Laugh tracking

Published on by Adam Thomas2 Comments

I’ve noticed in my sermons that I always get a laugh when I make oblique references to my age. I remember people chuckling when I’ve said: “A decade ago, when I was a sophomore in high school,” or “Back in 1993 when I was 10 years old” or “I was born during Reagan’s first term.” Now, I’ve never thought that the congregation was laughing at me; they weren’t laughing because someone half or even one-third their age was preaching to them. They laughed because they remembered themselves at 25, remembered how young or naïve or wide-eyed they were. They laughed because their thoughts of themselves in decades past were pretty darn funny. I wonder if their quarter-century selves laughed back then thinking of 25 or 50 years down the road. Laughter marks our journeys. Laughter, in all its tones, for all its reasons, tells us where we are and how we are experiencing life. And laughter is one of God’s most effective means of communicating God’s plan to us.

You see, there’s not just one kind of laughter. You can chuckle or guffaw or cackle or giggle or chortle or snicker or double over and slap your knee or, if you are the Queen of England, “express amusement.” Different kinds of laughter fit different situations. You might not realize it, but God speaks to us in laughter. When we discover why we are laughing, God’s movement in our lives becomes much clearer. Here’s four kinds of laughter to illustrate what I mean.

In our story from Genesis today, the LORD appears to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre and makes a startling, even comical, announcement: “I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah will have a son.” The narrator explains why this is so funny: “Now Abraham and Sarah were old, well advanced in years.” The King James Version puts it a bit more colorfully—the couple was “well stricken in age.” Now, whether she is advanced in years or well stricken, Sarah is most definitely post-menopausal. So Sarah laughs the incredulous laughter of impossibility. This laugh usually consists of one loud sound, almost a bark. There’s no way she can have a baby! God is really selling something this time.

How often does God ask us to do the seemingly impossible: from loving those who hate us to holding the hand of a dying friend to working for justice in a world where disparity is the overarching reality. Sometimes, all we can do is laugh at the hopelessness around us. Thinking God is changing our world is incredible—incredible, as in, “not credible.” This is the incredulous laughter of impossibility. Sarah and Abraham (in the previous chapter) both laugh at the possibility that God can do the impossible.

But as a recent Adidas ad campaign reminds us: “Impossible is nothing.” I think Adidas’s marketing department has been reading Genesis. God hears Sarah laugh and says, “Is anything too wonderful for the LORD?” This may sound like a question, but there’s only one answer. “Is anything too wonderful for the LORD?” No. In another story we all know about a woman (who shouldn’t be able to have a baby) having a baby, the angel Gabriel says: “Nothing will be impossible with God.” Believing that impossible is nothing can spur us to laugh the zealous laughter of confidence. This laugh comes from the belly and usually generates a hair toss or the placement of hands on the hips. This is the fresh, unrefined zeal that accompanies a mountaintop experience or a revelatory conversion. Of course nothing is too wonderful for God! How could I ever have doubted?

But fresh, unrefined zeal has a short shelf life. Don’t misunderstand: there aren’t too many better feelings than riding a spiritual high. But there is a danger when these mountaintops, these highs points become the focus of a life of faith. Too often, spiritual high seekers becomes self-centered, always looking for another buzz, never stopping to realize that God has already filled them with every good thing.

When fresh, unrefined zeal deepens past the surface, past the level where the erosion of daily life always threatens to wash away our confidence in God, another kind of laughter emerges. The narrator of Sarah’s story says, “The LORD dealt with Sarah as he had said, and the LORD did for Sarah as he had promised.” Believing God’s promise to fulfill all of God’s promises leads to the thankful laughter of surrender. This laugh of relief usually begins with a long exhale and ends with a small, almost inaudible chuckle. This isn’t surrender in the sense of “giving up,” but in the sense of “giving over.” When we give over to God all of our insecurities and anxieties and fears and limitations, we realize that God has already given us the ability to rest in God’s promises. And we thank God for the willingness to embrace us, love us, and transform our lives.

Sarah’s life changes when she conceives and bears her son Isaac. Nine months before, she was laughing incredulously at the thought that she could have a child. But here he is. And Sarah says, “God has brought laughter for me.” In saying this, she’s having a little joke of her own—in Hebrew, Isaac means “laughter.” I imagine Sarah holding him in her arms, a small swaddled gift from God. I imagine his little fist clutching her old, leathery finger. I imagine her throwing her head back and laughing the sparkling laughter of joy. This laugh is unrestrained and spontaneous and unique for every one of God’s children. This laugh connects us to the God who is the source of our joy. When sparkling laughter wells up within us and spills from our lips, we proclaim that God has made our joy complete, as Jesus says in John’s Gospel.

Sarah says, “God has brought laughter for me,” and then she continues, “Everyone who hears will laugh with me.” Our laughter is a testimony, a witness to the movement of God in our lives and in the world. In the story of Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie echoes this witness: “When the first baby laughed for the first time, the laugh broke into a thousand pieces and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.” When God’s movement in our lives causes us to laugh—incredulously, zealously, thankfully, sparklingly—our laughs break, like our bread, and skip across a world in dire need of something to laugh about.

So laugh for the joy that God is calling us to love and serve God and each other. Laugh for the thankfulness that God equips us for this loving service. Laugh for the faith that nothing is impossible and nothing is too wonderful for the LORD.

(Sermon for June 15, 2008 || Proper 6, Year A RCL || Genesis 18:1-15; 21:1-7)

Eucharistic tachycardia

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment

I woke up this morning with my heart racing. I clutched my pillow (which sports faded images of Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie, C3PO, R2D2, and Darth Vader), took several ragged breaths, and waited for my heart to slow down. I had been sleeping. I wasn’t active at all. I don’t remember dreaming. I don’t have a heart condition. So why was my heart racing?

I had words going through my mind as I awoke: “On the night he was handed over to suffering and death, our Lord Jesus Christ took bread; and when he had given thanks to you, he broke it, and gave it to his disciples, and said: ‘Take, eat: this is my Body which is given for you. Do this for the remembrance of me.’ ”

These aren’t just any words. In the Episcopal Church, these are some of the “words of institution,” which are part of the Eucharistic prayer. This is the prayer we pray to remember our place in God’s story of salvation and grace, to fulfill Jesus’ wish at the Last Supper, and to ask Christ to indwell the bread and wine with his presence so that they become to us his Body and Blood. “Eucharist” means “thanksgiving”; therefore, when we participate in the Eucharistic prayer, we corporately thank God for all the gifts God has given us, most especially the gift of Jesus Christ our Lord. It’s no coincidence that the word “corporate” comes from the Latin word for “body.” We come together as the body of Christ to share the Body and Blood of Christ (Paul explains this in 1 Corinthians). This sharing of Christ opens our eyes and hearts to the presence of Christ already around and within us. We are nourished to renew our commitment to our Lord, to proclaim the love of God, and to do the work God has given us to do.

In the final chapter of the Gospel According to Luke, Cleopas and his companion meet a wayfarer on the road. They are leaving Jerusalem, defeated and despairing. But the wayfarer sees their predicament from another perspective. They have the story all wrong, he says. And he reframes the story they know into a new story in which violence doesn’t overcome peace, hate  can’t snuff out love, and life kicks death in the teeth. They reach their destination and ask the wayfarer to eat with them. When he breaks the bread, they realize Jesus has been with them all this time. They remember feeling like their hearts were on fire when he was speaking to them on the road. And they race back to Jerusalem to proclaim that they have seen the Lord!

Maybe that’s what happened to me this morning when I awoke with Jesus’ words in my head. My racing heart was burning within me as I thought about what I will do for the first time this Sunday. I am being ordained to the priesthood tomorrow, and I am overjoyed to be celebrating the Eucharist for the first time this weekend. If idly thinking the words of institution gets my heart racing, how will I feel in two days time? Nervous, I have no doubt (in all the gesturing, I’m convinced I’m going to knock over a chalice). Nervous, yes, but my joy is overriding my nerves. This joy springs from deep within me, from the place where Christ dwells, speaking words of love and grace into the very core of my being. Now I have the opportunity to preside at a celebration of this joy with other people. This fills me with awe–awe that God would use me to make known God’s love in the world, would ask me to serve God’s people as a priest.

One of the Eucharistic prayers prays these words: “And here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee; humbly beseeching thee that we, and all others who shall be partakers of this Holy Communion, may worthily receive the most precious Body and Blood of thy Son Jesus Christ, be filled with thy grace and heavenly benediction, and made one body with him, that he may dwell in us, and we in him.”

Lord Jesus, please dwell in us so we can share your love in the world. Let us dwell in your presence, which infuses life with your nourishing grace and sets our racing hearts on fire.

What size straightjacket?

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment

I have had quite a bit of downtime in this month between graduation from seminary and ordination to the priesthood. While this has been a happy occasion to catch up on sleep and Law & Order:SVU, it has also produced a surplus of mental energy that is no longer being poured into my thesis and papers. Any of my friends could tell you that I think too much, especially about relationships. And when I have the time to think too much, my mind develops every choice, every scenario, every possible combination of what could go right and will go wrong to every logical and illogical conclusion.

In the last two years of seminary, I had few opportunities and even less time for my brain to engage in such frivolous and ultimately useless exercises. But now that formal studies have concluded, my mind wondered what to do with the extra horsepower. Without a relationship with a woman to examine, deconstruct, extrapolate, and fret about, my mind turned to my relationship with God.

As such, in the last month, I have had a few minor anxiety attacks, a couple small bouts of existential dread, and even a dark afternoon of the soul.* Am I ready? Is this really what I want to devote my life to? What about all the other things I could do? How huge is this commitment? Am I committed? Should I be committed? I wonder what size straightjacket I’d wear? My mind climbed the ladders to these lofty questions, and then it found a chute and jumped headfirst. The lofty questions mingled with the old set of relationship questions, and my mind ventured down all the well worn paths it has trod before, all the parallel universes in which I didn’t say this or did recognize that warning sign or missed an opportunity or or or…

Then I realized that all my dread and neuroses were misplaced. When did my relationship with God start mirroring my relationships with women? Now, this is nothing new: the great prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures often compared God’s relationship with Israel to a marriage, sometimes favorably, sometimes not so much. But, in those comparisons, God was always faithful–it was the people of Israel who broke the covenant and went after false gods. My dread came from confusing mine and God’s parts in the story. In my neurotic imaginings, God played the part of the leaver in the relationship. I was the faithful one, the stalwart. But that’s not how it is. The only thing that keeps me going in a world that seems full of leavings, full of broken relationships, is the faith that God will never leave, will never break a relationship. What a revelation.

My ordination is in five days. You might think it strange that someone about to be ordained to the priesthood seems just to be figuring out that God is here to stay. Well, it’s not the first time I’ve realized it, and I’m sure it won’t be the last time I need to. But faith is about remembering to remember. It’s easy to lose sight of God’s promises because life is built on those promises. Over time, they blend into the landscape. Small bouts of existential dread and dark afternoons of the soul jar me into remembering to remember those promises.

At the end of the Gospel According to Matthew, Jesus says, “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Lord, help me remember that you are in this relationship for good. Help me remember that my neuroses aren’t going to scare you away. Help me be in this relationship with you.

Who’s to say where the wind will take you?

Published on by Adam Thomas2 Comments

Adam, a follower of Christ,

to all those who find this blog through the Series of Tubes.

Grace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!

The Apostle Paul really nailed the beginnings of his letters, so I thought I’d borrow his intro formula to begin my blog. Paul journeyed all over the Mediterranean following the little dotted purple and blue and red lines you see on the maps in the back of your study Bible. I’m afraid I can’t afford the airfares to Thessalonica or Ephesus, so I will have to rely on the Interwebs to make a new set of dotted lines from my MacBook to your computer. Since you’re probably in modern day Scranton or Lubbock rather than ancient Greece, I think the Internet is the way to go.

Pop over to the “About” page for an introduction to the blog. I look forward to your comments on future posts. I took the title of this blog from U2’s song, “Kite.” In the midst of the grief that spurred the song to be written, I hear the hope that wind will continue to carry us on. I don’t know U2’s source material for this song, but I can’t get Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus out of my head when I hear the chorus. Jesus says, “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). In Greek, wind and spirit are the same word (pneuma). Who’s to say where the wind will take me? Who’s to say where the Spirit is leading me? In this blog, I will reflect on the movement of God in my life, the movement that dances on the wind of the Spirit. I invite you to follow my reflections and discern how God is moving in your own life.

Here’s that U2 song in case you’ve never heard it. It’s on their album All That You Can’t Leave Behind: