By Reverend Laurie DeMott

"What?" asks the Senator, caught off guard, "Well, yes, yes I am. Why do you ask?"

Lincoln replies, "Because all you Episcopalians swear alike."

In an instant, the Senator’s rage is changed to laughter and his anger diffused.

Humor has the potential for cooling anger because while anger immerses us in our self-absorbed hurt, humor startles us by pulling the rug out from under our determined stance. A good joke reveals the absurdity of the situation and plows through our self-righteousness so that we can suddenly stand outside of ourselves looking in and we share a smile at the foolishness of our own human nature. Not all laughter is humor -- we can laugh at others in mockery and ridicule and if Lincoln had interrupted the Senator's tirade by saying, "All you southerners swear alike," the Senator's fury would probably have been heightened because he would have perceive the President's comment as an insult. To be truly funny, a joke must be grounded in incongruity. Lincoln's suggestion that cursing prowess is linked to church affiliation instantly creates an absurd image. We find ourselves wondering about that association. Do the Episcopalians among us swear in a more liturgical manner than the low church Baptists? Are the curses of Lutherans more trinitarian than those of a Presbyterian? Lincoln's comment paints an ironic picture in which saintly men and women compare their most unsaintly of behaviors, and we laugh not only because it strikes us as silly but because deep within, we wonder if it's true!

The great church theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr said that humor is the prelude to faith and laughter is the beginning of prayer. Niebuhr argued that humor is able to remind us of the absurdity of our human notions and in doing so prepare our hearts for the entrance of God's grace.

Those who have researched humor agree with Niebuhr's assessment that humor is grounded in absurdity. Think of the classic "slipping on a banana peel" scene. If you saw a little child slip on a banana peel and you broke into guffaws of laughter, most people wouldn't share your sense of humor but would think you were just cruel. "What's wrong with you?" they would ask, as they rushed to soothe the crying toddler. If, however, you saw a rich well-dressed and obviously arrogant man brush rudely by the other pedestrians and then slip on a banana peel, you probably wouldn't be the only one laughing. It's not the fall that makes us laugh but the inconsistency of the man's superior self-image with the fact that he can be so easily taken out by a lowly banana peel.

Humor is the prelude to faith and laughter is the beginning of prayer because it levels the playing field. It reminds us that no matter what image we have attempted to present to the world, we remain all equally fallible human beings and any sense of superiority over others is mere self-delusion.

It is this capacity to strip away our self-assurance that makes children such a source of humor for us. As children ponder the world and ask their questions, we are often forced to try to explain a world to them that we realize in fact makes little sense, and the resulting ridiculousness of the human enterprise can only make us laugh.

I remember my first trick-or-treating expedition with John when he 3 years old. It was hard to try to explain to a three year old why I was going to make him dress up as a bear and walk around in the night ringing stranger's doorbells, but he understood the idea of candy if nothing else and so was willing to give this strange custom a shot. As we approached the first house, I coached him on the process: "When the person answers the door, you're to say 'Trick-or-Treat' and then they'll put the candy in your bag." We rang the doorbell and a woman opened the door. John stood in stony silence, tongue-tied with embarrassment, but the woman smiled and dropped the candy in his bag anyway. I thought maybe his shyness would be eased if we went to the home of someone we knew so I took him next to the Hall's house. Before we approached their door, we again rehearsed his lines and when I was certain he had them down, we rang the doorbell. Lynne opened the door and I prompted, "What do you say, John?"

This time John thrust out his bag at Lynne and said, "Right here!" Lynne obliged.

I decided to end the night by stopping at President Coll's house (because, you know, he gave out the really big candy bars) and on our way up the long driveway, I, in my adult persistence, tried to impress on John the importance of uttering those magical words, "Trick or Treat." We knocked, Ed opened the door and, in one last effort, I whispered, "John, what do you say?"

John looked at me, looked up at President Coll, and then said earnestly, "I love you!"

Every time I think of this story, I laugh not at John but at our adult conventions -- the bizarre tradition of going house to house demanding treats and threatening tricks, and the etiquette which requires that we not profess love to strangers no matter how much affection we might feel for a person about to indulge us in chocolate. How many times in our lives do our children cause us to recognize the absurdity of our own habits and assumptions? How many of their questions leave us floundering for reasonable answers that don't sound silly in our own ears? How many times do they leave us laughing not at them but at the recognition of the strangeness of life?

Humor strips away the veneer that we have created in our attempt to make life reasonable when it isn't reasonable, predictable when it isn't predictable, controllable when it is ultimately beyond our control, and it is only when we admit our own presumption that we open the door to God's grace.

In a famous line that we often mistranslate as "Vanity of vanities," the author of Ecclesiastes declares, "Absurdity of absurdities, all is absurd." The preacher of Ecclesiastes spends twelve chapters ruminating in an Eeyore-like manner on the uselessness of so much of human thought and endeavor. He observes that being good doesn't guarantee a reward, and that hard work doesn't always result in success. He notes in a verse that could have been written by a college freshman, both the wise and the fool end up just as dead in the end, so what's the point of even gaining knowledge? Ecclesiastes could be the most depressing book in the Bible in its brutal honesty about the senselessness of the world, if it weren't for his conclusion. The only meaning to be found in life, he says, is not in our human striving but in our finally giving up our quest to create our own meaning and resting instead in the simple goodness of the gift of life which has given to all of us by God.

Humor is the prelude to faith and laughter the beginning of prayer because when we admit the absurdity of so much of our human endeavor, we open the door for God to enter our lives and finally take control of hearts. We confess finally that we can be saved not by the work of our hands, but ultimately only by the grace of God.

When John was four, a friend of mine came to spend the weekend to talk over some difficulties she was having in her job. As we sat on the couch discussing the problem, John played quietly at our feet seemingly absorbed in driving his matchbox cars across the floor. At one point, however, I said to my friend, "Is there anything I can do to help you feel better?" and John looked up at her and said, "Only God can make us feel better."

I laughed and said, "PK -- preacher's kid" but in his innocence and in our laughter, we heard the words of truth: in God alone is our salvation and our help. To believe anything else is vain striving and absurd arrogance.

And therein lies the prelude to faith, and the beginning of prayer.