Our soul is healthiest when it includes a good dose of humor. As was mentioned in the last blog, if the Abraham and Sara story is a pattern for our faith journey, then the birth of Isaac, laughter, was critical for the fulfillment of God’s promise to them. We need to know how to laugh as we pursue our own faith journey, especially when it involves the stresses that are part of ministry.
Think about humor. Most humor involves some of the following characteristics.
Satire,
Exaggeration
Reversal of expectations.
These features can be part of our coping in even the direst of situations. Recall how the TV program, Mash, used macabre humor to maintain sanity in a tragic world. Think about how often great comics come out of an experience of oppression or tragedy. Popular examples are the humor of such people like Dick Gregory, and Bill Cosby or some of the many examples of Jewish humor.
One of the failures for many Christians is that in their attempt to be pious, they have lost the Jewish ability to play with Scripture. Play with the possibility, for example, of one of Jesus brothers coming to a psychiatrists.
“What seems to be the problem, my son?”
“Well, doc, you see, my brother is God and it just makes me feel so inadequate.”
“You have other gifts, my son. You could be a leader of the church in Jerusalem.”
Yes, I know that is not great comedy, but just the ridiculousness of it can loosen us up. If you keep playing with that silliness for awhile, you may find yourself digging deeper into the meaning of Scripture.
The same is true of the practice of ministry. Laughing at some of the ridiculous situations in ministry helps us maintain perspective. My guess is that if a whole congregation would occasionally have a banquet in which they “roasted” the congregation as a whole, they might find some refreshing freedom to allow laughter, Isaac, to be a source of hope for their future.
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Monday we will continue the serial story, “Truth & Consequences: a Pastor Confronts Sexuality,” and then we will continue this exploration with some suggestions of how clergy can engage in some laughter that relieves their times of stress.
