matthew, Executive Editor:  Ralph W. Harris; World Library Press, Inc., Springfield, MI, 1986.
     Wink, Walter, Engaging the Powers, Fortress Press, Minneapolis, MN, 1992

Sermon: Re-membering the Dry Bones

Watch the video of this sermon here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwL51yltXPw#t=60

The Rev. Dr. Leah D. Schade, PhD

Ezekiel 47:1-14; John 9:1-41
United in Christ Lutheran Church, Lewisburg, PA

April 6, 2014

[Begin singing “Dem Bones.”]

I remember the first time I looked at dry bones.  I was walking in the woods as a kid, exploring along a deer trail that went along a little creek winding its way through a valley of trees.  Suddenly I came upon a skeleton of an animal, the white bones jutting up out of the soil.  

A small patch of fur was the only thing left of what had covered those bones.  They had been picked clean by turkey buzzards, beetles, and invisible microbes.  It was a bit horrifying for an eleven-year-old, seeing the remains of death so clearly out in the open.  “Can these bones live?”

A short time later, I saw another collection of bones.  One of the more ambitious students in my 6^th grade class decided she wanted to reconstruct the entire skeleton of a chicken for her science project.  She and her father spent countless hours identifying the tiny bones and wiring and gluing them together piece by piece, joint to joint, until she had a macabre display of the inner bone structure of that chicken.  

My classmates and I gathered around her display silently, awed both by the meticulous work she had done, and the shiny blue ribbon that adorned her tri-fold poster display.  “Can these bones live?”  She later went on to become a doctor and undoubtedly fixed and reconstructed countless bones in her practice.

But what Ezekiel sees in that desolate valley of his dreams is no science project.  Nor is it a sorry skeleton of one decayed animal in the woods.  He’s looking at an entire community of people decimated, their lives long ago destroyed and their flesh just a dried up memory.

It is generally assumed by biblical scholars that Ezekiel was transported to Babylon along with the rest of what remained of Israel during the first exile very early in the 6^thcentury B.C.E. The prophet watched King Nebuchadnezzar destroy Jerusalem to nothing but a pile of smoldering rubble, thousands of people murdered in the streets.  And he suffered with his remaining kinsfolk as slaves in Babylon, the memory of charred bones seared into their brains.  So when Ezekiel dreams of "dry bones," this is no idle nightmare.  This is a vivid mirror of the remains of his community.  The bones have been there a long time, picked clean, weathered, and bleached as desert sand. “Can these bones live?”

Ezekiel answers the question by deflecting it back to God.  “O Lord, only you know.”

But God puts it right back to Ezekiel.  “Prophesy to the bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.”

So Ezekiel, in a sense, preaches to those old dead bones.  And sure enough, like a scene from Night on Bald Mountain, the bones begin to rattle together, skeletons assembling themselves like some kind of ossified congregation.  Then before his very eyes, flesh forms over the bones until every last figure is covered with brand new skin.  But the bodies are not yet alive.  For that a second sermon is needed. 

This time Ezekiel is told to prophesy to the wind, the ruah, to invoke the very Spirit of God so that it may enter into those lifeless bodies and revive them.  In a great rush the wind blew in – the same wind that blew across the waters of creation; the same wind that parted the Red Sea; the same wind that will, in the future, blow into an upper room of bereft disciples in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost.  This wind – the same wind that was first blown into the lungs of Adam – now is blown into the lungs of this great congregation of Israel.  "’I will put My Spirit in you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I, the LORD, have spoken it and performed it,’ says the LORD.'"  This community that was dead in their bodies, dead in their faith, dead in their hope, is promised life again through the power of God.

Tony Morrison described another kind of dry-bones community in her book Beloved (1987), about the former slave population in post-Civil War America.  Every Saturday in the summer, the old woman preacher named Baby Suggs would go out to a place in the woods called The Clearing, with all the men, women and children following her.  There on a huge flat rock she would stand and preach to a gathering of what were essentially dry bones.  Men and women beaten physically and emotionally, their skin scarred, their bodies ravaged, their families ripped apart.  Children who had watched their parents humiliated, and who themselves had suffered hunger and physical abuse.  They were the remains of generations of human beings dragged from their homelands in Africa, much like Ezekiel and the Israelites many centuries before. 

“Can these bones live?”

Baby Suggs prophesies: “Here,” she said, “in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it… No more do they love the skin on your back. Yonder they flay it. And O my people they do not love your hands. Those they only use, tie, bind, chop off and leave empty. Love your hands! Love them! Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them, pat them together, stroke them on your face ‘cause they don’t love that either. You got to love it.”

  http://www.everydaycitizen.com/2009/07/baby_suggs_sermon.html

"This is flesh I’m talking about here. Flesh that needs to be loved. Feet that need to rest and to dance; backs that need support; shoulders that need arms, strong arms I’m telling you. And oh my people, out yonder, hear me, they do not love your neck unnoosed and straight. So love your neck; put a hand on it, grace it, stroke it, and hold it up. And all your inside parts that they’d just as soon slop for hogs, you got to love them. The dark, dark liver - love it, love it, and the beat and beating heart, love that too. More than eyes or feet… More than your life-holding womb and your live-giving private parts, hear me now, love your heart. For this is the prize."

The very breath of Baby Suggs preaching to that community brought God’s life back into them.

We are not a gathering of folks who have memory of such oppression and generational decimation.  But there are some among us who have known what it is to have their bodies treated as objects and abused.  

There are others who have watched their bodies broken in accidents, deteriorated by age or ill health.  And some of us have watched our loved ones reduced to nothing but dry bones.  The cemetery just outside these walls reminds us every week that we are surrounded by the memory of death.  

The valley of dry bones is as close as our parked cars, and if we were to walk the pathway, we could point to the names of those we have lost, crying together as much as Mary and Martha when their brother Lazarus had died.

What are we but a bunch of dry bones, our faith parched from the scorching heat of life, our ability to trust severed by so many betrayals, so many things gone wrong?  But each week we gather, unafraid to pass by those graves.  How hard it must be for some of you, looking out on those plots where we stood together after the funeral, the memory of grief and sadness washing over you just a little each time you come to church.  But you do not run away.  You gather your courage and step into this place and await the breath, the wind from God to blow over you and fill you with new life once more.  You take that God-given air into your lungs and sing the hymns, pray the prayers.  You move about the sanctuary during the passing of the peace and touch each other’s hands, embrace each other’s bodies.  You feed each other with the bread and blood of Christ, and later with the fellowship of our common Christian community.

And what’s more, you welcome other bodies into this place.  Every new person that steps into this church, do you know what their question is?  “Can these bones live?”  They want to know if God still has the power to breathe new life into them.  They want to know if they will encounter Jesus in this place and find someone who will laugh with them, weep with them, and prophesy the breath of God into them.

Here in this place we are, literally, re-membered.  Each of us rattling together in this assembly each week, we are the skeletal structure of a community of faith deeply in need of reconnection that only the power of God can give us.   Like bone joined to bone, sinews connected, muscles flexing, and protective skin encasing, we are the Body of Christ raised to new life every time we come together for worship. 

“Can these bones live?” Just watch!  [sing “Dem Bones” while “connecting” the members, hand-to-hand]