Clergy members say faith and laughter can mix

The Rev. Sherry Boles said she knew members of St. John United Methodist Church had accepted her recently when they pranked her, but good.

When she left her notes on the pulpit between the early and late services, complete with answers to questions she tossed out during the sermon, someone copied and spread around the answers to the questions. When Ms. Boles asked the questions in the late service, a chorus answered her back.

“I didn’t get it at first,” said Ms. Boles, who was appointed pastor at the church in June after serving St. Luke United Methodist for seven years. “Then it was like, ‘Wait a minute.’ I just died laughing. I do think God creates those moments to show us we’re really not in control.”

St. John UMC will hold Holy Humor Sunday this week with a potluck lunch and “goofy” talent show following the church’s late morning service.

Area clergy said parishioners sometimes forget they don’t always have to be serious, but they also can be joyful over their blessings.

“Joy is a blessing from God,” said the Rev. Carlton Harper, pastor of Silverdale Cumberland Presbyterian Church. “Sometimes we so take it for granted.”

“We’ve got to laugh at ourselves,” said the Rev. Dale Lovelady, pastor of Hickory Valley Christian Church. “We’re not perfect. If we can’t laugh at ourselves, we’re straw men.”

Ms. Boles said she first heard of staging Holy Humor Sunday the week after Easter when she was an associate pastor at Munsey Memorial UMC in Johnson City, Tenn. The pastor there, the Rev. John Ripley, received a newsletter that mentioned the tradition had historical roots, she said.

She introduced it locally last year following her final Easter at St. Luke UMC.

“There is a tradition in Eastern Orthodox Christianity,” she wrote in St. John’s newsletter, “that priests get together after Easter to smoke cigars, drink brandy, sing songs and tell jokes. Being Methodists, we are just going to sing and tell jokes. Oh and, of course, no Methodist gathering would be complete without food.”

The Rev. Stavros Ballas, priest at Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church in Chattanooga, said he had never heard of such a tradition but that didn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

Following Orthodox Easter, which is April 27 this year, his church traditionally has a Renewal Week, or Bright Week, he said.

“That has more to do with the service, not a time when you cut loose,” Father Ballas said.

The Holy Humor idea is rooted in the celebration of Easter.

“The Resurrection (of Jesus Christ) is a joke ... on the devil,” Ms. Boles wrote in the church newsletter. “The punch line to a joke often involves an unexpected outcome. With that definition in mind, the Resurrection of Jesus is one of the great punch lines of all time.”

Mr. Harper said Christians sometimes believe they have to be serious about their faith at all times.

“I know they think it,” he said. “You don’t get (permission to laugh) verbalized all that much. Amongst older people, especially, you get the idea that, now that we’re in church, we’ve got to be serious.”

However, humor has its limits, Mr. Harper said.

“In seminary and in homiletics (sermon composition and delivery) classes,” he said, “there has been the idea of being humorous in the pulpit but (the necessity of being) careful of how you do it. You don’t want to be a comedian.”

Mr. Lovelady said he doesn’t try to force humor in his sermons.

“I don’t always use humor,” he said. “It almost has to come naturally. I don’t use humor just for the sake of humor. But then there’s something that seems appropriate and you can.”

Ms. Boles said she sees the humor in most everything and often is able to see a different angle on things — “what’s relevant in the culture” — in her sermon preparation and sermon title.

“What is in the secular world many times has elements of the sacred in it,” she said. “We just have to lift those up just as Jesus lifted up from the secular world a farmer, a widow looking for a coin, common things. But he looked at them through a sacred lens.”

It’s necessary, sometimes, to laugh about things that happen in church, Ms. Boles said.

“We do try to be so serious, and then something funny happens and (it’s) like God’s telling us to lighten up here, to enjoy life,” she said. “I hate to think of people leaving church feeling beaten up. I think they should leave church feeling joyful and full of life.”

The week after Easter, especially, should be full of humor, Ms. Boles said.

“We’re to be joyful,” she said. “We know the story. We know the outcome. And the outcome is God has won.”

HUMOROUS HOMILIES

Several clergy members who discussed the use of humor in worship are often among those whose sermons titles are selected by the Times Free Press as most intriguing of the week:

The Rev. Sherry Boles, St. John United Methodist

* “Emily Post’s Etiquette for Lepers, Sinners and Saints”

* “How To Use Amped Up Power Tools”

* “Jesus Is Not Our Personal Butler”

* “McDreamy’s Lullaby”

* “Rich Drunk Man Meets Untimely End”

The Rev. Carlton Harper, Silverdale Cumberland Presbyterian.

* “Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh: Not Your Usual Housewarming Gifts”

* “The Way to Heaven Is Through a Pig Pen”

* “Pastor Jesus Would Never Make It in a Megachurch”

* “Gluttons, Drunks and Other People Like Me”

* “It Ain’t No Game When Jesus Says, ‘Go Fish’”

The Rev. Dale Lovelady, Hickory Valley Christian Church

* “Jesus Gives Lodging to the Outcasts of Poker Flat”

* “When Jesus Got in God’s Face”

* “007: Agents of Change — The World Is Not Enough”

* “When Your Past Is a Dangerous Intersection”

* “Bury the Hatchet Deep”