Do You Hear the Laughter?

Do You Hear the Laughter?
A Sermon by Brent J Eelman
Preached at First Presbyterian Church, Clarks Summit
August 23, 2020

Psalm 2
Why do the nations conspire,
    and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
    and the rulers take counsel together,
    against the Lord and his anointed, saying, 
 “Let us burst their bonds asunder,
    and cast their cords from us.”

 He who sits in the heavens laughs;
    the Lord has them in derision. 

 Then he will speak to them in his wrath,
    and terrify them in his fury, saying, 

 “I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill.”

 I will tell of the decree of the Lord:
He said to me, “You are my son;
    today I have begotten you. 

 Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,
    and the ends of the earth your possession. 

 You shall break them with a rod of iron,
    and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”

 Now therefore, O kings, be wise;
    be warned, O rulers of the earth. 

 Serve the Lord with fear,
    with trembling kiss his feet,
or he will be angry, and you will perish in the way;
    for his wrath is quickly kindled.

Happy are all who take refuge in him.

When I was ten years old, my parents took a month long tour of Europe, leaving four of us children behind.  My father was a professor and they arranged for one of his married graduate students and spouse to watch us.  They were not yet parents themselves, and so this would be an opportunity for them to “practice” with four of us.  The husband fancied himself as a strict disciplinarian who could handle children. Truthfully, they were no match.  The four of us regularly pushed the edges of acceptable behavior (as only children can) and I am sure they wondered what they got into.

My younger brother, Dean, was 6 at the time.  He was a strong little kid, who had the mischievous streak that the youngest often have.  I can’t remember what he did, but he pushed the poor student, this surrogate parent, over the edge, and to our horror, my sister and I watched as he took Dean and put him over his knee and started to spank him. 

Then it happened.  Dean laughed.  He hit him harder, and Dean continued to laugh.  He continued to hit him and Dean just laughed harder.  Finally, in disgust he gave up, and sent him to his room.  We realized then that he lost all moral authority in his relationship with us.   To paraphrase Psalm 2,
    “He who was bent over the knee laughed…. He held him in derision.” 

This is how we should understand Psalm 2.  The cast of characters includes the politically powerful: kings and rulers wielding their empty words, their vacant threats, and their armies.  They believe they are the be all and the end all.  They are smug. They threaten and bully the weaker nations, Israel among them.  And then there is God…. God looks down from the heavens and sees these bloviating windbags, these pretenders to power, and laughs.  God’s laughter renders them powerless. 

Today, I want to listen to the psalmist speak to our generation. We find ourselves, not only in the midst of a pandemic, but also a divisive season of electoral politics. It is a season when anxiety governs the day.  Psalm 2 addresses our world containing 1).  a message of judgement, 2). A message of comfort, and 3). A message of hope. 
                                                I
Judgment. Let us make no mistake about it, this is a judgment on those who wield political power for their own ends.  The King James Version raised the question, “Why do the nations rage?”  The modern translation softens the verb, “Why do the nations conspire?”  This is about international politics.  It goes on, “the kings and rulers of the earth take counsel together….. against the Lord, YHWH, and his anointed; the Hebrew word for anointed is “messiah”.

The psalmist described a world that was in uproar.  Order was crumbling.  The earthly rulers (the political powers of the day), were conspiring with and against each other.  It was.a frightening environment and the people were afraid, hence the question, “Why do the nations rage?”  The psalmist also personalizes the conspiracies of the nations and their kings.  They were rebelling against God, and God’s anointed, presumably King David.  

The Divine judgment upon them was brutal: 
    “He shall break them with a rod of iron, and dash them in pieces.” 

I find the violence of that judgment off-putting, but consider what breaks them: It was God’s laughter! The divine looks down upon these banty roosters, hiding behind their armies and propped up by their sycophantic lick-spittles, and laughs.  God laughs at their pretensions to power.  They have no moral authority. 

Can you hear laughter today?  I am struck by the irony of our current predicament.  We have invested in building the largest economy in history.  We have the power of atomic weapons.  We can send humans to moon. They can live in space for years. We can put thousands of years of knowledge inside a disc drive the size of my thumbnail.  We have this amazing communications of television, the internet, and satellites.  We have armies, navies air power and even a space-force…. 

And yet, we have been crippled by one of the smallest biological realties in God’s creation: a microscopic virus!  Despite our protestations, it has exposed our pretensions to power as just that: pretense!

We need to be very careful that we do not identify this pandemic as God’s judgment upon humanity, or even upon those who wield power.  No!  This pandemic is a reminder that we are all in this together: rich and poor, white, black and brown, employed and unemployed, young and old, Republican, Democrat and Independent.   It is a reminder that we need to cooperate and work together to survive it. 

No… the divine laughter is directed toward those in power who deny the reality of a common humanity in the face of a deadly illness.  It is directed toward those who seek to divide in order to conquer. 
    “He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord has them in derision.
                                                       II
But Psalm 2 is more that a message of judgement, it is a word of comfort. Patrick Miller, in his commentary on the Psalms, describes God’s laughter “as one of the most assuring sounds of the whole Psalter.” (Interpreting the Psalms p. 90).  Why? Because God is unmoved by any pretensions of human power.  In Miller’s words, it
“relativizes even the largest of human claims for control over the affairs of peoples and nations.”
 He continues,
“even the fiercest terror is made the object of laughter and derision and thus is rendered impotent to frighten those who hear the laughter of God in the background.” 

Hearing the laughter of God, even in the midst of all that chaos that surrounds us, is a pleasant and comforting sound.  It reassures us that ultimately God is God: a mighty fortress in the midst of strifes of life. 

I still vividly remember the the spanking incident that occurred nearly 60 years ago.  Our parents were gone and we were bereft of their protection.  We had these pseudo parents to watch over us, and they were attempting to enforce control by violently hurting us, spanking the youngest and smallest child, as if to make an example of him in front of us.  It was a horrifying prospect to behold.  And then he laughed. It was a most reassuring sound.  It was comforting because in that moment we knew, we would survive and be fine. 

There is a comforting message within the violent bookends of Psalm 2.  Amidst the rage of the nations and bullying of the powerful (often choosing to visit harm upon the smallest and the weakest) God’s goodness will prevail. 

We can recall the words of Mary, in the Magnificat:
His mercy is for those who fear him
 from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
    he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
    and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
    and sent the rich away empty.
 He has helped his servant Israel,
    in remembrance of his mercy…

I would add the concluding words of Psalm 2, “Happy are all who take refuge in him.” 

                                                   III
Psalm 2 is ultimately a message of hope.  One of the most popular pieces of choral music is the “Hallelujah Chorus” from Handel’s Messiah.  It is a glorious piece that proclaims “Hallelujah” or “God be praised!” forty eight times.  Sadly, it is often divorced, in our hearing, from its original context.  The context for this glorious chorus is Psalm 2.  It begins with Bass solo, raising the question,
“Why do the nations rage? Why do the people imagine such a vain thing?” 
The tenor then responds with a brief recitative:
“He that dwelleth in heaven shall laugh them to scorn; the Lord shall have them in derision.” 
He continues with a solo proclaiming the judgment of God… “He shall break them….” 

And then the music pauses. It is a long, pregnant pause. Suddenly, it shifts from judgment to glorious hope.  The choir responds to the tenor’s solo:  “Hallelujah…” not once, but nearly 50 times!  Why does the choir sing “Hallelujah?”  In midst of this emphatic response one hears these words: “The kingdom of this world has become, the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ.  And he shall reign forever and ever.” 

This is the message of Christian hope that speaks to the human condition, to the despair that we experience in our daily struggles. It speaks with authority to a world weary of this pandemic, but also weary of the feeble attempts to respond to it.  It is a message of comfort and hope to those who have suffered, those who continue to suffer, and those who fear the suffering that might occur, proclaiming the victory of resurrection and life in realm of eternity.  

Hallelujah is the response of those who have heard the laughter of God and live in hope.  Even in the midst of a pandemic!

I remember the first time I heard those words, though I heard them many times before.  I was 2 years into ministry and it was all falling apart.  In a few short months I experienced a devastating broken relationship.  I was an associate pastor and the pastor who I worked with, and looked to him for direction was involved in a scandalous extramarital affair.  I was carrying some burdensome debts from education and poor decisions. I was in a PhD program but was not convinced I was called to be an academic.   I thought things were crumbling down around me.  The choir, that Sunday was putting on its Easter concert, and would feature the appropriate portions of Handel’s Messiah.  I sat dutifully through it, and then stood with everyone when the Hallelujah Chorus began, taking the opportunity to stretch my legs so that I could make it until the end.  I had heard this music a number of times… and then I heard it. 
“The kingdom of this world, has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ.” 

For some reason those words just jumped out at me and grabbed me.  I remember feeling during that moment that my worries, my despair, my anxieties were ultimately so small in the great scheme of things…. 

This world was God’s world… His Kingdom and of his Christ.”   That is hope… Hope that enables endurance.  Hope that fortifies resilience.

Over 40 years have passed since that moment, and yet it exists in my soul as yesterday.  Lately, I find myself feeling the same way again… not for me, however, I’m on my last lap. 
I feel it for the world, for the people I know and love.  For my own child.  For the hundreds of children I have baptized and confirmed.  For the future generations.
 I experience it when I watch, read, or listen to the news, to the rhetoric of the “powerful”.
 I experience it, and in conversations with others, I am aware that many of you also experience this ominous feeling.

 It is time that we stop and listen…. Listen… not to the pundits, not to the powerful; not to the prognosticators of the future.  No.  Listen for the laughter… the divine laughter that emanates from the heavens.  The laughter that proclaims, “this is my world… you are my people… I know you by name, and love you dearly.” 

I have given away most of my books and volumes to aspiring pastors, hoping to encourage them in their respective ministries.  Among the volumes that I have kept are about 40 by one author Karl Barth, a 20th Century Swiss theologian.  There is not enough time to share his importance and impact he made. He died on December 10, 1968 in his house in Basel, Switzerland. On the prior evening, he had a phone conversation with his lifelong friend Eduard Thurneysen.  This was 1968. They fretted over the events in the world. The riots, the assassinations, the Cold War, the nuclear build up.   Barth concluded the conversation with these words,
“Just don’t be so down in the mouth, now! Not ever! For things are ruled, not just in Moscow or in Washington or in Peking, but things are ruled – even here on earth—entirely from above, from heaven above.”

My Christian friends… listen.  Listen Do you hear the laughter?  It comes from the heavens… and speaks to us today a message of comfort and hope.  This is the good news.  “Happy are all who take refuge in him.” Amen.