August 19, 2007

Rev. Art Lavoie

READING: Molly Fumia

To be joyful in the universe is a brave and reckless act.

The courage for joy springs not from the certainty of human experience,

but the surprise.

Our astonishment at being loved,

our bold willingness to love in return -

these wonders promise the possibility of joyfulness,

no matter how often and how harshly love seems to be lost.

READING: 

When you go to buy a pomegranate,

pick the one that’s laughing,

that has its rind cleft,

so that through its broken-open-ness

you get some information

about the seeds.

Listen for the laughter

that shows the inside,

that cracks the casket-shell

and lets you see the pearl.

There’s another kind, an unhappy laughing

like the red anemone that shows

its inner blackness.

But pomegranate-laughter is blessed,

like the companionship of good people.

Even if you’re a common rock,

when you join them,

you’ll become a precious stone.

Keep the love of happy laughing in you.   

Feeling the Shoulder of the Lion “Let That Laughter Lead You”, by Rumi, trans by Coleman Barks

SERMON

One Sunday, several years ago, Cathey came up to me after church, “Art, Art,” she asked, “how do you make God laugh?”  “I don’t know Cathey,” I replied, “How do you make God laugh?”  “You tell him or her your plans,” she answered laughing excitedly.

We were in the middle of coffee hour, and there were many people bustling about, so Cathey and I didn’t have the opportunity to explore this further.  But her story, and the issues that it raised have been churning in my mind ever since.  “How do you make God laugh?”  “You tell her or him your plans.”

When I about God laughing I am confronted with a few conflicting thoughts and images.  First, I have serious trouble with ideas of an anthropomorphized deity, or, if you will, a god who is given human characteristics. 

It seems to me that we limit any notion of the sacred by manifesting it in our own image.  It is the image of the old, white, male god with a long flowing beard, and all that it represents, that many of us move away from as we explore our adult spirituality.

On the other hand, though, I kind of like this image of a laughing God.  So often in our culture, the images of an angry, judgmental, punishing God are thrown in our faces, and I find it refreshing to contemple a God who laughs.

Think about it, where in your background, where in our culture or in our world do we hear stories about a God who laughs?

Now, I know, on a superficial level this story about a laughing God is meant to remind us that we are not able to control the world around us, that everything is not going to happen the way that we want it to, no matter how hard we try or how much we wish.  And, it especially reminds us that we are powerless to control other people. 

But, I believe there is also a dynamic tension inherent in this image of God laughing when we tell our plans.  We, human beings, are known for our ability to think, to reason, and to make plans.  It’s an important part of our identity.  By making plans we take some control over our lives.  And if there is a God who laughs at our making plans, our ability to do what is part of our human nature, is that laughter one of support and encouragement or one of reprimand and invalidation?

There is a deep theological question at the heart of this matter, regarding our belief in the nature of God, or the universe, or what is most sacred.  Do we believe in a God, or a cosmos, that is abundant, that is generous, that is loving?  Or, do we believe that there is something or someone that seems to be out to get us at every turn, that we can’t seem to move forward without being slammed back down? 

It is the angry, judgmental, omnipotent God that I remember from my childhood.  And when I experienced that God laughing, it was a snide and vindictive laughter.  This was a God who seemed to laugh at me, a God who manipulated my life at his/her own will and discretion, a God whose love was judgmental, not abundant.

And, I believe that we face a world where this image of an omnipotent, angry God rules.  We see it everywhere around us in the religious fundamentalism in our own country and throughout the world.

People are taught, as I was taught, as perhaps many of you were taught, that this God controls everything, that what happens to us is, somehow, “God’s will.”  And, we are also taught that we are held accountable by this God for all of our thoughts and actions.  My friends, this is not an image that I want to give to our children.

The Laughing God that I want to focus on is the God of our Universalist heritage, the always loving, ever accepting God with arms thrown wide in hearty laughter; a rare image in our western world.

It was the Universalists who first rejected the notion of an angry, judgmental God.  For them, God was not capricious, was not acting out of some divine plan that we, mere humans could never know or understand.  No, the deity, the sacred which they imagined was all-caring, ever-present, bestowing an abundance of love and goodness upon all.

A long time ago there was a Buddhist monk named Pu Tai.  He lived in the tenth century.  His name “Pu Tai” can be translated as hempen sack, and it is said that this monk traveled around with all his possessions in such a sack.

Pu Tai, so the legend tells us, is the origin of the “laughing Buddha,” an image of the Buddha that is often depicted surrounded by children, a symbol of the love and acceptance that children possess, an important virtue in Chinese culture.  This Buddha is always seen with a broad smile on his face, and he is seated with his right leg raised in a more relaxed posture, that symbolizes his contentment with himself and the world. 

According to Buddhist mythology there were five incarnations of the Buddha.  Upon his death Pu Tai revealed his true identity to be that of “the Loving One,” expected to come as the fifth and final Buddha.  Through this story, laughter, contentment, and a generosity of spirit are associated with the most loving of the Buddha’s incarnations.

Laughter and love in this story can be seen as a place where the divine and the human meet.  Laughter has that way of touching our hearts, brightening our spirits, and lifting our burdens.  This is an image of the sacred that I want Unitarian Universalist theology to offer, a laughing and loving spiritual presence in our lives, not the angry, punishing God that is so often portrayed around us. 

Whatever our image of the sacred, we must come to understand that it is our responsibility as women and men of faith to bring forth, to embody that loving and laughing presence. We understand that it is our responsibility to show to the world a different image of what religious belief can look like, today, here and now. 

For you see, my friends, we are the face of that laughing God.  We are called to live in partnership with the sacred source of life which fills the universe and which dwells within each of us.  We either work to build a community based on love, caring and abundance or we build one based on greed, mistrust, and scarcity.  We either embody a God who laughs with us, who rejoices in the fullness of life; or we embody a God who laughs at us, who judges and punishes.

Abundance is not about what we have or what we can get, but abundance is about who we are, our theology and our world view.  It is a way of seeing the world which calls each of us to a deeper communion with the mysteries of life and charges us to take an active role in building a loving community.

Laughter is also a window to the soul.  The Rumi poem Michelle read this morning, describes happy laughter, or a life lived in abundance as one that shows “broken-open-ness,” that lets the seeds inside show.  But Rumi reminds us that a life lived with “pomegranate-laughter is blessed.”  Rumi also tells us that even if we are “common as a rock,” when we join the company of those who laugh we will become “a precious stone.”

In our first reading Molly Fumia writes that being joyful in this world is a “brave and reckless act” which takes much courage.  She also writes that “the courage for joy springs not from the certainty of human experience, but the surprise.”  She’s right you know. 

We exist here without certainty.  We will never know what tomorrow will bring.  Our belief in an abundantly loving and laughing God, or, if you will, a life that will give us more joys than sorrows, this belief comes from a place of deep faith and deep hope and it takes courage to live from that “broken-open” place.

Molly Fumia continues:

Our astonishment at being loved,

our bold willingness to love in return -

these wonders promise the possibility of joyfulness,

no matter how often and how harshly love seems to be lost.

A God who laughs is one who lovingly accompanies us on our life’s journey and shares all of our joys and sorrows, a God who covenants to walk with us as we covenant to walk with each other.  This is a gift that Unitarian Universalism can bring to a broken world.

Let me return for a moment to Cathey’s story with which I began this sermon.  After she told me about the God who laughs when we tell our plans, she said that she was so taken by this when she first heard it, that she began to call her friends and share the story with them. 

Now, you have to understand that when Cathey gets excited about something, she speaks so quickly that her words jumble together in a way that I will try to imitate.

So she calls her friend Anita and says, “Anita, Anita, Howdoyoumakeg-odlaugh?” 

“What,” Anita replies. 

“Howdoyoumakegodlaugh?” Cathey says again. 

Anita responds confusedly,

“What’s godlaugh?   Is   that   some   kind   of   Scandinavian   dish?”

I would like to think that when we bring laughter into our midst, there is something holy which is present and laughing with us.

Amen, Ashe, Blessed Be