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The following message for the moment is delivered by the Reverend Dr. Bruce Wheeler Thielman. Today's sermon is entitled "Ha! Ha! Among the Trumpets." Let us continue in worship by giving attention to the reading of God's Word as it is recorded in the book of Job, the 39th chapter. I begin the reading at the verse numbered 19.

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Do you give the horse his might? Do you clothe his neck with strength? Do you make him leap like the locust? His majestic snorting is terrible. He paws in the valley and exults in his strength. He goes out to meet the weapons. He laughs at fear and is not dismayed. He does not turn back from the sword. Upon him rattle the quiver, the flashing spear, and

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the javelin. With fierceness and rage he swallows the ground. He cannot stand still at the sound of the trumpet. When the trumpet sounds, he says, "Ha! Ha!" He smells the battle from afar, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting. And may God bless to us this reading from his Word. Pray with me.

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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. A long time ago, in 1968, I was candidating for a pulpit in Southern California, the Los Angeles area. And when the vote was taken, I got all of the votes but three. About a week later, the chairman of the pulpit committee called me and said that they had found out

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who the three people were who voted against me. And why? They had voted against me because in the course of my sermon, I had told a joke. Now there are some people who can see no relationship between humor and faith. Back in 1676, the famous Puritan Robert Barclay wrote, "It is not lawful to use laughing, jesting, or mirth

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in Christian liberty." And yet the Scriptures say, do they not, "There is a time to weep and a time to laugh." Jesus was very popular at parties, and he filled his speech with hyperbole, which was the joke-telling of first-century Israel. Is it possible to imagine a perfect man who had no sense of humor? It's true, Scripture never relates to us that Jesus laughed,

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but I would suggest to you that that is because it was so typical of him. On the other hand, when he wept, an atypical thing for him, this is recorded on the pages of the New Testament. Now the common people heard him gladly. Children crawled up into his lap, and they don't do that with sad sacks. I heard about a little boy whose goldfish

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died, and when his father came home, he met him at the door with tears and related the sad news. And his father said, "Well, this is what we'll do. You call all of your friends, we'll dig a little hole outside, and we'll put flowers all around it, and I've given up smoking, so we'll take my cigarette case and we'll make that into the casket, and then

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we'll put the fish into the casket, and we'll put the casket into the ground, and then we'll cover it over with the earth, and then I will take you all out for ice cream." And just then they happened to look down, and the fish, which before had appeared to be dead, was swimming quite merrily about the bowl, whereupon the youngster looked up to his father and

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said, "Daddy, let's kill it." There are some people who would rather have tears than laughter. Yet I think I'm far within the mark when I say that laughter is an excellent solvent for the grit of irritation which often jams the gears of our lives. People who cannot laugh suffer a great deal more from stress

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and anxiety and from fear. Humor has great value in life. My favorite reference to humor in the Old Testament is to be found in the book of Job. You remember in the 38th and the 39th chapters, Job is talking about the things that God has made and how his glory and majesty are shown by his creation. And in the 39th chapter, at the 19th verse, he

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refers to a war horse. He says he is powerful. He has a mane like thunder. His nostrils flare with excitement, his hooves paw in the valleys. He has been bred for conflict, and when he hears the trumpets of war, the cacophony of conflict, he is ready to go. And he says, "Ha, ha," among the trumpets. His confidence in himself, you see, and his confidence in

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himself because of his maker enables the creature to say with laughter, in the midst of the trumpets of trouble, "Ha, ha," among the trumpets. Laughter is a great gift of God, and we all need to learn how to use it, to say, "Ha, ha." My friends, if you don't think God has a sense of humor, then just take a look at some of the people who are sitting around

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you. Think first of how laughter and the heroic spirit go together. In Proverbs chapter 15, we read, "A glad heart makes a cheerful countenance." The suggestion is that good humor carries us on in difficult times. If we can come up with a smile or a joke, we can not only hearten ourselves but hearten other people as well. Back on December 22, 1944, the German forces

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were moving against the Allies in what we call now the Battle of the Bulge. If you remember, this was the last great German attack, and the panzer divisions of Hitler were rolling down on a small town called Bastogne. That town was the key place that had to be defended. Defending that town was a group of American soldiers, and they were led by a general,

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General Anthony McAuliffe. When the tanks of the Germans were all in place, they sent a radio message to General McAuliffe, and they said, "Surrender or die." McAuliffe replied, "In the presence of all of his command officers and many of the troops who were standing about, send back this message. Nuts." And everybody laughed at the indifference, at the courage,

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at the enthusiasm that he showed, the fact that he didn't back off an inch, that contemptuous answer, "Nuts." And they went on to hold Bastogne, and the Germans advanced no farther. Did you ever hear of Sidney Smith? Now, Sidney Smith was an Anglican clergyman, and he was a member of the Parliament in Great Britain. He was the one who won the right for Roman

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Catholics to vote in England. He was the one who won the right for Jews to vote in England. He is the one who was at the very forefront of the charge to win the freedom of slaves in England. And what he did there had great impact on the abolition movement here in the United States. If you look in the Encyclopedia Britannica, you will find a lot about Sidney

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Smith. But one thing you won't find noted there is that in his day, he was considered to be the funniest man alive. He had a marvelous sense of humor. He would convulse his audiences, and he won his victories many times through the application of his wit. He laughed, ha-ha, even in the midst of the trumpets. Or go to the world of athletics. Here's Bill Russell,

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one of the great basketball players of all time. He was on the Celtics, and you remember that they won the National Basketball Association Championship 15 times. And after he retired, he wrote a book about his experiences called Second Wind. And in that book, he addresses a rhetorical question to himself. He asks, "What are the reasons for the Celtics' great

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success?" And then he answers his own question. "There are two reasons. We did our best, and we learned how to laugh. Ability and a sense of humor are unbeatable." I confess to you that one of my least favorite things in all the world is to go to a supermarket. All those people going back and forth in the aisles, products stacked up. Used to have eight kinds

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of cereal. Now they have 96, and I never can find the one I'm looking for. I sometimes think to myself that these helicopters that fly around the city in the morning and in the late afternoon to tell you about traffic patterns, they ought to have one of those flying around inside one of these supermarkets. And it could send down messages like, "The

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aisle to the meat department is jammed all the way back to the milk section." Or, "There's been a smash-up in the cereal aisle, but the two carts have been pulled over to one side. Unfortunately, everybody's rubber-knocking as they go by." And at the intersection of the pop line and the snack line, there's a customer on fire, so you want to avoid that

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area if you possibly can. I think to myself when I'm in a supermarket of things I would like to do. Like I'd like to go over to somebody whose basket is three-quarters full, and they're not looking, and I would put a few things into their basket that they didn't select. And then watch their expression at the checkout counter when he pulls up the bottle and says,

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"Why in the world did I buy these pig's feet? And wouldn't it be great to set all the lobsters in the lobster tank free? Even better than that would be to hide some of them behind the milk cartons. That could have a tremendous effect. And to get hold of the microphone that they use in those stores. Attention shoppers, our special for this hour is standing rib

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roast at eight cents a pound. That would cause a real bit of excitement. Or attention shoppers, we have just found a thousand-dollar bill in the soap department. If it is yours, come and claim it." Laughter, making myself think of things that give me a chuckle, a chortle, has a kind of lifting power. I don't care whether we're talking about war or parliamentary

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debates or sports or going through supermarkets. Even in the time of death, laughter helps. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, who is probably our world's best-known thanatologist, has sat with thousands of people when they die. And she says that they never talk about the things that they own or the things that they're leaving behind. Instead, she says, they talk about

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things like the wonderful trip they took to Switzerland 15 years ago, or the time they fell out of the boat on the fishing trip, or the newest baby that's been born into the family. They relate happy moments out of their past experience. And these things give them the smile and the encouragement that enables them to die in a great peace. Glad hearts

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create cheerful countenances, and a cheerful countenance can promote a heroic spirit. Olive Schreiner put it in a very, very interesting way. She said, "Echoes of despair slink away for the laugh of a brave, strong heart is death to them." Ha-ha, among the trumpets. Well, think about this, laughter and the healthy spirit. In Proverbs chapter 17, we read, "A

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cheerful heart is good medicine." Now, you all know what the word psychosomatic means. Psychosomatic has to do with an illness that begins in the mind but has some effect upon the physical body. You can worry so much, for example, that you give yourself an ulcer. Now, the Hebrews knew about psychosomatic medicine a long time ago, and they suggest

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that God gives us laughter to help to keep us healthy. A cheerful heart is good medicine, which is another way of saying it's not so much what you eat as it is what eats you. Stress you see, kills. It causes ulcers and strokes and depression and high blood pressure and heart disease, but laughter helps to reduce these things. And it has no calories and it

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has no caffeine and it has no alcohol and it has no harmful chemicals. It's altogether natural and one size fits all. We ought to laugh 15 times every day, and we'd find it would be good medication because studies have shown that laughter causes us to relax, laughter causes our pulse rate to slow, laughter many times relieves us of headaches, laughter exercises

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the chest muscles, particularly the diaphragm, and it also has a good effect on the facial muscles. The act of laughing is an exercise for the face. I always think of Moe Green in this relationship. Moe Green was a man who was 65 years old and weighed 300 pounds, and he decided he would have to lose weight. So he went on a diet and a walking program

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and he dropped 40 pounds. One day he met one of his friends and his friend said, "Moe Green, is that you?" And he said, "Yes, I've lost 40 pounds and I'm beginning to feel better every day." He kept at it and not too much longer he had lost another 40 pounds and now he was jogging regularly every day. And one day as he was walking down the street he passed

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one of his old buddies and he said, "Hello," and the buddy turned and looked at him and said, "Moe Green, is that you?" And he said, "Yes, I've dropped 80 pounds now and I'm in tip-top shape." And then he joined a health club and he dropped 40 more pounds and he built up his muscles until eventually he began to look like a man half his age. And he fell

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in love with a young girl who was 28, half his age, and they were married. And on the night of their honeymoon, the first night, he said, "You know, dear, I would love to celebrate this night with a bottle of champagne." She said, "I think that's a great idea." So he ran down 14 floors in the hotel and he ran across the lobby and he ran across the

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sidewalk and he started to run across the street when he was hit by a truck and killed instantly. And when he got to heaven he said to the Lord, "Lord, I just don't understand. I mean, when I was carrying all that weight and when I was in such bad health, out of shape altogether, I can understand how something like that could happen. But when I bring my

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self down a total of 120 pounds and build my muscles up and at the beginning of a new marriage, why in the world does this happen now?" And the Lord looked at him and said, "Mo Green, is that you?" Now I do not want to disparage the omniscience of our Lord. He knows all of our names and he knows the very hairs on our heads. But there is a relationship

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here, you see, between laughter and health. Let me give you a case study. Norman Cousins was the executive editor of the Saturday Review of Literature. And at 47 years of age, he developed a disease called ankylosing spondylitis. That's a very painful, inflammatory disease of the spine which often causes stiffening or hardening. They told him that this has

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come about because of great stress. And they also told him that he probably would never be able to work again. Well, Norman Cousins reasoned to himself, "If stress brought this on me, then the opposite of stress may take it away." And so he asked his doctors if he might move to a hotel which was very near the hospital and they gave him permission.

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And he would spend most of the day watching comedies, Laurel and Hardy and Abbott and Costello and Red Skelton and Jimmy Durante, all of them one after another. And when he got tired of watching movies, then he would have a friend of his read him jokes from a big collection of joke books which he had assembled. And he discovered very quickly

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that 10 minutes of laughter would give him two hours of uninterrupted, painless sleep. And he went on to become better and better so that in a few months he was back to work again. Now the theory is, you see, that when you laugh, you excite your endocrine system. Part of the endocrine system is the pituitary gland. When it's excited, the pituitary gland

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puts into your bloodstream endorphins. Now endorphins are pain killers. Runners can tell you about them. You run until you think you can't go another step and just then there is this flow of endorphins into the bloodstream and with it comes a new surge of power. Pain is killed. And there's also some healing effect. Norman Cousins tells all about this in a book

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which relates his experience. It's called The Anatomy of an Illness. Here he was facing the demanding trumpets of disease, the screaming trumpets of suffering. But he said, "Ha, ha!" among the trumpets. A cheerful heart is good medicine. To make a slight variation on an old phrase, "He who laughs, lasts." And then think about this, laughter and the spirit

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of holiness. In Job chapter 8, these words appear, "God will not reject a blameless man. He will fill your mouth with laughter and your life with shouting." G.K. Chesterton, the great Christian apologist of a few generations ago, said, "Joy is the gigantic secret of the Christian." He's not talking about silliness. He's not talking about comedy, although those

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things can be part of our lives profitably also. He is talking about the power of hope. When you begin to see life through the spectacles of the Holy Spirit, then you understand that for God and for God's people, all ends in victory. Job says, "Christians are not rejected. God fills their mouths with laughter." Who has more right to laughter than a Christian?

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Faith is dismayed by what it sees in the world. Christians see suffering. They see sin. They see the great sorrow of our time, but they see it with inside of them this secret joy. You can have both sadness and joy in your mind at the same time. You remember what it said about Jesus, "Who, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross." Joy, confronting

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the sadness, the tragedy of the cross. We all know that laughter and tears are very close relatives in the family of emotions. Many times we'll laugh until we start crying, or sometimes we'll start crying and end up laughing. My friends, the opposite of joy, the opposite of laughter, is not sorrow. It is unbelief. The Christian may not understand

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all the mysteries of God's providence, but he knows enough of God to have heard through God and God's Spirit and through his only begotten Son this good news, that evil will perish and that the time will come when the children of God laugh at it. This is what Paul means when he says, "Rejoice always." There are two kinds of people you know. There

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are people who bring happiness wherever they go, and there are people who bring happiness whenever they go. And we are supposed to be of the former number, ha-ha, among the trumpets. I very much like that sign which I saw in front of a church in Syracuse, New York, which read, "Don't come in here if you don't plan to have a good time." Have you learned how

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to laugh? Have you thought about how silly it is that people stand there and keep pushing the elevator button as if somehow that's going to make the elevator come faster? Incidentally, did you know that the Otis Elevator Company, one of the biggest elevator companies in the world, has its headquarters in a one-story building? I think that's funny. I like to

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think about that. Have you ever watched somebody talking to a foreigner and they don't know the language and they're sure they'll be understood if they just talk louder and then begin to use a little fake accent? "What is it that you are wanting to know?" That kind of thing. Do you laugh at signs? Just outside of Baltimore, there's a cemetery and there's a big signboard

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right beside it that says, "This is Marlboro Country." I've often thought that's true. I saw it on the South Hills Village Mall, a sign which said, "Ears pierced while you wait." What other alternative would there possibly be? Down in Ocean City, New Jersey, I saw a sign which said, "Socks and shoes required to eat here." I don't know where

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the rest of your clothes were supposed to eat. And there is a restaurant here in Pittsburgh, I won't tell you which one or where, that has a sign that says, "For restroom, use the stairs." Now that could lead to a lot of problems. And do you contemplate bumper stickers as they go by? I saw a bumper sticker last week that said, "Keep the city clean, shoot a pigeon."

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Or another one, this was more than a week ago, it was, "Start a movement, eat a prune." I enjoyed that one. And what is funnier, really, when you get right down to it, what is funnier than to see a car traveling at 75 miles an hour in a 55 mile an hour speed zone and on the bumper there's a sticker that says, "Honk if you love Jesus." Do you listen to the things

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that people say to you sometimes? I said to a man in this church, "Do you believe in capital punishment?" He said, "Yes, as long as it's not too severe." I still tease him about that. I knew a fellow who used to wear his wedding ring on his wrong hand, on his wrong finger. And when people would ask him, "Why do you wear your wedding ring on your wrong finger?"

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He would reply, "Because I married the wrong woman." I said to a lady on one occasion, who lives out in the area where I live, "How do you feel about foreign affairs?" And she said, "I think Americans should date only Americans." I suppose she was the same lady who when she was asked what she thought of Red China replied, "I think it looks very

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nice on a white tablecloth." Put a cartoon on the front of the refrigerator door. Put one on the bulletin board in your office. Try to make at least one person laugh every day. Send people whom you know are going through a difficult time a funny card. These will open the door to a very, very winsome witness for you. Play with a kitten every day, or

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with a baby, or with a puppy, and be reminded of what God's sense of humor is really like. You know, it's not an accident that God has so made us that we would much rather see a funny movie than listen to a doleful sermon. Christians are the best people in all the world to grin and bear it. When we laugh, we are saying we are not defeated, that our

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faith will be victorious. Yes, the world is a colossal mess, but we hear a joyous voice which comes ringing to us across the centuries. It comes from a man standing by a Galilean sea, and he has the sorrows of the whole world on his shoulders, but he has the light of heaven in his eyes. And this is what he cries out to all those who call him Lord. "Be of

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good cheer, for I have overcome the world." Let us pray. Our Father, deliver us from minds so small that we've forgotten how to laugh, from spirits so bitter that we cannot contemplate laughter as a gift which comes from your hand and therefore a subject often to be explored. May laughter have a lifting power in our lives. May it

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be a good medicine and give to us a cheerful and heroic countenance. And our Father, may it also open our eyes so that we will see life in terms of the spectacles of the Holy Spirit, the ultimate victory which is ours in the face of whatever failure belongs to the world. The gospel is that you love this world so much that you gave your only begotten

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Son that whosoever liveth and believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life. To have received such a gift and to have such a promise, O God our Father, fills our hearts with shouting, our lips with praise, and our hearts with a holy laughter. We pray our prayer in the name of the smiling Savior. Amen.

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[ sweatballs crashing on the ground ]