Read Psalm 150 & Nehemiah 8 here.
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Today
we’re talking about fun. Fun helps us thrive, and is a symptom of thriving. Some
of you are a little worried about what I might do or say in my sermon
today. Some of you are sure it’s going
to be all puns. It won’t be ALL puns.
But
did you know that God’s first name is
Andy?
That’s why we sing that song,
“Andy walks with me, Andy talks with me…”[1]
I
do like to tell jokes, and I like to have fun.
Who in here does not like to have
fun?
Our
session has been pondering ways to complete this sentence:
This is a place where….
How would you finish that
statement? One I’m proposing today is
this: This is a place where people are
having fun.
Many
people think you can’t have fun in church.
But you can. And we do!
Why
does having fun matter?
· #1 Because fun is fun.
Fun means enjoyment! One definition says that
“Fun is an experience that is often
unexpected, informal, and/or purposeless,”[2]
…which is why some of us have trouble having
fun.
Fun matters…
·
#2 Because the Bible encourages us to
have fun.
The
word fun
is not in the Bible, except in the Message version, but the word joy
appears hundreds of times. The Bible is
a joyful book. Christianity is an exuberant and happy faith.[3]
1
Thess 5:16 commands us to “Rejoice always!”
Psalm
100 encourages us to “Make a joyful noise to the Lord!”
Psalm
150 is a recipe for some raucous joy! This
psalm lists all the instruments known to the ancients . . . In other words, no
musical instrument was too loud, too clanging, too clashing, or too “vulgar” to
praise the amazing God of Israel.[4]
Fun matters . . .
#3 Because
fun is good for us.
We’ve probably all heard the phrase
“Laughter is the best medicine.”
Proverbs 17:22 says, "A cheerful heart is good medicine."
Science
proves it. Laughter releases endorphins and relieves stress.[5] Studies show that without fun in our lives,
we are more likely to be unhealthy, and are less successful in our jobs and at
school, and are more likely to commit criminal acts.[6]
Back
in the 1960’s Charles Whitman, a
seemingly normal 25-year-old engineering student at the University of Texas in Austin, went to the top of a tower that
overlooked the campus and started shooting. Over the next three hours he killed
17 people and wounded 41 others. It was later discovered that just before
going to the tower, he had also killed his wife and his mother. The governor of Texas at the time commissioned a team of experts to look
into the reasons Whitman would have done this. Dr. Stuart Brown, a psychiatrist at the Baylor College of Medicine,
was on that commission. One of their
striking discoveries was that Whitman as a child was not allowed to play with
other kids. His tyrannical father
had systematically suppressed the child’s natural playfulness. When we play, we learn to deal with the
unexpected, which prepares us to deal with stress. Whitman didn’t have that.[7]
This
finding prompted Brown to devote his life to studying the benefits of play. He
founded The National Institute for Play,
and has spent years cataloging data about the impact of play on people’s
lives. He’s consistently found a high
correlation between play and success,
and higher tendency toward violence
where play has been absent.[8]
Play
is good for us, it’s fun, and the Bible encourages it. It’s also good for our world…
#4 Because fun is contagious.
When
we’re having fun, it helps other people have fun. Laughter spreads, just like yawns.
Fun
matters . . .
#5 Because encountering
God, following Jesus and being inspired by the Holy Spirit is fun if we let it
be.
I’ve
been asking people all week about this.
I even posted the question on Facebook.
What’s the most fun you’ve had in
church or at a church-related activity? It’s
been a lot of fun hearing the answers.
They’re quite different. What
about you? What’s your answer?
One
answer surprised me a little. The person
said the most fun they’d had was at a retreat
having communion after they’d just learned more about the deeper meaning of
the sacrament. Encountering God in a deeper way is an amazing way to have fun. It’s the kind of fun I most want us to be
having together as a church. And the
more we let the Holy Spirit work among us, the more we will have that kind of
fun, because I know God longs to bless us.
Isaiah 30:18
“Yet the Lord longs
to be gracious to you; therefore he will rise up to show you compassion. For
the Lord is
a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him!”
That’s
what’s happening in Nehemiah. In
many Bibles, this section we from read today is titled, “the revival of worship.” After centuries of disobeying God, Israel
is conquered by their enemies and carried off to Babylon. Jerusalem and the temple are destroyed, and
the people live in the Babylonian exile for 70 years. Now they have been allowed to return, and
they have come back in stages. First one
group, then several years later another.
They have worked on rebuilding the temple, and rebuilding the city. Now they are gathered to hear the words of
scripture read to them by the priests. They also heard the word
interpreted.
This worship service was a bit longer
than ours. Six hours!
Which reminds me of one of the worst problems with ancient orators – they tended to Babylon.[9]
(Get it? Babble on. They just came back from Babylon.)
This
is the first time many of them have heard these words. They are sad to discover how far off track
they’ve gotten with God. They are
ashamed. But God is giving them a fresh
start, a chance to change their ways and be God’s people again – repentance,
reform, revival. So the priests tell
them, “Don’t be sad over what’s happened
in the past. Instead give thanks to God
for this new start. Rejoice! Eat the fat and drink the wine, and share
with everyone! In
other words, enjoy God and enjoy this new life.
And so they do.
We,
too, are given a fresh start with
God every time we realize our sin, and return to God. Jesus
has paid the penalty for our sin, and God freely gives us grace and forgiveness. Sometimes,
though, we look as if he hasn’t. We punish ourselves. But Jesus already took our punishment. We are to enjoy grace and enjoy God! We
need fun in our lives. God made us to
enjoy life.
What are some ways we can choose fun
over drudgery?
This
is the advice given by two spiritual giants, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and His
Holiness the Dalai Lama in their book, “The Book of Joy.” They are both men who smile and laugh a lot,
even though they have both had great struggles in their lives.
Archbishop
Tutu is from South Africa where he experienced the horrors of apartheid. The Dalai Lama had to flee from his country
as a teenager because the Chinese invaded, and has lived in exile every since. And yet they smile and laugh, and say that
humor has helped them in so many difficult situations.
The
Archbishop visited Rwanda shortly after the genocide there, and was asked to
give a talk to the two sides, the Hutus and the Tutsis. He wondered how to talk about such a fresh
wound. His solution was to speak truth
to power through humor. He told a story
about the big-nose people and the
small-nose people and how the big-nose people were excluding the small-nose
people. The people in the audience
were laughing, and suddenly realized that he was talking about the
ridiculousness of prejudice and hatred. He got them laughing at themselves.[10]
Share the joy - joy is multiplied when it’s shared and…
People
are drawn to joy. One of my favorite
scenes from the movie “Elf” is when his new friend Jovie remembers that Buddy
had told her that the best way to spread
Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear. They need more Christmas cheer because that’s
what powers Santa’s sleigh. So she starts singing. And then someone else starts singing with her.
And soon the whole crowd is singing, and the Christmas cheer meter in Santa’s
sleigh starts rising higher and higher until it’s fully powered up.
It
works even when it’s not Christmas. The dwarves in Snow White taught us to
whistle while we work. Mary Poppins
encourages the children to sing while they do their chores.
The
Spirit works among us as we sing together, and especially as we sing with all
our hearts. Zeph
3:17 says that God rejoices over us with
singing. The word used for singing there is also often translated as joy. (Rinna means both joy and singing.) Joy and
singing go together.
Look for joy in small things by being
thankful.
My
daughter told me this week that she found joy in an expected place when she
discovered that the restaurant at which she was having lunch had bendy straws. It’s a small thing, but it brought her joy. It’s often finding joy in unexpected ways
that prompts us to laugh.
I’ve
talked before about the connection between thankfulness
and joy. Joy is embedded in thankfulness. The Greek word for being thankful is eucharisteo. The word for joy is chara. Eucharisteo
has joy right there in the middle. Eucharisteo. I’m sure that’s why Paul puts them all
together in 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18:
“Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who are in Christ Jesus.”
So
let’s look for the fun – bendy straws, flamingos, balloons, beach balls,
puns. God wants us to enjoy life and to
enjoy Him! In fact, the Westminster Catechism
spells it out quite nicely. Our purpose is
to glorify God and enjoy Him forever!
Encountering
God IS fun, in all the ways we’ve mentioned and more. As we trust God and
follow Jesus, the Holy Spirit works in us.
When the Holy Spirit stirs our hearts,
we have the most amazing kind of joy – joy that is encouraging, and strengthening,
and contagious. That’s what the
priests were encouraging the people to know in our story from Nehemiah – that the joy of the Lord is our strength
(Neh 8:10). The joy of the Lord is our life. The joy of the Lord makes us thrive.
This is a place where people have fun because this is
a place where people are finding Jesus, receiving
grace, and experiencing the work of
the Holy Spirit in new ways.
I’m
excited and thankful for all the ways we have yet to discover to have fun and enjoy God together!
[1]
From a Family Circus cartoon
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fun
[3]
Nixon,
Paul. I Refuse to Lead a Dying Church!
(Kindle Locations 643-648). Pilgrim Press/United Church Press. Kindle Edition.
[4] Kelly J. Murphy, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2826
[10]
His Holiness The Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, with Douglas Abrams – The
Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World (New York, Avery: 2016),
218.
