AIN'T WE GOT FUN

7/12/09 from my sermon from II Sam 6:1-5, 12b-19



I can see it now....a church staff position...Minister of Fun. At the job interview, "What qualifications do you have?" "I went to clown school, then I got my undergraduate degree in humor, my Masters of Hilarity, and I'm working on my Ph. D., Doctor of Pfthlllth." Wouldn't that be fun?

Ain't we got fun...in the church? Once upon a time I was visiting with a first time guest at another church I served. She came with her little daughter. During the service, her daughter leaned over to her and said, "Mommy, who died?" "Why do you ask, honey?" "Because everyone looks so sad." Ouch.

Christ died. But I like what one child said to me when I was doing a children's sermon on Easter once. "Yeah, Christ died....but he didn't stay dead too long!" Thank God! We have good news to share. So can church be fun?

King David and company sure had fun. They were moving the long-forgotten Ark from its storage place to Jerusalem. Our scripture reads like a liturgical procession....there was an order of worship....that included fun. There was dancing...singing....musical instruments...lavish offerings.....ritual feasting. There was ecstacy within liturgy.

It reminds me of what happens in a Jewish worship service. Have you ever been? At one point in the service, they open the Ark....yes that is the word...the place where the Torah scrolls are kept. They open these ornate doors, pull out a beautiful, large scroll, and then the rabbi walks through the congregation. People smile, laugh, give thanks to God. They kiss it as it passes, touch it with their hands, touch it with their prayer books. It is a joyful moment. One would even say that they were having fun in worship!

Ain't we got fun? Can we have ecstacy in our liturgy? I was reading over old notebooks I have kept over the years. I found another story of a little boy who was just starting to attend worship. He really enjoyed communion....enjoyed the fact that he was welcome at the table. His parents told me, "When you break the bread, he claps his hands and says, 'I just love this part!'"

May it always be so that we can have fun in worship.

Part of our fun comes from the fact that we don't do worship alone. David had 30,000 with him! Ain't WE got fun? Fun comes in community.

Reading over those old notebooks, I remembered what happened one Sunday in worship when I was pastor in San Saba. It was an old style sanctuary with the choir behind me in the choir loft, rows of wooden pews that extended all the way back to a balcony with a railing. During the sermon, our younger son, Matthew got loose from Cathy. God bless the spouses of pastors. She chased him to the back of the sanctuary where he climbed up one side of the balcony on a staircase. She followed him up. He started down the other side. She went down and started up that side. She went down and up the other side. Now I could see what was happening, but I kept on preaching my serious sermon. But the choir behind me was dying with laughter. They were watching a tennis match...with Matthew shuttling back and forth across the top of the balcony and Cathy batting him from side to side. Finally, Cathy sent our older son Joel up one side while she went up the other to trap him on top. I can only tell this story now because Matt just turned 25 on Friday.

We can have fun in church...we laugh at the children's sermons....and today when a child is baptized...and at weddings.....and even at funerals. Christ died, but he didn't stay dead long!

Ain't we got fun?

But Michal can't stand it. David's wife looks out at his leaping and dancing and "despised him in her heart." The commentaries say that maybe it because it reminded her of what the fertility religions did, and she was disgusted at this irreverence. Or it was her disgust over David's near nakedness. Or she was a cynic and saw this as David's political manuevering, trying to cement religious power with the throne. Or she felt used; everytime she is mentioned in the story she is married off to someone for political reasons.

Maybe we are like Michal in some ways. We are wary of too much fun in worship. "It's not appropriate," we say. "It's disrespectful."

We would have good grounds on which to stand, even from this passage. Did you notice some verses were skipped in the reading. What happened in those verses was that as the Ark was being moved, it was going to fall off the cart upon which it was being carried. A young man who was not a priest reached out to keep it from falling and was struck dead. He violated the holiness of the Ark.

What are we to say? God won't be trifled with. God is awesome. I like what Annie Dillard says, "Liturgy are the words that we have learned that we could safely say in worship without getting struck down."

Can we still have fun before the awesome God? David and company sure did. I got some help in understanding how from another source. Her name is Fiona, and she is very high up in the management of Southwest Airlines. She is also married to a UM pastor. She was a resource person at our Bishop's convocation in March. She was the one who asked the probing question, "Do you have fun at church?" She said that one of the core values at SW Airlines was a fun-loving attitude. She said, "We take our work seriously, but we don't take ourselves seriously." Here's the punch line, "Humor creates courage."

It took a lot of courage for David to do what he did, moving the Ark. I think he got caught up in the moment. He truly worshiped. It was the closest he ever could be to God, singing and dancing and offering sacrifice. It was bold, it was risky, it was fun.

Ain't we got fun? We can face anything with courage, with humor. At my last church, we had lots of people with cancer, lots of people going through chemo, lots of people with lots of hair loss. So what did we do. Several of us cut our hair off. As you can see with me, it was no big sacrifice. Then we designated one Sunday as cap Sunday. If Sarahann and Bill and Phyllis were going to lose their hair, then we would too. In the face of fear, we laughed. We had fun.

Maybe we don't need a minister of fun on the church staff. Maybe we are all called to this ministry. Amen.