"A Time to Laugh; A Time to Cry"

A Sermon by the Rev. Bruce Clear

Sunday, November 4, 2001

All Souls Unitarian Church

Indianapolis, Indiana

In the last few weeks, a common conversation topic in our country has been the role of laughter and humor. For a couple of weeks following the attacks on New York and Washington, the television comedy shows, especially late night talk shows which so often make fun of current events, were silent. That silence seemed appropriate at the time. Jokes and gags that seemed funny before September 11 were no longer funny after that event. There seemed something irreverent, insensitive or even cruel about laughing. For a period of time, many of us wondered if there would ever again be a time for humor. When we wondered if things would ever "get back to normal," we also wondered if what we considered to be "normal" included humor, jokes, or even just plain silliness.

And then, eventually, almost surreptitiously, we caught ourselves laughing when we didn't expect it or intend to. When that finally happened, it felt good, though for some of us, still tinged with a little guilt. But eventually we recognized the healing power of laughter and humor, and the guilt left and we re-discovered humor again as a form of therapy.

This balance between humor and mourning brought to my mind the familiar lines from the Old Testament Book of Ecclesiastes:

"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die;

a time to plant, and a time to reap;

a time kill, and a time to heal;

a time to break down, and a time to build up;

a time to weep, and a time to laugh...." and so on.

There is wisdom in this scripture. There are appropriate times for all these emotions and events. It is not the case, though, that these feelings need to be discreet and separate in time from each other. A time of sorrow, does not rule out laughter; a time of laughter does not preclude sorrow. These emotions can, and often do, and often should, overlap, for they serve much the same purposes from parallel places in life.

The silliest time of joking and banter and laughter my brothers and I ever had together was ten years ago when our father died. The several days that we were together was a nearly continuous time of laughter -- interrupted, of course, for more socially appropriate behavior at a public funeral.

Our laughter was not disrespectful. Each of us admired our father deeply, but we also knew how important humor had been in his own life, and we knew that he would want us to treasure that inheritance. We also knew that he would approve of the way we spent that time together, and his only regret would be that he couldn't be part of it. Our laughter was also not merely a distraction from or avoidance of grief. It was, in fact, an integral part of the grieving process. The healing function that grief performs wouldn't have been nearly as effective without the time of laughing.

I was impressed when I saw this episode repeated, just a few years ago, when Nancy's much-loved uncle died, and she gathered with her silblings and cousins, and the laughter flowed like wonderful balm over the wounds of their loss. It seemed as if the more fun they had together, the more effectively healing were the moments of grief when they came.

The advise from Ecclesiastes about honoring "a time to laugh" and a "time to cry" is wise for many reasons. But it shouldn't be felt that tears and laughter are completely separate emotions, never to be joined together. The fact is that they have a very natural overlap.

Dante’s 13th century trilogy, entitled The Divine Comedy is probably one of the greatest masterpieces of literature in history. It is the story of Dante’s journey through the tortures of Hell, the lesser sufferings of Purgatory, and his final victorious arrival at the glories of Paradise. For a long time, I was puzzled over the title, The Divine Comedy. Even reading the books didn't resolve the confusion. Yes, there were some humorous parts of the story, but certainly not enough to justify the word “comedy” to be used in the title.

I eventually learned that the word "comedy" was used in a special context in Dante’s world. In his world, life was experienced as having only two alternatives. Life was fundamentally tragic, and those experiences which were not tragedy were called “comedy.” Comedy, in Dante’s world, was the overcoming of tragedy. It meant victory; it meant happiness; it was Paradise.

There is, I think, a some wisdom in using of the word this way. It is tragic to take life too seriously, so seriously that the effect is heavy and only grave and somber. It is tragic not to see and appreciate life’s absurdities and paradoxes. It is unhealthy to hold only the perspective that life is an immense burden, and a hopeless task.

I don't know how many of you saw that great Italian film from a few years ago called "Life is Beautiful." It was a comedy, even a romantic comedy, that takes place in the most horrific of all settings: a Nazi concentration camp. The film brilliantly wove together the extremes of human emotion -- happiness and sadness, humor and anguish. For the emotions it communicated so well, the film deserved the many awards it received all over the world.

I rented the movie this week, using research for this sermon as an excuse. Again it illustrated so well for me that there sometimes is a hair's breadth difference between humor and grief. Sometimes its not only that you don't know whether to laugh or to cry, sometimes you can't even recognize which you're doing.

The movie "Life is Beautiful" is a comedy, not just in the popular culture sense of having jokes and humor, but it is comedy also in the classic sense of Dante -- that the most tragic of all circumstances imaginable could not defeat the human spirit.

For some time now, many people have been wondering if it is all right to laugh again. Well of course it is. Not only is it all right to laugh, it is imperative. This is how we keep the human spirit alive; this is how we overcome tragedy.

There is a sense in which religion and comedy serve the same purpose. Both help us to overcome tragedy. Both serve to provide strength to face adversity. Both help us to cope with life’s insecurities and uncertainties.

Good humor often serves to give us a new perspective on something, to see things in ways we never thought about before. It gives distance from something in order to see it differently. In order to jooike about something, we must, to some extent, be able to extract ourselves from our emotional ties to it, and look at it in a different way than we have before. Mark Twain was a master at this, and often his subject was the absurdities of some religious doctrines. Here, for example, is what he had to say about Satan, suggesting that Satan was not granted sufficient respect:

I have no prejudice against him. It may even be that I lean a little his way, on account of his not having a fair shot. All religions issue bibles against him, and say the most injurious things about him, but we never hear his side. To my mind, this is irregular. It is un-English; it is un-American; it is French. We may not pay Satan reverence, for that would be indiscreet, but we can at least respect his talents. A person who has during all time maintained the imposing position of the spiritual head of four-fifths of the human race, and political head of the whole of it, must be granted the possession of executive abilities of the loftiest sort.

Humor, when it is effective, adds a new perspective, offers a little emotional distance, and supplies a pain reliever that kicks in when it's most needed.

We need something in life that urges us to overcome tragedy, something that inclines us to say "Yes" to life, even when life is not in a friendly state with us. This function has often been the responsibility of religions. In many cases humor accomplishes the task more efficiently.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-9

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

A time to be born, an time to die;

a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;

a time kill, and a time to heal;

a time to break down, and a time to build up;

a time to weep, and a time to laugh;

a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

a time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones together;

a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

a time to seek, and a time to lose;

a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

a time to rend, and a time to sew,

a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

a time to love, and a time to hate;

a time for war, and a time for peace.