O God be in my mouth as I speak for you..and fill this place with your great grace that we may leave this place less of what we use to be and more of what we ought to be, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen…
As
a priest I get my fair share of religious jokes…The following is one of my
personal favorites…
Moses,
Jesus and some old geezer are going to play a round of golf at the local
country club.
Moses
tees off and the ball goes right into the pond. No Problem. Moses walks over,
parts the water and hits the ball again, where it lands about 1 foot from the
hole.
Jesus
then tees off and the ball goes flying off to the left, hits a tree, then
miraculously bounces to about six inches from the hole.
The old geezer steps up, tees off, the ball heads
right for the pond, a huge bass jumps up grabs the ball in its mouth, suddenly
an eagle swoops down, grabs the bass and flies over the green, the bass drops
the ball and it rolls about two inches from the hole. All of a sudden a worm
pops up and knocks the ball in. A hole in one.
Moses
looks at Jesus and says, “You know I really hate playing with your old man.”
After studying the bible for many years, jokes like this one make me wonder whether well-known biblical figures had good senses of humor.
For
example from what I know about their respective personalities, I could actually
see the joke above taking place.
Remember
Moses spent forty years in the wilderness with the children of Israel….he had
to have had a good sense of humor to put up with all the complaining that went
on….
Moses
we don’t have enough food, Moses we don’t have enough to drink, Moses are we
there yet…
Let’s
face it, Moses wouldn’t have lasted forty minutes without a sense of humor….
And
it is has never been hard for me to think that our Lord, had a sense of humor
and an infinite amount of patience,
Think
for a moment about the apostles. Was
there ever a bunch of bigger blockheads?
Time
and time again our Lord told them what he was going to do, when he was going to
Jerusalem, that he would be crucified, that he would rise on the third day etc.
etc….and still, still they never got it……
Of
course, I firmly believe that Adam and Eve invented humor…remember, one of the
first comic exchanges in the Old Testament happens when God says to Adam did
you eat the fruit of the tree…
Adam
looks around for a moment and instantly passes the buck…not me God,…but you see
that woman over there the one that you gave me…she ate the fruit, not me..I’m
innocent….
And
Noah probably had the best sense of humor in all of Genesis…can you imagine
getting all those animals together on the ark……
having
to feed them, the clean-up on the ark(yuck), the grooming and vet bills….Noah
had to have a good sense of humor about the vagaries of human life……
I
suspect that King David also had a good sense of humor….which possibly helps
explain his luck with the ladies…..
However,
I am fairly certain that Jeremiah did not have a sense of humor…something about
his writing indicates that he was just not a fun person to be around….
Just
listen to this, (Woe is me, my mother, that you ever bore me, a man of strife
and contention to the whole land)…
You
might also recall that his cheery disposition got him tossed into a well by the
king’s guards…
Something
about Jeremiah’s personality just rubbed folks the wrong way, and I doubt you
will ever find him as a principal character in a golfing joke….
A
sense of humor is also missing from the major figure that appears each year on
the Second Sunday of Advent…John the Baptist…..
Listen
again to what he has to say ”you brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from
the wrath to come? Bear fruit that befits repentance, and do not presume to say
for yourselves, “We have Abraham as our father, for I tell you God is able from
these stones to raise up children to Abraham”.
These
venomous words are spoken to the religious establishment coming out from
John
says these harsh words to a group of men that he suspects are solely there for
the photo op.
The
religious leaders of
Without
a hint of humor he accuses them of hypocrisy…
We
hear John criticizing the Pharisees and Sadducees attempts to claim that their
heritage as Abraham’s children gives them special status….
John’s
message to them is swift and harsh…..Abraham is not going to do you any good,
for God is able to raise up children from the stones found on the ground about
them.
As
a figure in Advent John the Baptist reiterates the message we heard last week,
be ready and be prepared….the
As
symbol of all the prophets that have come before him, John is caught up in the
apocalyptic fervor of his day. He is consumed by visions of the end of time and
has little time for jokes or humor.
John
preaches about a messiah that will baptize with spirit and bring a fire that
will incinerate those that fail to be faithful to God.
John’s
humorless presence is another warning to us on this second Sunday that we
should be prepared and that we should always be ready for the coming of the
Lord……
Of
course, part of the humor of our story is that John did not get the messiah
that he wanted…..
Think
about it, John preaches about a Messiah who will ride into town like an old
western hero with his guns ablazing….
But
instead of a gunfighter, John gets Jesus.
He
gets this seemingly insignificant fellow from the backwater town of
John
gets someone who is his complete opposite….
John
tells people that something terrible is coming, the wheat will be put into the
granary and the chaff will be burned….
John
meets a messiah whose message is one of love and hope for a people suffering
from the burden of their sins…..
Instead
of getting a messiah who will throw the Romans out of
And
most radical of all he tells his followers that they must love even the hated
Samaritans and Romans as their neighbors….
The
arrival of the messiah heralds not a time of judgment and fear but a time of
hope and an opportunity to make a new start with God.
The
unquenchable fire, John speaks of, can wait for another day……
What
strikes me as most humorous about our story, is that John gets something he
does not expect…..
This
is why later in Matthew’s Gospel, we see John sending his followers to question
Jesus after John has been arrested by Herod….”are you the one that is to come
or should we expect another?” ….John is
not sure what to make of this Jesus.
Our
Lord’s answer is telling…he does not say yes or no…
But
tells John’s followers to look around them and tell John the signs are all
around him
The
blind can now see, the lame can walk, lepers are healed, and the dead are
brought back to life…and blessed are folks who do not take offense at Jesus’
words or his actions…
Like
so many of us in life, John expects the worst that God can offer and he finds
instead that God loves this world and God is going to do something completely
unexpected…
Most
of us, expect God to be this humorless distant figure uninvolved with our
world….we don’t want to give God the opportunity to really change our lives….
We
are so reluctant to give up control, to admit our lives are a mess ,and that we
each need God’s help to become that person who truly is “more of what they
ought to be”…
Yet
this is one of the main themes of Advent, God chooses to act in ways and
through people that are completely different from our expectations…..
God
chose David the youngest son of Jesse to be his greatest king.
God
chose Mary, a insignificant woman living in
Jesus
chose Peter, an uneducated fisherman, to be his greatest apostle.
And
on this Sunday, God chooses you….and God chooses me to join in God’s great plan
to bring salvation to a suffering world. To embody in our own lives the good
news that Jesus told to John’s disciples…. The blind will see, the lame will
walk, the sick will be healed and the spiritually dead are brought back to life….
You
probably weren’t expecting this to happen….but Advent is all about finding out
that God has faith in each of us.…
and
that given time, and a good sense of humor, God is ready for each of us to do
something completely wonderful….and more importantly completely unexpected…..AMEN..