Message from Bob Henderson            Friday, September 6, 2019

Dear friends:

Quantitatively speaking, you don't find much laughter in the Bible, but qualitatively there's nothing quite like it to be found anywhere else. This week's scripture passage comes at the end of a section of Genesis that positively shakes with humor. 

Sarah was never going to see 90 again, and Abraham had already hit 100, and when the angel told them that the stork was on its way at last, both of them almost collapsed. Abraham laughed "till he fell on his face" (Genesis 17:17), and Sarah stood cackling behind the tent door so the angel wouldn't think she was being rude as the tears streamed down her cheeks. When the baby finally came, they even called him "Laughter," which is what Isaac means in Hebrew, because obviously no other name would do.

Roman Catholic journalist G.K. Chesterton, who would infect C.S. Lewis (a serious scholar and Oxford Don) with the sanity of the Christian faith, explained how laughter was necessary. "Life is serious all the time," he quipped, "but living cannot be. You may have all the solemnity you wish in choosing your neckties, but in anything important such as death, sex, and religion, you must have mirth or you will have madness."
 
Unfortunately, some haven't agreed. The sixth-century Rule of St. Benedict declared: "As for coarse jests and idle words or words that lead to laughter, these we condemn with a perpetual ban." 

On the other hand, in the Inferno of his Divine Comedy, Dante buries melancholy people in black mud in hell, because they remained stubbornly gloomy in the glad air of God's Sun. As he leaves the realms of Purgatory and follows Beatrice into Paradise, Dante hears a sound he has never heard before: celestial laughter, the laughter of the heavens.
 
This week, we begin a sermon series entitled "Living with Courage and Hope" and we'll start, appropriately I believe, by exploring the notion of God's laughter and our response. You can read about it here. 
 
We'll also share communion, enjoy excellent music, hold the finale of our Faith + Career panel discussion series and welcome children back to the newly renovated Education Wing for 9:30 a.m. Sunday School classes.
 
See you on Sunday,



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Bob Henderson preaching
Bob Henderson preaching
Bob Henderson preaching


 
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