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Tag Archives: humor

On Grace, Love, and Humor…

14 Wednesday Aug 2019

Posted by jandrewsweckerly in Uncategorized

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attention, beloved, God, grace, health, humor, Kingdom, love, pattern, push, sick, unconditional, vacation, well

FeverFighters

Photo credit:  https://www.unitypoint.org/livewell/article.aspx?id=f76749ae-debc-43f3-8168-7969460772cf

One of the things I typically do before a vacation is frantically try to get as much done as possible, working late nights until basically throwing my weary self into a car before letting myself slip into vacation mode.  I run hard partly because I want to have as much done before I leave as possible, setting others up for success; but I run hard partly because I know the to-do list will be even bigger when I return.  The down side to this model is I sometimes push so hard part of my vacation is recovering from the cold I catch in wearing my body down.

But this week, something comical happened.  I had been toying with working on my day off to make sure everything got done before vacation.  And then, days before, my daughter got a fever.  For those of you familiar with childcare, you know a child has to be 24-hour fever free to return to care.  Not only did her fever not ease on my day off, the fever didn’t break until the next day – leaving me precious little time to accomplish my to-do list.

At that point, I just started chuckling.  God has a tremendous sense of humor – and a somewhat mischievous way of getting my attention.  After years of the repeated pattern, if I was unwilling to change my behavior, something stepped in my way (a fever, namely) to force me to break the pattern.  Suddenly, all that stuff that just had to get done would have to wait.  The abruptness was frustrating, and I still squeezed in a few things between videos and meals, but my usually hidden, under the surface high-stress levels just could not continue.  However, it is hard to be frustrated when the roadblock is a red-cheeked, clammy little one who just wants to cuddle and falls asleep at strange times.

I began to wonder yesterday how I might be more measured with my own health and the generosity of a God who loves our hard work for the kingdom, but also loves us unconditionally.  What are some of the patterns you find yourself falling into that disregard the reality that you are made in God’s image and are loved unconditionally?  How might you receive that grace more gracefully this week?  In what ways is God inviting you to shift that grimace to a smirk to a smile?  My hope for you this week is you allow God’s love to wash over you, breathe in God’s unconditional grace, and then share that love with someone else who is pushing so hard they forgot their belovedness too.

A time to laugh…

03 Tuesday Feb 2015

Posted by jandrewsweckerly in Uncategorized

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comedy, gift, God, humor, joy, laughter, sacred, Spirit

This week I had one of “those” days.  I had a funeral at 10:00 am, which I had specifically scheduled early in the day so that I could run over to Clergy Day with the diocesan clergy, hoping to fit in a few hours with colleagues.  Of course, the day before it snowed and iced, and the schools were on a two-hour delay.  My oldest would need to board the bus at the exact same time the funeral was to begin.  So with lots of help and rearranging, I managed to figure out a way to take my youngest to childcare by 9:00, bring the oldest back to church with me while I setup the funeral, and then have a parishioner take her to bus stop while I began the service.  Perfect plan!  Of course, that is not exactly how it played out.  As I was loading bags in the car, I discovered a small bird in the garage.  Then, as I was doing a last-minute pumping, my infant started crying inconsolably.  Then my eldest could not find her favorite snow books and also began crying.  Once I managed to get everyone in the car and to nursery school, we found out the director was stuck in traffic and school would be opening ten minutes late.

That was the point at which I started laughing.  I have no idea why, but suddenly my whole morning just seemed comical – hilarious really.  I kept laughing.  Despite my eldest daughter’s confusion about why I was laughing so hard, she started laughing too.  Somehow the stress of the morning lifted.  Despite all my scurrying around nothing could keep this day on track – and through unbridled laughter, that reality was suddenly okay.

Laughter has a sacred place in my life.  One of my favorite activities with my husband is watching stand-up comedy.  Though we have pretty different senses of humor, when we find a comedian who can make us both laugh, it is more precious than gold.  And although he regularly laughs at things I deem inappropriate for humor, his belly-laughs make it impossible for me to stifle a smile.  At other times, you can find my husband, eldest daughter, and me huddled around the baby trying to get laughs out of her – which of course lead to our own laughs.  When my eldest and I get into a struggle of wills, I have found laughter to be the key to unlocking the tension and setting us back on track.  In fact, just the other day, as I was struggling to get her out of bed, for some reason I started making funny faces at my daughter.  She started giggling, which got me giggling.  Before I knew it, she was out of bed and we were having one of the more pleasant mornings we have had in a while.

A beautifully captured laugh.

A beautifully captured laugh.

Laughter is gift of the Spirit.  I think of the many times that laughter comes up in scripture.  When God tells Abraham that Sarah will bear a son in her old age, she laughs.  In fact, their son’s name, Isaac, means “he laughs.”  Ecclesiastes proclaims that there is a time for everything, “a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance…” (3.4)  Even in Luke’s beatitudes, Jesus says, “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.” (6.21)  I think God longs for us to have more laughter in our life.  Through our laughter, we get a glimpse of the unbridled joy of God – a joy that can fill our entire bodies.  I invite you this week to make some space for laughter.  My guess is that you will find God there too.

Sermon – Matthew 6.1-6, 16-21, AW, YA, March 5, 2014

06 Thursday Mar 2014

Posted by jandrewsweckerly in Uncategorized

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Ash Wednesday, discipline, God, humor, Jesus, Lent, piety, Sermon, spiritual

As many of you know, Lent is my favorite season of the liturgical year.  I love the spiritual discipline Lent encourages, I love the liturgical uniqueness of Lent, and I love the ways that Lent encourages us as a community live life differently, even if only for a little while.  By Ash Wednesday every year, I usually have a set discipline in place, and I am eager to get going.  But this year, I find myself in a situation in which I have never been.  With the pending birth of our second child, I find myself hesitant to commit to any spiritual discipline this Lent.  I have no sense of how tired I will be, or how upended my home routine and family life will be; I have no idea whether I will be too exhausted to stay connected digitally to the world, or whether technology will be my way of escape when everything else is disjointed; and besides the desperate prayers of an exhausted, weary mother, I have no idea how to tend to my spiritual life once I step away briefly from my churchly life.

I confess this sense of being lost about Lent because I imagine some of you may be feeling that same sense of being lost as well.  We have been buried in an awful winter, longing more for spring and the joys of Easter, than preparing for burrowing deeper into the depths of penitence and discipline.  Our news feed is full of local and global disaster, making even the normal joy of international events like the Olympics feel a bit hollow.  And we have a growing itch to be more settled here at Church – as we trip over one another trying to find adequate space for normal activities while our undercroft is under construction, as our Vestry makes changes to better equip us for ministry, and as our Rector steps away for a time, making us all have to assume responsibilities that burden our already full plates and sparking concern about how we can thrive without our leader at the helm.  Who has time for figuring out a Lenten discipline when we feel like we are just barely managing our lives?

Into this sense of discombobulation, Jesus comes at us in the gospel lesson today with a scathing critique of our spiritual lives.  Jesus wants us to give alms, but to do so with such secrecy that even our own selves are unaware of our sacrifices.  Jesus wants to take our prayer to our private rooms, so we are not tempted to bring attention to ourselves in public.  Jesus wants us to gussy ourselves up daily so that no one notices the longing and discomfort our fasts are creating for us.  To be honest, his words are a bit confusing and seem contradictory to Jesus’ other messages.  This is the same Jesus who later in Matthew says, “What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops.”[i]  So which are we supposed to do?  Are we to keep our faith humbly hidden so as not to be seen as braggadocios, or are we to shout about our God on the mountaintop, or at least in the local diner, so that others might see the goodness of what God has done for us, and want to join us in that joy?

Perhaps a better place for us to begin is to imagine Jesus offering this teaching with a bit of sarcastic humor.  This past stewardship season we showed a video about the ways in which people give to church with muddled intentions.  The video has a series of clips with people doing things like using their generous giving to garner the decisions they want made in church or dramatically holding up their pledge envelopes before dropping them in the plate.  Imagine the person who would rather put coins in the offering plate for the noise they make than put in bills which silently but strongly support ministry, and you have the idea.  This is the kind of ribbing Jesus is doing when he describes the showy alms giver.

In high school, I was friends with a girl whose father was an evangelical pastor.  I remember going out to dinner with her family once, and being mortified before our meal began.  Once our plates of food arrived, her father stood up in the middle of the dining area, and very loudly began a prayer that, I promise, was easily five minutes long.  My cheeks began to redden as he went on and on.  I could feel the shifting of people near us as they became equally uncomfortable.  As I peeked mid-way through his prayer, I could see a waitress approach our table for drink refills and the recoil back to her station.  I was so relieved the next week at school when my friend apologized for her dad and made a joke about how much she actually hates eating in restaurants because her food is always cold by the time the prayer is over.  This is the kind of prayer Jesus jokes about too when he sends us to our rooms to pray.

And we all know examples of that complainer who has taken up fasting or whatever form of denial they have chosen for Lent.  They regale you with stories of how they almost fainted, or how they had to avoid their favorite activities in order to stay faithful.  You almost want to give them a handkerchief so that they can more dramatically tell their tale of woe as the lift their hand dramatically to their heads.  These are those whom Jesus teases when he says to put some oil on your face – so that even if you cannot keep your mouth quiet with complaints, at least you will look good.

The challenge with us in Lent is not that our spiritual disciplines need to be so rigidly hidden away.  The danger comes when our disciplines become more about ourselves than about our relationship with God and one another.  Jesus is not telling us not to exercise our piety.  Jesus is trying to jokingly help us to see the ways in which our piety can become a stumbling block to others seeing the goodness of God.[ii]  Think of the person who gives generously, who prays prayers that always seem to touch you, or who shares with you what fasting has done for them in a way that inspires you.  Jesus is telling us to be more like them:  not to dramatically hide away our almsgiving, prayer, and fasting, but to do that almsgiving, prayer, and fasting with a genuine humility that invites others to want to know more.  And at the end of the day, Jesus is also telling us to chill out – to enjoy whatever discipline you have chosen and not to worry so much about performing that discipline, but humbling trying that discipline within a community of people who can laugh at themselves as they try to do the same.

This Lent, as I begin this journey with you, my discipline is going to be about giving myself a break, and not taking myself so seriously.  I am trusting that by not pushing myself to take on some discipline that will only make me feel like a failure by week two of newborn sleep deprivation, that God will be present, revealing God’s self to me and showing me that God can work in spite of me and in spite of what promises to be a very unique Lent in the life of a priest.  I am trusting that God, the faith of this community, and my intentional letting go this Lent will work in harmony to make this time a time of holy connection to God.  Jesus invites you into the same trusting release this Lent.  No matter what discipline you assume, or what battles you face in the coming forty days, God will give you moments of insight and blessing, and even a bit of humor to keep you going.  Amen.


[i] Mt. 10.27

[ii] Patrick J. Willson, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. A., Vol. 2 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 25.

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