Cultivating Laughter, Song, and Dance (Letting Go of Being Cool and “Always in Control”)

When the Lord changed Zion’s circumstances for the better,
    it was like we had been dreaming.
Our mouths were suddenly filled with laughter;
    our tongues were filled with joyful shouts.
It was even said, at that time, among the nations,
    “The Lord has done great things for them!”
Yes, the Lord has done great things for us,
    and we are overjoyed.

Lord, change our circumstances for the better,
    like dry streams in the desert waste!
Let those who plant with tears
    reap the harvest with joyful shouts.
Let those who go out,
    crying and carrying their seed,
    come home with joyful shouts,
    carrying bales of grain! Psalm 126 (CEB)

Grace and peace to you from the Holy and Blessed Trinity: Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. Amen.

Have you ever been in a really hard place in your life that suddenly turned around? Where you were struggling and struggling and, then, all of a sudden the path was made clear for you? That’s how we find things in tonight’s psalm. It opens with a look back to a difficult time in Israel’s history. To a hard circumstance. A moment of remembering. Scholars believe this psalm was written after the Babylonian exile. After the northern kingdom had been exiled. After the temple in Jerusalem had been destroyed. After the southern kingdom - Judah - was taken into exile.

But, this psalm is not actually about the exile. Instead, its focus is on the surprising turnabout of Judah’s fate. Of a people in exile. Suddenly freed from exile by the Persians - by Cyrus the Great - and restored to their homeland.  Psalm 126 is a pilgrimage song. It’s a psalm about the journey. A journey out of exile and disorientation. To a place of home and reorientation. This model of orientation - disorientation - reorientation is one created by Old Testament theologian Walter Brueggemann. It’s a model that fit Israel’s communal experience. It’s also a model that fits well for our lives. And for those times when things seeming to be humming along - a place of orientation. Then everything falls apart - that’s the disorientation. Then, just when we are at what feels like the very bottom, suddenly things turn around. They are restored. Not the same as what they were, but in a new way. In a reoriented way.

So, what’s our reaction, when everything turns around? When everything's made new again? When everything seems to work out? If we look at Scripture and, particularly, Psalm 126, we see a typical human response. “Our mouths were suddenly filled with laughter; our tongues were filled with joyful shouts.” Think of Miriam at the edge of the Red Sea when Israel had been saved from the coming Egyptian army. Or of Mary at the birth of Jesus after finding out she was an unwed mother. Our human response is to laugh. To sing. To dance.

There is something about laughter and song and dance that shouts “life,” isn’t there. Barbara Ehrenreich in her book, Dancing in the Streets, documents the importance of engaging in what she calls “collective ecstasy.” She writes that we are “innately social beings, impelled almost instinctively to share our joy.”  And Brene Brown, after analyzing her research on shame for a couple years, learned that “laughter, song, and dance create emotional and spiritual connection; they remind us of the one thing that truly matters when we are searching for comfort, celebration, inspiration or healing: We are not alone.”

What makes you laugh? Perhaps it’s hearing a funny joke. Or watching your children or grandchildren do silly things. It’s not a laughing at, but a laughing with. What Brown calls a “knowing laughter.” It’s the kind of laughter that connects us. That comes from the power of sharing our lies and our stories with others. What makes you laugh? 

What makes you sing? When you hear a particular song on the radio, does it ever feel as though you’re right back to the first time you heard it? There are many songs on the soundtrack of my life. There is a whole playlist of Taylor Dane songs that, whenever I hear one of them, I’m immediately taken back to my early 30’s and a crazy, head-over-heels infatuation. What’s the soundtrack of your life? 

And, then, there’s dance! Perhaps dancing is the hardest because there is no other form of self-expression that can make us feel more vulnerable. Dancing is about full-body vulnerability. Have you ever watched a toddler dance? Writer Mary Jo Putney writes that what we love in childhood stays in our hearts forever. If this is true, then, dance stays in our heart even when our head tells us we should worry about what other people think.

And, that’s really the problem, isn’t it? Full-throated laughter, singing at the top of our lungs, and dancing with complete abandon require absolute vulnerability. And a lack of concern for what anyone else thinks.  As we mature and are socially conditioned, we limit this vulnerability. We learn that we are to be cool and “always in control.” We do this because we want to feel good enough. Because we feel as if we don’t measure up. That we aren’t good enough. We feel shame.

Yet, all we need do, like the psalmist, is look back. To look back at God’s response to our shame and our sin. How God, in Christ, has destroyed it. And how God, in Christ, has brought about resurrection. And continues to bring about resurrection. And new life. Constantly moving us from disorientation to reorientation. To a new place. 


May God help us to let go of fear and judgment and the feeling that we are all alone. May God lead us to cultivate courage, compassion, and connection. May God transform us into wholehearted people. Into shalom people. That we might experience all the laughter, song, and dance that God desires for us. And for all people. Amen.

Preached April 10, 2019, at Grace & Glory Lutheran Church, Goshen, KY.
Midweek Lent Worship
Reading: Psalm 126

Cultivating Play and Rest (Letting Go of Exhaustion as a Status Symbol and Productivity as Self-Worth)

The one whose wrongdoing is forgiven,
    whose sin is covered over, is truly happy!
The one the Lord doesn’t consider guilty—
    in whose spirit there is no dishonesty—
    that one is truly happy!

When I kept quiet, my bones wore out;
    I was groaning all day long—
    every day, every night!—
because your hand was heavy upon me.
    My energy was sapped as if in a summer drought. Selah
So I admitted my sin to you;
    I didn’t conceal my guilt.
    “I’ll confess my sins to the Lord, ” is what I said.
    Then you removed the guilt of my sin. Selah

That’s why all the faithful should pray to you during troubled times,
    so that a great flood of water won’t reach them.
You are my secret hideout!
    You protect me from trouble.
    You surround me with songs of rescue! Selah

I will instruct you and teach you
    about the direction you should go.
    I’ll advise you and keep my eye on you.
Don’t be like some senseless horse or mule,
    whose movement must be controlled
    with a bit and a bridle.
        Don’t be anything like that!
The pain of the wicked is severe,
    but faithful love surrounds the one who trusts the Lord.
You who are righteous, rejoice in the Lord and be glad!
    All you whose hearts are right, sing out in joy! Psalm 32 (CEB)

Grace and peace to you from the Holy and Blessed Trinity: Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. Amen.

Do you play? Do you fool around much? My father was a great practical jokester. He loved to sneak up on us during the summer as we were playing outside and completely surprise us by dumping 5-gallon bucket of waters on us. This would then turn into this ferocious game of gotcha. Back and forth, we would play this game for entire afternoons and, by the end of the day, we’d come inside for dinner, all of us, including my father, dripping wet. 

What’s not unusual about this picture is that we, as children, were engaged in play. What is unusual is that my father was, too. As farmer and rancher, he was always busy. If there wasn't cattle to feed or haying to be done, there was always machinery to be repaired or fences to be fixed. And, yet, he always took time out to play. As an adult.

On these Wednesday evenings, we’ve been considering the psalms along with elements of a book written by Dr. Brene Brown, a research professor at the University of Houston College of Social Work. Her book is The Gifts of Imperfection. 

As she has studied what it means to be wholehearted people - or shalom people - Dr. Brown has found that play and rest are important components of wholehearted living. In trying to more fully understand why play and rest are so important, she came across the work of another Dr. Brown - Dr. Stuart Brown, who is a psychiatrist, clinical researcher, and founder of the National Institute for Play. In his research, he has found that play shapes our brain and helps us foster empathy. It helps us navigate complex social groups. And it is at the core of creativity and innovation. One of the key components of play he has found is that play must be “purposeless.”

Purposeless. That seems like a shameful word in our world today, doesn’t it? To be without purpose. 

If you’re at all like me, you have a to-do list that never seems to end. My own sense of worth is very connected to being able to check things off that list. It’s a sense of worth that is tied to productivity and to net worth. So much so that the idea of spending time doing anything unrelated to my to-do list actually creates stress for me. Perhaps you are the same. As Brene Brown puts it, “[W]e convince ourselves that playing is a waste of precious time. We even convince ourselves that sleep is a terrible use of our time.” Because we need to get stuff done. We are a nation of exhausted and overstressed adults raising overscheduled children. 

Early in this series we talked about the connection between original sin and shame. Remember the story of Adam and Eve? They were given the job to care for the Garden of Eden. Yet, each afternoon God would meet them and walk with them in the garden, doing nothing other than basking in the beauty and joy of what God had created. This time of play and of rest that Adam and Eve experienced with God was eventually broken by sin. And then shame. Shame for their nakedness. And a sense they were no longer good enough to take that afternoon stroll with God. That they were no longer worthy to play and to rest.

How much are we like them? How much do we hold onto our sin and sense of shame and guilt that we are not good enough? How much is our own worthiness tied up in our accomplishments and our productivity? How more exhausted must we become? Holding on to this has a devastating physical effect upon us. It can lead to depression, chronic disease, and deep tiredness. Even the psalmist in tonight’s reading recognizes this: “When I kept quiet, my bones wore out; I was groaning all day long— every day, every night!” 

God’s “heavy hand” works to give us an awareness of the need for our repentance. And for letting go of our shame and guilt. Yet, we stubbornly refuse to yield to God. But God knows that, if we only share this shame and guilt - this false sense of worth measured by our productivity and manifested in our exhaustion - it is only then that healing forgiveness comes. And the flood waters of our lives subside. And the pressures diminish. 

What in your life brings you joy and meaning? How might you incorporate more purposeless play and rest in your life, knowing that your worth in God’s eyes is NOT tied to your productivity? But to who you are. A beloved child of God created in God’s own image.

You who are righteous, rejoice in the Lord and be glad! All you whose hearts are right, sing out in joy! Amen.

Preached April 3, 2019, at Grace & Glory Lutheran Church, Goshen, KY.
Midweek Lent Worship
Reading: Psalm 32