Where has all the humor gone?

We worshiped at Gold Hill Lutheran Church in Butte (Montana) yesterday where we heard a good sermon about the Lutheran take on baptism and the need for daily repentance and renewal.  A good Lenten homily, but rather sobering.

The pastor at Gold Hill has a good sense of humor though.  He is Tim Christensen, the same one who gained national - maybe world - attention when a video of him went viral a couple of  months ago.  We caught it several times on network national news. It was put on YouTube as well.  By Monday evening it had something like a million u-tube hits.  (not sure of the number, but lots) 
You can see it here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbqVPt8zzWQ

 It turns out Pastor Tim pulled a bit of a 'hail Mary' play to show his love for the 49ers football team as reported by Mashable.  His favorite team, the San Francisco 49ers, were in a playoff game that day.  For those of you who don't follow professional football - the National Football League plays almost all of their games on Sunday and the starting time of games coincides with traditional church time in a large part of the country.  It's the reason many would give for not going to church, I guess.  Millions follow it "religiously".

While the short sermon and NFL passion were real, Tim wanted people to know it was all in fun, and after he made his hasty exist, he returned to the sanctuary and did a full worship service with liturgy and communion.  So, most people just got a good laugh out of it.  

But not all.  By Tuesday he was getting reactions from people around the country.  People called the church or put comments on Face-Book calling him some rather nasty names - said he was an abomination, sacrilegious, a disgrace, (and worse) etc, etc.  They were not interested in talking about it and listening... Mary, the secretary who took lots of the calls, said, "they mostly screamed into the phone". 

I've seen surveys asking non-church goers why they don't go to church.  Often one of the responses is that people in the church are too critical and humorless.  Well, apparently there's some truth to that in some quarters of the church. 

Talking to Pastor Tim yesterday, I asked him how that criticism affected him.  He said it put him to tears a couple of times, especially the criticism from people who said they were Christians.  His family told him he really needed to stop even looking at the comments.  However, he didn't get negatives from either his congregation or colleague Lutheran pastors.   "Over all it was about four positives to one negative on the calls", he said.   

Which brings me to the point about humor. I have been thinking about humor and laughter lately after I caught a little bit of a conversation on radio the other day. A scientist who studies the brain was talking about the positive health effects of laughter and humor.  He made the comment that laughter is not mentioned much in the Bible... He said only 29 times in the old Testament - and most of those were negative - like sarcasm and such.  I didn't check to see if that is a fact. I had never really thought much about it.  He also said it is not clear from the Gospel texts if Jesus ever laughed.  I have to think he did, as least the scriptures record the words Joy and Blessed a lot (sometimes blessed is translated as happy). 

An example:

These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. John 15:11

I guess if we are full of joy we would be bound to laugh, right?

And I like this verse from the Old Testament:

Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for it is now that God favors what you do.  Ecclesiastes 9:7  (NIV)

What do you think?  What part does humor and laughter play in Christian life and worship?  

Having a good laugh with the grand kids

What to do about Lent?

The word Lent comes from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning springtime.

Lent has crept up on me again.  It starts on Ash Wednesday, March 5th, and continues for forty days after that.  

Though I can say that Lent is a season I look forward to, it is also  a season I am  never quite ready for.  I have some inner struggle about what to do about Lent- Should I fast? do a retreat? more intentional prayer?  good works?  give generously to good causes?

 I believe in all of these as worthy spiritual practices, but do them imperfectly and somewhat inconsistently.  Lent gives me a chance to do some of these practices with more intentionality - Luckily I have someone to accompany me and keep me on track, my good wife, Judy, besides a small group of fellow believers that will meet each week during Lent.

Again this year our friend Bruce McNab, an Episcopal priest, has written a short piece that helps set the framework.  Here are a couple of paragraphs from our church newsletter. 

"There’s a modern trend to pooh-pooh fasting and abstinence in Lent and insist that it’s better for Christians to “take on” something worthwhile rather than to “give up” something we’d be better off without anyway. I’m not trying to pick a fight with progressive contemporary clergy. More power to them. (Who could object to more good deeds being done by believers?) But I want to make a case for abstinence, no matter how many additional worthy works you might also want to take on during the forty days before Easter.

In the sixth chapter of Matthew, which is the gospel for Ash Wednesday, Jesus speaks about alms giving, prayer, and fasting—three regular practices of pious Jews. He assumes that his hearers are going to be engaged in all three; he doesn’t say “if you give alms,” or “if you pray,” or “if you fast.” He speaks of “when you give alms…and pray…and fast.” None of the three is optional. We also hear Jesus telling his followers that “unless they deny themselves, take up their crosses, and follow him,” they cannot enter the Kingdom of God. Fasting and self-denial go hand-in-hand as traditional Lenten disciplines.

Self-denial is not a form of masochism. Self-denial is essential if we’re going to follow Christ on the steep, upward way that leads to life. All of us have appetites, don’t we? Not just for food and drink, but for more money, a nicer car, a vacation place in Arizona (!), thicker hair, or a thinner waistline. We want stuff. For most of us, the stuff we want is innocent enough in a moral sense. But unbridled self-indulgence is unhealthy, even if the things we want are not evil in themselves. Giving in to our every whim turns us, in time, into utterly self-centered creatures, enslaved to our appetites. Jesus says that unless we deny ourselves we cannot be his disciples. We cannot enter his Kingdom."

 Some good thoughts to ponder and then act on. So, Judy and I have decided on our Lenten fast.  In fact I'm looking forward to it.  What about you?

In Montana we  have lots of snow as Lent begins, but Spring will be here by Easter (we hope)!

Change:

  

Last week-end we visited Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona.  

As we walked the rim trail we paused to look out at the amazing vista of colors and shades of light on ancient rock formations, the same scene that has entranced millions of visitors for over a century and probably some Native Americans who were here before us.

What struck me were the almost incomprehensible numbers of years it took for erosion to form this magnificent natural wonder.... counted in the billions of years.  We heard that this geological change is still going on ... the canyon grows deeper by about the width of a sheet of paper each year.. 

We stopped to gaze out in wonder just as my Great Aunt Ella Henning did 110 years ago... right at the grand Tovar Hotel, which was under construction when she visited in 1903! We marveled at the same sight from the same spot... though over a century of time separated us.    

This is what Aunt Ella wrote in her journal.  She was traveling by train and on this portion of the trip she had come from Albuquerque overnight into Arizona. The train route into the Grand Canyon had just been in place for two years - what she probably thought of as a very modern technological development.  It is interesting that we happened to stay at an old 1930s Route 66 motel in Williams, a small town she passed through ....

July 8, 1903:  

A little after noon we changed cars at Williams for the Grand Canyon, passing over a distance of about sixty-three miles.  The scenery was much similar to that we saw before reaching Williams, but not a living thing nor a single house was in sight, except in one place, I saw a team before a wagon.  This was near a mining station.

          We arrived at the canyon around four o'clock.  Such a grand sight, I never saw.  I had never for one minute imagined it to be what it really was.  The great variety of colors in the huge stone walls with the rays of the setting sun falling on them produced a grand effect.  The canyon is thirteen miles across and one mile deep.  This is where conception of size cannot be formed by mearly looking at it.  I found that out, when after supper we started to descend the trail.  We walked down and down the trail, and each time we looked up, the rising cliff above seemed no higher than before.  O my! It was hard work to get to the top.  The moon was shining full upon the canyon walls long before we reached the top.  It was a beautiful scene, and the cool mountain breeze was delightful.

          We left about nine o'clock the next day, July 9, and returned to Williams where we again changed cars, leaving there about two o'clock.  

As I thought about it, a life-time is such a speck of time in the grand scheme of the ongoing creation of the earth.  I can easily feel insignificant and small in the face of such grandeur, but at the same time I am filled with awe and appreciation for life.  Ella's words express the same feelings and wonder as we felt....  viewing the sunset and sky above, the vast cavern before us and the forests surrounding us...  Psalm 8 comes to mind:

When I see your heavens, the works of your fingers; the moon and the stars that you have established: What are human beings “Alors je pense, Qu’est-ce de l’homme?” — Fr. “Then I think, what is man?”that you are mindful of them? Mortals that you care for them?

It is true that the grand canyon was formed by the forces of nature over millions of years, but the capacity to appreciate and reflect on its grandness is a here and now God-given human capacity.... including our natural inclination to wonder about change and how we fit in this world.

We passed through the park almost as quickly as Ella did, but we, just as she, paused long enough to marvel at it all... I voiced a prayer of thanks for those who have preserved such places for succeeding generations ..

What changes prompt you to stop and ponder?

 Here I am, sitting near the same spot where my aunt Ella viewed the canyon in 1903.    Also the below postcard view. Little of it has changed.

 A postcard several years after Ella's visit & most likely several years before the Grand Canyon became a National Park in 1919.