The Powerful Force of Laughter
A sermon preached with the people of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Oakland, California.
[To begin, this video was screened, link cued to start at the 4:29 mark]
It’s a wild, supernatural scene we are treated to in today’s reading from the Book of Acts. There are tongues of fire. There is violent wind. And a crowd speaking and understanding a multitude of languages they’ve never known.
“What does this mean?” some ask. “They are filled with new wine,” others answer. And to this, Peter responds, “Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning.”
John Cleese (of Monty Python fame) has described this comedic tool of applying what could be called “hyper-logic” to an absurd premise. He argues some of the best comedy occurs when a character responds to a completely chaotic, unhinged situation with dry, literal-minded logic.[i] This will not surprise anyone who has watched his work.
So Peter’s line, that might as well be, “they can’t be drunk ... the liquor stores aren’t open yet,” has provoked chuckles in the congregation every time and every place I’ve heard it read … and I don’t think that’s an accident. I believe Luke, our master storyteller, intended it that way; giving us the gift of laughter on the Day of Pentecost, every year.
One of the things I love most about St. John’s is the laughter here. All the time. Even in the most unexpected settings. This place knows how to laugh. Or put another way, this community isn’t ever afraid to laugh. Isn’t held to some kind of forced, polite solemnity.
I know many of you in this room are carrying tremendous worry, exhaustion, anger, disappointment, sorrow, and fear.
And, still — somehow —there is laughter here.I don’t think that’s trivial. I think it’s holy; a particular charism of this community.
Because laughter, as Stephen Colbert suggests, is what keeps the very real fear of “a time like this” from hardening into despair.
Laughter is, in the end, a powerful force.
And I suspect that powerful people who seek to mold the world into their own image have always feared that force.
The fear of laughter’s power is, after all, why the cancellation of Colbert’s late-night talk show — seemingly for provoking laughter offensive to powers-that-be — carries meaning beyond our own television habits. Because it has revealed that in a time like this, political power can and will reach into public speech and silence it; especially when laughter is involved.
Of course, compared to all the violence, separation, injustice, and uncertainty unfolding around us, it’s a small thing — but still, Colbert’s final show, which aired on Thursday, left me in yet another “I cannot believe this is happening” place. A place, it turns out, that is not so far from the emotional world of that first Pentecost.
Before the wind and tongues of fire, the disciples are still huddled together; staying close. It has been just 50 days since their friend and guide was put to death by the state. Throughout those days, they have seen this friend risen from the dead. They have been able to speak with him. Interact with him. Break bread with him. And then, their friend left them once again; disappearing in a cloud. But before he did, he instructed them to stay in Jerusalem. Because God is going to give them a gift, and they should be there for it.
And immediately, they ask, “is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” – an almost child-like guess at what’s wrapped under the Christmas tree. “Will the occupying forces retreat?” “Will we once again recognize our own city, country, world?”
There is a particular kind of grief and disorientation that comes when institutions and norms you assumed were unshakeable seem fragile. A time when things you thought could never happen begin happening. A time like the one the disciples and everyone gathered in Jerusalem were standing inside all those years ago.
The immediate political relief the disciples were hoping for was not the gift they received. The gift they received just ten days later — the gift of the Holy Spirit — was so much bigger than that.
Because the Holy Spirit brought nothing less than life.
At the beginning of creation, She moved over the deep. When God formed humanity from dust, She breathed their very breath into them. When Mary was told she would bear God into the world, the Spirit came over her.
And on Pentecost, the Spirit — this forever gift — came to everyone. All people were prophets now. All people are prophets now. (talk about a threat to empire).
The Spirit is always moving us toward life. Toward the full humanness we were designed for. And, always calling us to resist whatever diminishes life and that humanness: cruelty, violence, oppression, injustice, greed.
And so it stands to reason that Pentecost didn’t come sounding like a three-hour monotone lecture from the heavens, complete with accompanying slide deck. It came like a party, spilling out into the streets. Sound and visual effects. Shouting and singing and, I have to believe – laughter.
Because when you think about it, laughter itself is a little, dare I say, Pentecostal.
Maybe it’s not exactly speaking in tongues, but it does come on us as a surprise. It catches and it spreads. It physically overtakes us.
And, it’s the same in every language.
And so maybe the more astounding Pentecost effect wasn’t so much that people spoke to one another in any particular unfamiliar dialect. Maybe it was that people understood one another. The Spirit created connection where fear had created separation. Created community across boundary lines. And, we know that community gives us courage.
This miracle of the Pentecost party doesn’t make grief or fear dissolve. Nor does it trample the occupying empire, or remove us from an “I can’t believe this is happening” place.
The miracle is that the Holy Spirit comes to us and creates a community that remains fully alive anyway.
That sings anyway. That gathers anyway. That feeds and protects anyway. That “finds some way to love and laugh with each other” anyway.
Robert Hayden wrote, “We must not be frightened nor cajoled into accepting evil as deliverance from evil. We must go on struggling to be human …”[ii] That’s where the Holy Spirit meets us. In that struggle; in times of “I can’t believe this is happening,” making us fully alive, fully human, fully loving people, who might indeed look, well, a little intoxicated. Even at 10 o’clock in the morning.
[i] Paraphrased/summarized, probably poorly (forgive me actual students of comedy, philosophy, and storytelling), from several articles and videos, including this one.