Episode 1530: Fill Me with Laughter

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining me on episode 1,530 of the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

[00:00:06] Clint Davis: Hi, I'm Clint Davis and I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent, and your treasures to live out your calling. Having the ability to share the stories of your life is key, and one way to be inspired to do that is to hear other people's stories and insights.

[00:00:28] You can do that right here on the Inspired Stewardship Podcast with my friend Scott Maderer.

[00:00:40] Scott Maderer: When we're filled with fear and scarcity and self-importance and power, then our giving becomes suspect. But if we are filled with laughter and the joy of giving and community and relationship and hope and love, then everything changes. And in that [00:01:00] moment, we are closer to Christ. Welcome and thank you for joining us on the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

[00:01:09] If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be. Then you must learn to use your time, your talent, and your treasures for your true calling. In the Inspired Stewardship podcast, you will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others, and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.

[00:01:36] In today's spiritual foundation episode, I talk about Psalm 1 26 and John chapter 12, verses one through eight. I share how we are often challenged to find joy and how that makes change, and I also share how we struggle with certain verses and what they really mean for us today. Psalm 1 26 says, when the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we [00:02:00] were like those who dream.

[00:02:01] Then our mouth was filled with laughter and our tongue with shouts of joy that it was said among the nations. The Lord has done great things for them. The Lord has done great things for us, and we rejoiced restore our fortunes. Oh Lord, like the watercourse in the nab, may those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy.

[00:02:21] Those who go out weeping, bury the seats of sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy carrying their sheaves. And John 12 verses one through eight says, six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. When they gave a dinner for him, Martha served in Lazarus, was one of those reclining with him.

[00:02:43] Mary took a pound of costly perfume, made a pure Ard, anointed Jesus's feet and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume, but Judas, one of the disciples, the one who was about to betray him, said, why was this perfume not [00:03:00] sold for 300 Ari and the money given to the poor?

[00:03:03] He said this, not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief. He kept the cabin purse and used to steal what was put into it. And Jesus said, leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.

[00:03:23] Every now and then there's times that studying history and studying what's going on in the world helps us understand what's going on in that bigger picture. There was a period of time where there was comedy was reintroduced as something that was done in theater. They call the period Restoration Comedy.

[00:03:49] It's a late 17th and early 18th century theater style that was popular in England and on the continent during this time. And a lot of the reasons that it was [00:04:00] popular is because it was making fun of the aristocrats the nobles of the time. And the lower classes loved seeing those who had power made to look like fools, and those that had power enjoyed seeing other people that had power be taken down a peg.

[00:04:19] Obviously when the joke was on that other guy, and not them, but in fact these. Antics of the upper crust, the nobility were the context, but it wasn't really designed to question the status quo it wasn't really challenging the way the system was set up, and in fact, many people, historians now believe that it actually has shore up the class system and make it last even longer.

[00:04:47] And yet during that time, boundaries were pushed. And another thing that happened at this time, there was suddenly the introduction of women into theater. Of [00:05:00] course, women had been around before, but all of the parts in the Elizabethan period were played by young boys. If they were a female part, and really why?

[00:05:12] Just because. Women weren't seen as being allowed on the stage. It was somehow corrupting to them. And during this time, for the first time, women began to write plays that were then performed. And it's a good thing because the subject matter began to change it. It began to introduce more realistic dialogue and behavior between men and women.

[00:05:38] All of this sort of taboo subjects begin to come into the humor. At that time nowadays, we would look at these things and not consider them at all robust or pushing the limits or any of that sort of thing. But at the time, this was dramatically different than anything that had come before [00:06:00] because all the sudden real life things began to come into the.

[00:06:06] Into the theater, real life, misunderstandings, relationships, longings desires, failure, success, hope, and disappointment began to be played out and played for laughs. That's probably how they got away with it. By the way. It was comedy and because it was comedy, no one said, Hey, we should take this seriously.

[00:06:29] Instead, it must not be serious. Humor can't change. A so social system, they it doesn't turn the status quo. It doesn't make people begin to think that something could be different and yet change was happening. Some of the most significant psalms that we have are also some of the shortest as well.

[00:06:55] Psalm 1 26 is only six verses long, and yet [00:07:00] it has a deep message as well. Maybe you think it, it's a nice psalm. It has laughter and shouts of joy and good and things, but what's the deeper message? Even at the end, there's tears and proclamations of heaven. These last couple of verses of Psalm 1 26 and all of that happiness reminds us.

[00:07:22] That even in the midst of that, we are still in the midst of struggle. It takes a turn in the middle it, it starts out talking about how we've been restored and then at the end it's like, may those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy. It begins to remind us that we've got that struggle of daily living.

[00:07:44] There's no rainbows in unicorns. There's still struggle and risk and loss. And futility. There's still fragile life and hope here. And in fact, if you read through these voices [00:08:00] and really think about 'em, there seems to be loss in these verses. Is the bad time really over? Have we returned home? Are the dreams finally realized?

[00:08:12] And yet halfway through, there's a prayer for restoration when the Lord restored the fortunes. And then it turns around later and says, restore our fortunes. So had it happened and we lost it, or is it only a dream? And then we woke up, what is going on? Why is there actually something to laugh about and shout with joy?

[00:08:36] And yet there isn't as well. Are we waiting or have they happened? Did it happen and we missed it? We want. Our fortunes restored. That's the truth. We want to win the lottery. We want everything to be perfect, everyone does. We often argue about how to get there, but politically, socially, we all [00:09:00] want the world to be a little better off and for even more for our own life to be a little better off.

[00:09:08] But maybe that's a misunderstanding of what the Psalm is talking about. What's the fortune they're talking about? Maybe it's not material wellbeing, but maybe it's something else. Think about restoration comedy. What was restored at that time? What's the restoration in the restoration? This is also corresponds with the time that the Puritan band and closing of all the playhouses had entered ended.

[00:09:38] They reopened at this time. What was restored was the ability to laugh. What was restored is the ability to enjoy poking fun at ourselves and our own frailty and our own pretense. The joy of exposing human life at its vulnerable moments that was restored. See, sometimes we get so wrapped up in the seriousness of our [00:10:00] situation, of the struggle, the pain, the slights real and imagined from all those who seem to be our enemies we're turned around.

[00:10:07] By messages that tell us the only way forward is to hate because we have to take it from them so that we can have it. They're holding us down. They're the enemy. We should hate. We should fear, we should be angry, and we get overwhelmed by that and we forget that we can be overwhelmed by tears and we can't imagine reaping, let alone reaping with shouts of joy.

[00:10:34] Maybe what we're really wanting, maybe what we really need, what we're begging for and praying for is the ability to laugh again, to love again, to hope again, to not look at others with hatred and fear and anger, but instead to look at them as a living person and to capture our own hope and joy, not in wealth or material goods, but in a fortune that nothing [00:11:00] can really give us, except the Lord I.

[00:11:04] Fill our mouse with laughter and our tongues with shouts. Not chuckles, not grins, but shouts of joy in John. It turns to Judas and it says that Judas doesn't really know how to celebrate the moment. Here is this great moment where Mary recognizes Jesus and the greatness that he has done for her and Lazareth and her family, and.

[00:11:30] Judas immediately says, you shouldn't have. And this isn't the humility of a grateful receiver. No. This John tells us in a parenthetical thing that it's because he was a thief. He thought it should go to him, but maybe also John put those words into the story to cover our own guilt. The other versions of the gospels tell this story a little differently.

[00:11:58] And maybe John [00:12:00] had even been there earlier and now is looking for someone else to blame for speaking out against Jesus. Maybe there was jealousy and hunger there, and Judas was not only the only person feeling it, he was just the one who spoke it out loud. And then there's that last verse, that challenging verse.

[00:12:28] You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me. In fact, that passage is not in all of the gospels. Luke Cha does something different because Luke, throughout his gospel, has a solidarity, a message of caring for the poor. And while this story could be misinterpreted. I think we wonder what, how this last message [00:13:00] parallels the version that's in Mark and others that shows Jesus's mission.

[00:13:06] I. And you wonder if maybe this is left out sometimes because the worry is that we'll seize on these words and it'll give us permission to let up on our caring for the poor to not care for others. This is a loophole that maybe lets us off the hook, maybe. It means give to Jesus more extravagantly or just give to the poor out of a sense of duty, or give Jesus everything and just give the poor some things or give to Jesus.

[00:13:39] Always give to the poor when you can. There's all sorts of ways that this has been interpreted, and honestly, I don't know exactly what it means either. But I find it hard to believe that Jesus is asking us to change and back off from giving with our whole heart and giving with joy. I wonder if [00:14:00] instead Jesus is talking to our experience and warning us about how our lives are actually lived out.

[00:14:07] Sometimes maybe at part he was trying to get across to his followers that his death was coming up soon and they wouldn't have him here. But he was also maybe saying to all of us that sometimes when we give to the poor, we'll see Jesus's face and sometimes we won't. Sometimes we'll know this and we'll feel his presence and we'll feel like we're doing the right thing.

[00:14:33] And other times we'll wonder is this really what should, what we should be doing and what Jesus would want for us to do when he seems so far from us and so far from this moment? But no matter what, we should give out of a sense of love with extravagance, maybe in part it has to do with what fills us.

[00:14:57] When we're filled with fear and [00:15:00] scarcity and self-importance and power, then our giving becomes suspect. But if we are filled with laughter and the joy of giving and community and relationship and hope and love, then everything changes. And in that moment, we are closer to Christ. Thanks for listening.

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