LAUGHTER may be the best medicine, but God is no joke, according to an Anglican bishop who has chided Christian church leaders who think of themselves as stand-up comedians and resort to making jokes during sermons.
The Bishop of South Sydney, Robert Forsyth, says there is nothing funny in “lame-fisted attempts” to crack jokes and be funny during services and church meetings. Humour has its place, but God and church, he says, is no laughing matter.
“I am frankly sick of ‘leaders’ ruining the atmosphere of the meeting/service and disrupting the focus on God with half-baked comic lines,” he wrote for a Sydney Anglican online ministry resource guide. “Or they detract from my reflection upon some important point made in the sermon with smart cracks or attempts to make funny comments about the preacher or the sermon.”
Please, no one tell Bishop Forsyth about [url=http://www.trinitywallstreet.org/resources/article.php?id=538]this[/url].
Umm, Bishop Forsyth: Lighten up just a tad bit, will ya? I’ll wager that Christ Himself had a sense of humor! Seriously, though, the Eucharist is a solemn rite, and the humor can come later.
Goodness. I have listened to a few sermons which seemed like not much but one joke strung after another and they were not so hot (or edifying). But, joy and humor, IMHO, definitely have a place in worship and preaching. Personally, if a congregation and clergy are deadly serious *all* the time, that’s not so good. Consider Eccl. 3.4 – A time to weep and a time to laugh. And, what about our God who would name one of the patriarchs “Laughter”? I definitely think God has a great sense of humor… and there goes that Leviathan which you have made just for the sheer playfulness of it (Ps. 104.27b) Where else would we get ours?
Humor is often a response to being in the presence of the sacred.
Bishop, there are lots of types of humor. As long as the truth is told.
Thirty years overdue. Well done, bishop.
John, is irreverence the truth?
I have heard sermons and given some, that had humor, but the humor wasn’t writen in as part of the sermon, nor was there any attempt to be a stand up comedian. It was just part of a delivery in not being tied to a manuscript. I don’t think it was ever irreverent.
However, celebrating the Eucharist is an awesome undertaking, but there is certainly room for joy in it. One of the greatest and most joyous blessings of my life is being given the gift of God to officiate at the Sacrament.
I had to chuckle as this article brought to mind the spat two monks were having in the movie Name of the Rose (I think that was the movie, but I could be wrong) when they were arguing whether Christ ever laughed and getting bent all out of shape.
“I am frankly sick of ‘leaders’ ruining the atmosphere of the meeting/service and disrupting the focus on God with half-baked comic lines,”
I fully agree. We have to draw the line somewhere. From now on, fully-baked or nothing.
Glad to read this. Wasn’t it Tozer who wrote a book titled “The Lost Art of Worship”?
This article is so general, it’s hard to know what the bishop is actually talking about–a wise crack at the fraction anthem, a joke at the dismissal, a humorous aside during the sanctus? Or is this humor in the announcements or in a sermon, or at some gaff in which a little self-deprecating humor in a small congregation helps us all through it? Bishop Frye is hilarious. He gets you laughing in a sermon, and then delivers really powerful stuff through it. Humor can be so full of grace and love–it can be a way to say really hard things while communicating genuine care and compassion for the people you’re saying hard things to. If it weren’t for a highly developed sense of the rediculous, I couldn’t survive myself, much less the church.
No, I don’t want worship trivialized. I don’t go for jokes in sermons that are just there to “warm up” the crowd. But a word fitly spoken, especially if its really funny, is like apples of gold. IMHO.
Hold on a second. Are you telling me that during a sermon it is common – or at least not unusual – for members of the congregation to make wise cracks? Just like that? You just up and zing a one liner at the priest? I MUST be in the back country indeed if this is the case! Larry
Truth and humor are most often found in the midst of paradox (my own quote there- not someone else’s). In order for a person to accept what is being said they have to be open to it. Laughter indicates that what has been said has been “let in”, so to speak. If my congregation were continuously silent and solemn I’d be pretty sure that what I was saying was not being received.