Sermon Tone Analysis

Of Jokes and Memes...

So, today is the 1st of April, commonly called “April Fool’s Day.” Doing a bit of research, I found some interesting things on the history channel website.

Firstly, it seems that, in 1700, British pranksters began popularizing the annual tradition of playing practical jokes on people on the first of April.

Although celebrated, never seriously, over the last 300 years, the origins of this joke holiday remain a sort of mystery.

Some scholars speculate that the tradition comes from France in 1582, when France changed from the Julian calendar to the more modern Gregorian calendar, as called for by the Council of Trent.

When word didn’t get around, and some people were still waiting to celebrate the new years closer to the end of March, people who were still ignorant of the change were the butt of jokes and hoaxes, like having paper fish put surreptitiously on the backs of these people as well as being called “poisson d’avril” or “April Fish” in French, so named after an easily caught fish and a gullible person.

Yet other historians link it to several older traditions and pagan practices, based some on the ever-changing spring weather most of us are so familiar with.

In fact, I am pretty sure that we here in Nebraska and Kansas have experienced our share of…odd weather, going from a lovely 75 degree day to biting cold, to include the possibility of snow within a day.

April Fools’ Day spread throughout Britain during the 18th century.

In Scotland, the tradition became a two-day event, starting with “hunting the gowk,” in which people were sent on phony errands (gowk is a word for cuckoo bird, a symbol for fool) and followed by Tailie Day, which involved pranks played on people’s derrieres, such as pinning fake tails or “kick me” signs on them.

In modern times, people have gone to great lengths to create elaborate April Fools’ Day hoaxes, and some of them you may or may not have heard of.

Newspapers, radio and TV stations and Web sites have participated in the April 1 tradition of reporting outrageous fictional claims that have fooled their audiences.

In 1957, the BBC reported that Swiss farmers were experiencing a record spaghetti crop and showed footage of people harvesting noodles from trees; numerous viewers were fooled.

In 1985, Sports Illustrated tricked many of its readers when it ran a made-up article about a rookie pitcher named Sidd Finch who could throw a fastball over 168 miles per hour.

In 1996, Taco Bell, the fast-food restaurant chain, duped people when it announced it had agreed to purchase Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell and intended to rename it the Taco Liberty Bell.

In 1998, after Burger King advertised a “Left-Handed Whopper,” scores of clueless customers requested the fake sandwich.

More recently, as many of us are familiar with the popularity of the internet, even YouTube, before being purchased by Google, pulled one of the biggest pranks in internet history.

Back in the day and years before, there was an ongoing joke, where people on internet message boards would post a hyperlink (one of those things in blue text that when you click on it takes you to another website) supposedly to a helpful website, or other such thing, but in reality was a link to this video:

For those of you unaware, this is the music video for Rick Astley’s song “Never Gonna Give You Up.”

When you clicked on the link and you got this video, the term used was “You just got ‘Rickrolled!’”

With all of the jokes and focus on today for April Fool’s Day, this begs the question: Does God have a sense of humor?

This leads me to understand three things:

God does have a sense of humor, although different from ours

Jesus also has a sense of humor, the same as the Father’s

Knowing these things brings us closer to Jesus, and therefore to the Father

Let’s take another look at the first of our Scripture readings today and see what Biblical evidence there is of these bold statements...

5 When the Philistines captured the ark of God, they brought it from Ebenezer to Ashdod. 2 Then the Philistines took the ark of God and brought it into the house of Dagon and set it up beside Dagon.

3 And when the people of Ashdod rose early the next day, behold, Dagon had fallen face downward on the ground before the ark of the LORD.

So they took Dagon and put him back in his place.

4 But when they rose early on the next morning, behold, Dagon had fallen face downward on the ground before the ark of the LORD, and the head of Dagon and both his hands were lying cut off on the threshold.

Only the trunk of Dagon was left to him.

5 This is why the priests of Dagon and all who enter the house of Dagon do not tread on the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod to this day.

God DOES Have a Sense of Humor, But Different...

Firstly, let’s talk about what I mean when I say “sense of humor.”

When we see something that makes us laugh, chuckle, or sometimes even groan, we can usually say that whatever it was, could be defined as “funny.”

Consider my favorite joke: Two muffins are in an oven.

One muffin says to the other “Is it me, or is it getting hot in here?”

The other muffin exclaims “Holy smokes!

A talking muffin!”

Another good one is: There was a man who entered a local paper's pun contest..

He sent in ten different puns, in the hope that at least one of the puns would win.

Unfortunately, no pun in ten did.

Or, lastly: A woman has twins, and gives them up for adoption.

One of them goes to a family in Egypt and is named 'Amal.'

The other goes to a family in Spain, they name him Juan'.

Years later; Juan sends a picture of himself to his mum.

Upon receiving the picture, she tells her husband that she wished she also had a picture of Amal.

Her husband responds, "But they are twins.

If you've seen Juan, you've seen Amal.”

See what I mean?

Well, we, as humans, were made in God’s image.

God is creative, so we are creative.

God loves, so we love.

All good things about us come from God, right?

Well, where do you think we get our sense of humor from?

From God! Here’s the difference though: unlike our sense of humor, which can be self-deprecating, crass, or even downright cruel, as much as God’s love is more perfect than ours, so is God’s sense of humor better than ours.

Heres what I mean: has anybody here ever heard of the show “America’s Funniest Home Video?”

For those who are unaware, it’s an older TV show where people would send in funny home videos to have them voted on with the best video winning the originator a large cash prize.

Too many of those videos, in my opinion, were of people getting injured, albeit while doing crazy or stupid things.

Some of them were genuinely funny, but not many, and these were usually animal videos or videos of kids doing something cute or funny.

In my experience, God’s humor is more ironic in nature, and always works to bring Him glory.

For those of you who didn’t know, I wasn’t always Adventist.

Back then, after Stacy and I had first met, I was very vocal and upfront with her about the “fact” that I would NEVER convert to her faith (she was raised Adventist), and we all see how THAT worked out for me, as God had other plans!

If you go back before that, after my divorce, I swore I would never remarry, and actually had the gall to tell God “Don’t bother sending anybody into my life.

I am not getting married again, and that’s that!” Seems God had decided differently.

If you had asked me, before July 2013, if I would ever be in ministry, I would have told you, probably laughing, that there would be absolutely NO chance of that happening, and again, we see that God had other plans for me.

In fact, as I wrote this sermon, I began thinking on all of the things and events of my life that led me to where I am today, and realized that God was in it every step of the way, when I was following and seeking after Him, although He was quite adept at turning even my mistakes, failures, and downright defiance of His will to use for His glory.

This leads us to this story in 1 Samuel 5. Eli was the high priest over all Israel.

He was the latest in the line of Judges/Prophets/Priests of God.

As had been done in the past, Eli tried to raise his sons to follow in his footsteps, as they were also priests of the Lord (1 Sam 1:3).

The problem with these two, was that, according to Chapter 2, verse 12, they were “scoundrels’; they had no regard for the Lord.”

They would actually steal from the offering to the Lord, taking in His name, that which was not theirs to take, or taking more than what they were supposed to take.

Eli heard about this, as well as all of the other rotten business they were supposedly doing (like sleeping with the deaconesses and such), and he talked to them.

He spoke to them, but did not follow up with them, nor remove them from office, knowing that they were not going to listen to him, and instead keep doing what they were doing.

God brings in Samuel to replace Eli, deciding that Eli wasn’t doing his job in keeping his own sons in line, showing favoritism to them, and telling Eli, through Samuel, that he and his sons were going to die for their transgressions.

Then comes the Philistines, who fight and make war with the Israelites.

The Philistines are afraid of them because they have heard stories of the flight from Egypt.

Even after all these years, the desolation that was once the great and proud nation of Egypt, was destroyed because of the God that the Israelites served, and that same God was allegedly walking with them whenever they carried the Ark.

But in fighting, the Philistines won!

And they captured the Ark.

Of course, as priests of God, the two sons of Eli, Phinehas and Hophni died during the capture (they were with the Ark), and upon hearing the news, Eli died and Phinehas’s wife gave birth prematurely, and died shortly afterwards, declaring the name of her son Ichabod, saying “The Glory has departed from Israel, for the ark of God has been captured.”

(4:21-22).

And thus the Philistines came into possession of the Ark of the Covenant, and like the nations of that day were wont to do, they took the artifacts of rival gods and put them in their own deity's temple, because that was proof that their god was stronger than their enemies’ gods.

Except this wasn’t some false god they were dealing with.

They were dealing with the Ark of the Father’s Covenant with Israel.

And the next day, they found the statue of their deity fallen face down before the Ark, almost in a position of…worship?

Huh, wonder what happened there?

That’s weird.

No big deal, they said.

Let’s put the statue back up and everything will be fine.

And what did they find the next day?

Oops.

Guess that wasn’t such a coincidence as they thought.

You see, God mocked the Philistines and their idol worship in the most ironic way possible!

He purposefully made the statue of the object of their worship (to them, the object of worship itself) fall before His might in worship of Him.

If that’s not funny, I’m not sure what is.

What’s better, is that the second time, as God is trying to get the attention of the Philistines, He goes as far as to sever the head and hands of their false god, in essence telling them that Dagon had neither the wisdom nor the strength to stand up to God.

And was this done for its own sake?

Of course not!

It was done by God to bring Him glory and praise.

Of course we also know that they didn’t get the hint until God began a mini-campaign of plagues reminiscent of the Plagues of Egypt to get them to take the Ark back.