God's Sense of Humor

 Eastern Parkway United Methodist Church

 

 

 A warm welcome to each worshipper today. We celebrate you and offer you our friendship and love. We are a congregation of people who seek to grow spiritually, to become more like Christ in His compassion and acceptance of everyone while growing more aware of what it really means to be Christians today.

As a Reconciling Congregation, EPUMC affirms the sacred worth of persons of all sexual orientations and gender identities and welcomes them into full participation in the fellowship, membership, ministries, and leadership of the congregation.

 

 

 

943 Palmer Avenue, Schenectady, NY 12309 / 518-374-4306 epumc943@gmail.com / www.easternparkway.org

Order of Worship

April 24, 2022

Second Sunday of Easter

10:00 a.m.

*You are invited to rise in body or spirit.

 

Prelude Offertoire for Easter on the Melody O Filii et Filiae F. Landrieu

Greeting and Announcements

Mission Statement:

We are a faith community striving to be, to nurture, and to send forth disciples of Jesus Christ.

 

Call to Worship: By Bill Hoppe

Praise the Lord!

Praise God in the sanctuary.

Praise God in the vault of heaven.

Praise God in the earth and skies.

Sing praises to the Lord.

Shout and sing praises to God.

We have witnessed God’s mighty acts.

We have seen the Lord’s greatness.

Let everything that breathes praise the Lord.

Let everything that draws breath

praise the Lord!

 

*Hymn Love Divine, All Loves Excelling #384, vv. 1, 3, 4              

Prayer of Confession:

Must we see you in order to believe you, Lord?

Is seeing truly believing?

Are we to be prisoners of our senses,

distrusting and rejecting

whatever we cannot see, touch, or hear?

Yet you are faithful—

you give sight to the blind,

you carry us when we are weary,

you call us to your side.

The locked room of our hearts

opens at the turn of your key.

Speak your words of life to us again:

“Do not doubt, only believe.”

Speak your words of life,

that we might live.

 

Assurance:

The peace of God be with you.

Receive God’s forgiveness

and the promise of the Spirit,

for Jesus is risen from the dead.

Seen or unseen, he is present in our midst,

and we see the presence of Christ

reflected in each other’s faces.

Happy are those who have not seen,

yet have come to believe. 

Anthem Streets of Galilee Keith Hampton

The Rockers

Scripture Reading John 20:19-31

Jesus Appears to the Disciples

19 When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” 22 When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

Jesus and Thomas

24 But Thomas (who was called the Twin[a]), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

26 A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” 28 Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” 29 Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

The Purpose of This Book

30 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. 31 But these are written so that you may come to believe[b] that Jesus is the Messiah,[c] the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

 

Sermon God’s Sense of Humor

Friends, this is the second Sunday in the season of Easter–a season that lasts until Pentecost, which is on June 5 this year. Easter is a whole season, not just one day! But this is also a notoriously sparsely attended Sunday in churches. Everyone and their mom came out for Easter Sunday, but a lot of us want a break this week, and deservedly so. We need one. Getting through Lent and Holy Week is a big deal, especially if you helped make some of those events happen–maybe you helped with the bulletins, or you sang in the choir, or you were an usher or a liturgist. In fact, a clergy friend of mine has this joke that the Sundays after Easter and Christmas are “Cannonball Sunday” because so few people are here compared to the week prior that you could launch a cannonball into the pews and not hit anyone.

There’s also a lowkey tradition among clergy to dub this second Sunday in Easter “holy humor Sunday”. This tradition actually finds its roots among early Greek Christians who believed the days following Resurrection Sunday should be filled with joy and laughter, and who called this Sunday either “holy humor Sunday” or “bright Sunday”.

This is a week that I spent reflecting on this concept we might call “God’s sense of humor.” This idea that we pair with the old expression “If you want to make God laugh, tell the Divine your plans”. This idea that God isn’t this stoic face in the clouds some may imagine, but rather that the Holy is curious of our potential, experiments with Creation, and is playful. This idea that God will put us through moments that make us feel kind of silly or ridiculous in order to see us grow.

Many of us have a story like that from this faith journey. I certainly do.

Back in the summer of 2018 I was serving the Avon United Methodist Church, just South of Rochester. In August our Presbyterian neighbors across the street were hosting a Vacation Bible School, and their pastor invited me to teach it with her. I had taught VBS programs before, it sounded like fun. Daniel was 4 at the time, and couldn’t participate because he was in a summer program. I was pregnant with Alexander, and surely he participated from the womb. But my daughter Lillian was 2, home all day and otherwise not previously engaged, so she came with me. The day before this VBS began we had a volunteer training day. Lily and I headed over, and as we entered the sanctuary we saw all the volunteers standing in front of a projection screen, watching videos of kids singing faith songs with corresponding choreographed dance moves, and the youth group leaders urged, “Now everyone, this is your job today! By tomorrow you need to be pros at all those dances because you’re going to teach them to the kids!” So, I anticipated singing, I like singing, I don’t have a problem with singing, at least in theory. But no one said anything about dancing. Dancing was NOT part of the agreement. Pastor Natalie does not dance. Hard pass. 

Panic set in. I committed a week of my life to this, and I couldn’t back out. People were counting on me. Jesus was counting on me. But gosh darn it, I did not sign up for Busting a Move for the Lord. After I had a moment to clear my head, I came up with a brilliant plan to get out of the corny dancing: Lily. I was going to be taking care of a very opinionated 2 year old, when the dancing started I’d just hide in the back, and if anyone said anything I’d just say “Sorry, crying baby, what are you gonna do?”

But what happened next is something I was unprepared for only because the kids were still so young then. When me and Lily took our places in the way, way back, she immediately started protesting. “MOMMY, I CAN’T SEEEEEEEE!” Fine, fine, I grimaced and grumbled and moved up closer. “MOMMY I WANT TO BE IN THE FRONT!” Really, God? We went front row center. I hoped the vision of VBS participants was based on movement, and that if I just stood there I’d turn invisible. “MOMMY WHY AREN’T YOU DANCING?” And suddenly, there we were. The 2 year old and the pregnant lady down in front, leading the hand jive for Jesus. I envied the dead, but what changed this experience for me was Lily. She loved the Jesus dances more than anything in the world. She learned about Jesus. She grew a relationship with him right there, in her own perfect way. I was far from where I wanted to be, yet I was standing on holy ground. And of course, by God’s sense of humor, not only did I have to learn those dance moves and perform them in front of an auditorium of people, but now I will NEVER forget them.

See, here’s the thing about God’s sense of humor: we might really resent God’s action in those moments that we can practically here laughter from heaven. But those moments, so often, are the ones that provide us with the strongest sense of the presence of God, the clearest sign that God is really there, and that God loves us. We should never take these precious moments for granted, especially because so many of our siblings in the faith starve for them. Siblings like Thomas, from this morning’s Gospel reading.

Many of us, after a busy Holy Week, might be able to relate to the exhaustion of Jesus’ remaining disciples in these days following Jesus’ death, as they hid together. But what we might not fully grasp are the levels of sorrow and terror, in equal amounts, that they felt. They’ve stepped in to the sun for nothing, they’re all in one room with the doors locked. And their rabbi is gone, and they helped the trauma happen. In these days, what are they so scared of that they keep their doors locked? The text says “the Jews”, aka the Pharisees and Temple leaders, but I don’t really buy that. Those guys got exactly what they wanted, Jesus was dead. The Roman soldiers had more than moved on, and had found new Palestinian peasants to bully. I think it’s something else.

I think it’s Mary. After last Sunday’s story, when she saw the Risen Jesus, she immediately ran to tell the disciples. They’ve heard Mary’s testimony. Maybe they’ve locked the doors in fear that it isn’t true, that Jesus is really dead and will never be around to lead them through this world again. Or, maybe they’ve locked the doors out of fear that it IS true. 

Either way, no locked door in the world can keep Jesus out of our lives, so he waltzes right in, and shows the disciples his wounds, and offers them his peace, and prepares them for what comes next. The problem? Right at this moment when the amazing and impossible happened and everyone else saw Jesus, Thomas was in the bathroom. And part of me can imagine Jesus chuckling at Thomas’s disbelief and resentment of the others. And the Divine laughter wouldn’t be happening because Jesus somehow looked down on Thomas’s feelings, but rather because Jesus completely understood. Thomas got left out of the Holy Wonder. And Thomas thirsted for a moment that many of us thirst for–a sign. Something. Something we can point to, that we can see and experience with our senses, something that gives us some proof in trying times and in a terrifying world that Jesus is real, that our faith isn’t in vain, and that we’re not all alone.

I was so fortunate to witness that kind of moment in someone else. Right after I graduated from seminary, I interned for a year as a chaplain at Strong hospital in Rochester. Strong has a level 1 NICU, a level 1 trauma bay, state of the art facilities, and world class physicians, so I saw a lot during that year. But a conversation with one patient always rises above the others. 

This middle aged man had been battling type 2 diabetes. He had an infected wound in his leg, and despite his doctors working on it as hard as they could, they came to the unfortunate conclusion that they were going to have to amputate to heal him. This was devastating news for this man, and he was enveloped in fear. But suddenly, just before he was about to have the surgery, he felt calm. One of my colleagues asked me what changed for him, and this man explained that he had a dream, and in his dream Jesus showed him how he’d be there every step of the way. In his dream the man saw Jesus standing right next to him in the OR. And then he saw Jesus holding his hand in recovery. Then he saw Jesus by his side as he got fitted for a new prosthetic leg. Then he saw Jesus supporting him in physical therapy. And then, at the end of his dream, he and Jesus were walking in the woods together, with his prosthetic leg, and everything was fine. The man got through his surgery well, and felt perfect peace about his future.

Isn’t that a beautiful story? Sure. It’s also the kind of story that can sting a little if you feel slightly jealous that this man got to be so sure of something that most of us struggle to grasp at throughout this life. So if you feel like our friend Thomas this week, and you long for your own opportunity to see Jesus face to face, know that I get it, and so does Jesus. Maybe Jesus will show up in a dream, like he did for that gentleman I met at Strong. Maybe he will surprise you at home, like he did for Thomas. But maybe, as seems to be his very favorite thing to do, Jesus will find you in a smile, in a good joke, in a moment where you grow in spite of yourself and you can’t help but laugh.

On that note, I end this sermon with this story about a preacher who was delivering a very serious sermon about abstaining from alcohol. He said “If I had all the wine in the world, I would take it and throw it in the river!” With more determination, he said “And if I had all the beer in the world, I would take it and throw it in the river!” And then he emphatically concluded his sermon with “And if I had all the whiskey in the world, I would take it and throw it in the river!” As he took his seat, the organist announced, “And now, for our closing hymn, we will sing ‘Shall We Gather at the River’”.

Amen.

*Hymn Christ Is Risen #307

Offering

Offertory Duettino Ernest Grosjean

*Doxology #94

*Prayer of dedication           

 

Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s Prayer

Risen Christ, our eternal Savior,

Like the disciples,

we are gathered together the week after Easter:

wondering whether it is true,

marveling at the possibility,

and daring to hope.

 

Like the disciples,

we are sometimes afraid,

sometimes full of doubt.

 

But in your extravagant generosity, your boundless love,

you appear to us in our fear and love us in our doubts

and grant us the oceans of your peace.

Thank you for loving us as we are.

 

Teach us not to hide from our doubt,

but to recognize it as a door to mystery and to deeper faith.

After all, the disciples’ fear became a visitation

as they saw you among them, risen and triumphant.

Thomas’ doubt became a moment of revelation

as he saw and touched you, and finally believed.

 

This morning we pray for the many men and women in our society

who have no faith at all.

There are so many who live without hope,

without knowledge of your resurrection,

without your light in their lives.

Grant us the courage to live as witnesses to your resurrection.

Risen Christ, be light in our world.

 

We pray for those in our congregation this morning

who find it difficult to believe.

Lord knows that they are not alone, but in the best of company:

even Christ’s own disciples struggled to believe

all that they had seen and heard.

Loving Christ, it is your presence

that removes all fear and erases all doubts:

so come, and grant the doubting Thomases in our midst

your presence & peace.

 

And grant to all of us, living Lord Christ,

renewed faith, great courage, and your boundless peace.

 

Our Father, Mother, Creator God, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who have trespassed against us. Lead us, not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory forever. Amen.

*Hymn Come, Ye Faithful, Raise the Strain #315, vv 1, 2, 5         

Benediction

Postlude Come, Christians, Join to Sing Beckies Slagle May

Staff

Natalie Bowerman Pastor

Betsy Lehmann Music Director

Joe White Custodian

Cassandra Brown Nursery Attendant