Laughter is Still Prayer

The Disciple is a Holy Fool | Proper 6 (11), Year A

Genesis 18:1-15, (21:1-7); Psalm 116:1-2, 12-19; Romans 5:1-8; Matthew 9:35-10:8, (9-23)

Sophia (Holy Wisdom) and Jesus Christ by Lyuba Yatskiv

For notes to guide your reflections after this sermon: click here.

I’m travelling this weekend, so this sermon was inflicted upon the kind and wonderful people of Sanctuary Church, Tulsa. Thanks to Paul Paino† for the invitation.

†

In the Old Testament reading today (Genesis 18:1-15 (21-7) and do read 21:1-7) we are drawn into a biblical moment known to many of us through Rublev’s famous icon, “The Hospitality of Abraham”. Abraham instructs his wife Sarah to make 3 measures of flour into bread (And yes, you do remember Jesus saying “the kingdom of heaven is like a woman mixing three measures of flour…”), for three guests who, it turns out, appear to be the Trinity. Father, Son and Holy Spirit come for supper - which might make sense of why they apparently need a whole calf and 50 pounds of bread to eat. Yet this isn’t the most laughable moment of the narrative. At least not for Sarah. She overhears these visitors tell Abraham that despite them being substantially too old, Sarah is pregnant with the son promised by the Lord. Sarah’s response is to laugh.

Ephrem the Syrian notes that Sarah laughs when she hears the Lord’s plan, “because nothing like this had ever been done before.”¹ Looking back we realize that these sorts of moments with this God are not unusual, not least of all at the annunciation. God’s plans, true as they are, often appear impossible, unhinged, and commonly, laughable. Which of us wouldn’t laugh if we were Sarah? For God’s promise to be fulfilled, of course she needs a child, but the obvious solution is also beyond unlikely. Sarah’s comment, however, is telling:

Shall I be fruitful? (Genesis 18:12).

How many of us laugh at the plans of God because the weak point of the Lord’s plan is quite obviously us?

How many of us then note that the Lord seems largely oblivious to this?

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The people are described as harassed and helpless in the Gospel today. Perhaps you relate. We live in a constant news cycle that indoctrinates us in panic. A “Social” Media feed that demands outrage. A low-grade anxiety hums in all of our lives, discipling us into a way of fear. The people Jesus saw were like “sheep without a shepherd” in a world of wars, economic chaos, and political upheaval. Perhaps you can relate. But to that grief, disappointment, and exhaustion Jesus comes with compassion and invites his followers to see this. His compassion, as Rahner might say, is not pity, but a revelation of who he is.

The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.

There is more war than people of peace

There are more thieves than generous givers

There is more fear than there are non-anxious presences

Many of us know the response. It can and must only be “go”. Jesus is inviting response, isn’t he? “Be the solution,” surely is his call. If we read quickly, this is a call to action, mobilization, and mission. Which, of course, it is, but maybe not as we think. Bonhoeffer notes:

[Jesus] does not awaken his disciples’ own offer to proclaim the gospel, nor does he appeal to their love for the people [Volk] and the church-community, but he says: “Ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest” (Matt. 9:38). In a situation that is very similar to ours, Jesus calls not for self-empowered action but to prayer, asking God to send preachers. For we do not know what is good for the church-community; God alone is to act on his own counsel with the church-community. God alone knows what truly serves the church-community. The fire that burns in us is not supposed to burn in the church-community. God himself wants to kindle the fire on the altar.²

What we hear as a summons to action is a call to prayer. Ironically, it turns out, “thoughts and prayers,” is not Christian insensitivity, but our first move in the face of uncertainty. As uncomfortable as that is, it gets worse for the disciples when they are sent out to minister to these shepherdless sheep. Their packing list is unsettling:

“Take no gold, or silver, or copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff” (Matthew 10:9-10)

Terrifying, perhaps, yet Christ also sends them out without something we might recognize as a plan. Pay attention to v.19 where we discover that they don’t even know what they are going to say.

This leads us to the “big reveal”. What is happening here is not what we thought. These people may be sheep without a shepherd, but Christ is not sending them out to be the shepherds our anxieties so desperately need. These disciples, it turns out, are being sent out as “sheep amongst wolves.” Philemon of Gaza explains:

There is no flattery of our pride by making us shepherds with great responsibilities; he sends us out as simple sheep to other sheep which are lost. This is magnificent because a lost sheep which comes across another sheep of its own flock will be quickly reassured and calmed; it will docilely follow the way back to the flock.³

Jesus doesn’t take this ragtag bunch of separatists, loyalists, and traitors and turn them into shepherds. He sends them out as sheep amongst wolves (10:16). If Sarah was here, we can only assume that, once again, she’d be laughing. It may even be that this has descended beyond laughable. They are sent out into a hostile climate hoping on the hospitality of others because they have neither resources (10:9-10) nor words to say (10:19-20). Literally, not figuratively, sheep amongst wolves.

In Romans 5 Paul notes that, in situations like this,

…suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope… (Romans 5:4)

To which I think we can only respond, “no it doesn’t”, suffering produces disappointment and despair…unless, as Paul continues:

[and hope does not disappoint us, because] God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. (Romans 5:5)

The disciples can go out like “sheep amongst wolves” into the political uncertainty, the social media outrage, and the general anxiety, because the one thing they have is the peace of the Lord. Like Christ in his incarnation, the disciples participate in his need of hospitality and a trust that there are those who are looking for his peace.

The church practices this theologically every week. We gather around Christ, not with a task, but in prayer, we share the peace of Christ with one another, and, as if to prove that is a really blessing, we then are sent out in peace, from the table, just like these disciples, as sheep amongst wolves looking compassionately for other people of peace.

Pay attention: Christ assumes that on this journey they will not meet other Christians(!), or necessarily people like them, they are looking for those open to his peace.

Perhaps this is the most laughable moment. In advance of any mission of the disciples Jesus knows that God’s grace is already active in the people the disciples will meet. They are not bringing God to the graceless, they are finding the places where God is already working. It’s as if Jesus sees the human as fundamentally a being who is embodied, lives in time, flourishes in relationships, but also is oriented towards and waiting for God’s peace.

Who wants to sign up?

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Jesus defines his followers’ presence in the world as what Russian spirituality and literature would call Yurodivy (юродивый - yoo-ROH-di-vihy), the Holy Fool. Perhaps best known by Dostoyevsky’s “Idiot” Prince Myshkin, the Holy Fool is the character who embraces foolishness, eccentricity, poverty, or social marginality and in doing so creates space to expose truth through vulnerability. A Yurodivy never dominates and is rarely impressive in the conventional sense.

The God who promises an old woman a baby, the same God who, St Paul tells us died for us when we were weak and his enemies (Romans 5:6-10), sends his disciples out as holy fools among wolves.

If, like Sarah, you’re not laughing, one can only ponder if you are really paying attention to how ridiculous this is.

But what if our laughter at God’s plans is the truest deepest response? What if it’s our souls laughing at how ludicrous, in this world, God seems (most abundantly apparent on Golgotha’s cross)? What if that’s what God wants us to do. To laugh at how ridiculous he is. As Job’s friends correctly noted: “He will yet fill your mouth with laughter.” (Job 8:21). As Chris EW Green regularly reminds me, the late Robert Jenson famously said, God is “the laughter at the ground of things. The sense of humor at the ground of things.”⁴

What if God’s plans are laughable because he intends us to laugh our way into trusting him?

Christ calls his disciples to pray, to ask of the father. Sarah laughs and says, “Can I be fruitful?”, to which I can only ask: “How is that anything other than a prayer?” A laughable, and laughing truth. All prayer right now seems laughable, but what else would be better? And we are, after all talking about talking to God. As Robert Jenson says:

…prayer is, of course, a funny phenomenon, and in both senses: funny peculiar and funny ha-ha. Whyever, after all, would omnipotence enjoy our praises? And why do we need to petition omniscience? Surely God already knows what we want, and knows moreover what we need, and moreover knows what He is or is not going to do about it? If omniscience solicits our praises, if omniscience wants information from us, this can only be described as that peculiar kind of self-awareness and humility that we call humor. It is funny when God converses with us, paying real attention to our side of the converse. But He does do just that.⁵

This is what the Holy Fools understand. It’s not God that’s ridiculous, it’s everything else. So we laugh as a witness to something true. We turn up with nothing, are sent out like sheep, empty-handed except for the peace of God! We turn up empty-handed and the body and blood of the crucified Christ is placed in our hands, as a sign of his life. And we laugh at this ridiculous God, who laughs at us, because we have joined him in being ridiculous. Sarah laughs, God sees her, fulfils his promise to her and she says:

Now Sarah said, “God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me. (Genesis 21:6.)

Everyone will laugh with me. If we can be holy fools. If we can gather around this table, of bread and wine, which we say in laughably ludicrous seriousness, is the real presence of Jesus. If we can go with nothing but that peace and be peace in our schools, communities and workplaces, then maybe we too like Sarah, like God, can laugh.

Can I be fruitful? Perhaps when we realize that God’s love, peace, and hope has come to rest in our houses, schools, and workplaces, simply because we’re there — and we will join him in laughing too. Because the answer, hilariously, is yes.

Amen.

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1. Ephrem the Syrian, Commentary on Genesis 15.3

2. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Theological Education Underground 1937-1940 DBWE 15, p.430.

3. Philemon of Gaza Meditates Matthew’s Gospel, p.105.

4. Robert Jenson, “Evil as Person” in Theology as Revisionary Metaphysics: Essays on God and Creation, p.137.

5. ibid.