Laughter

Charlotte Collins Reed

Christ Church Episcopal

June 14, 2020

6 Proper A

          Twice in the last six years, I have gone to England to learn about what the Church of England calls Pioneer Ministry or Fresh Expressions.  As a noun, pioneer means the first to explore or settle a new area.  As a verb, the word means to be the first to use a new method of doing something.  Pioneer ministry in the Church of England seeks to take the church and the gospel to those outside of the church, to engage the culture and find new ways of being church in a creative and intentional way.  This is where I learned about Pub Theology, holding office hours in coffee shops, the importance of the church being present at things like the Memorial Day parade and Ice Cream Social, and hosting events with topics of relevance to the wider community.  This is where I learned about listening to a community to see what the community actually needs rather than making assumptions about those needs.  This is where I learned the importance of the church serving as a place to bring people of all faiths together in times of crisis.  Then, last year, a group of us from Christ Church were part of the Connecting Communities project that our Diocese sponsored which focused on new ways of engaging the community.  We have implemented much of what we have learned from these various opportunities at Christ Church over the last few years.

          But had anyone told me that in 2020 we would need to take all of that learning and adapt to being the church online, working together to create and grow community in a new non-physical space and a new physically distanced way due to a pandemic, I would have laughed a deep, loud, ridiculous belly laugh-the sort where you can’t actually tell if the person is laughing or crying.  I would have laughed the sort of laugh that I imagine Sarah laughing in the reading from Genesis when she is told that, at the age of 90, give or take a couple of years, she will bear a son.  Three strangers show up, out of nowhere for all Abraham and Sarah can tell, and after they eat the meal prepared for them, they tell Abraham that when they return, Sarah will have had a son.  And Sarah laughs.  What the men propose is utterly preposterous, and biologically impossible.  The prospect of having a child at that age was likely terrifying even if it was possible.  Any way Sarah looked at it, the only logical response was laughter.

          Jesus asks something equally outrageous of the 12 brand new disciples this morning.  Jesus has gone about the cities and villages, teaching in the synagogues, proclaiming the good news, and curing every disease and sickness.  Jesus doesn’t heal just a few sick people, but he cures  every disease and sickness.  When he sees the magnitude of the work ahead, he calls his 12 disciples, and gives them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness.  In other words, he gives the 12 disciples the authority to do exactly what he, Jesus, the Messiah, is doing minus the teaching in the synagogue.  These people are fishermen and tax collectors.  I can imagine those 12 people laughing at the audacity of what Jesus is asking them to do.  Cast out demons?  Cure every disease and every sickness?  You have got to be kidding, Jesus!  Us?  Ask us to catch some fish or file your taxes! If we read on past the ending of this morning’s lesson, the task gets even harder as Jesus tells the disciples that he is sending them out as sheep in the midst of wolves, and that they will be hated because of Jesus’ name.  Suddenly having a baby at the age of 90+ actually sounds pretty reasonable!

          If we look through the scriptures, God rarely asks anyone to do something reasonable.  Noah was asked to build an ark to save the earth’s creatures from destruction.   God asked Abraham to pick up and move to an unknown place.  God asked Moses, a man on the run from the law, to lead the Hebrew people out of Egypt.  Jesus asks his followers to pick up their cross and follow him and says that whoever saves his life will lose it and whoever loses their life will save it.  The list of seemingly unreasonable things God asks of God’s people goes on and on.

          But here’s the catch. God doesn’t ask any of us to do anything, no matter how unreasonable, alone.  Whether we read John’s Gospel where Jesus leaves us the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, to teach us and lead us, or Matthews’s gospel where Jesus says “And I am with you always to the end of the age,” we are promised that we are not alone.   And what God asks of us is for the sake of proclaiming the good news, casting out the demons that strangle God’s people, like systemic injustice, poverty, division, unequal access to education and health care, and on and on, healing the sick and proclaiming the Good News, all of which strengthen the trajectory of the story of God and God’s people.  In the midst of a pandemic and civil unrest, God makes the audacious request of us to be the Church, the body of Christ, to make a difference in this broken world, and God tells us that we can make a difference, even when we can’t be together in person.  We are called to take the story of God and God’s people further, just as Sarah did, and the disciples did, and God’s people everywhere through out the ages have done.  In the end, Sarah did have a child, Isaac, and the story of God and God’s people was furthered.  In the end, the disciples did preach, heal, and cast out demons and Jesus’ work was expanded and continues to this day.  In the end, we will continue to learn new ways to be the Church-to heal, to cast out demons, and to proclaim Good News to those who need to hear those words and we will do this pandemic or no pandemic, in-person and online.  We can laugh, and laughter may be the most appropriate response to something this outrageous.  And then we will move forward, trusting that just as God was with Sarah and with the disciples, God will be with us, and  we will be the body of Christ in new and unanticipated ways, and we will make a gospel difference in the world.                                                                

Amen.