An old, old story has a fellow coming to the most famous and
expensive doctor in town. From the very beginning the patient
admitted that there was no way he could afford the physician's
$500 fee, but he happened to catch the Doc on a generous day and
the fee was reduced to $400. "But Doctor," pleaded the man, "I
have a wife and six kids to feed." The fee was reduced to $250.
"But Doc, that's a month's rent." Eventually, the fellow's
begging and poor-mouthing got the fee down to $100 then $50 and
finally to $25.
The doctor could not help but asking: "Sir, you knew when
you came in here that I was the top specialist in my field and
admittedly the highest priced. If you could not afford to pay my
bill, why did you choose me?"
"Listen, Doc," the man said vehemently, "when it comes to my
health, money is no object!"
I suspect we all could go along with that. Our skills at
negotiating might not be as sharp, but we all know that without
our health, nothing else in life is worth very much. These days
we go to great lengths to do all we can to preserve health - we
watch our weight, reduce our calories, cut down on red meat, get
regular exercise. Within the last generation, Americans have
become very conscious about doing things that will improve our
physical conditions.
But there is one thing we do NOT do enough of...laugh. I am
not sure why. Perhaps we think that there is something a bit
demeaning about laughter. Perhaps we think that we will not be
taken seriously if we come across as silly or a clown. The
Puritans apparently felt that way - they even outlawed any
celebration at Christmas. That ought not to be.
Robert Millikan was a world-renowned physicist and a Nobel
Prize winner for his work in the 1920's which included the first
measurement of the charge on the electron. One day Millikan's
wife was passing through the hall and overheard their maid on the
telephone. She was saying, "Yes, this is where Dr. Millikan
lives, but he's not the kind of doctor that does anybody any
good."(1)
Some folks probably feel the same way about ministers with
doctorates. I heard one preacher on the radio who had been given
an honorary doctorate recalling the question of his son after the
award: "Gee, dad, does this mean you can write prescriptions
now?"
Well, I have a prescription for you this morning...not
original, but time tested for almost three-thousand years. It
comes from the writer of Proverbs. "A cheerful heart is good
medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones."(2)
Abraham Lincoln, despite being caught up in the midst of the
most disastrous war this nation has ever experienced, and despite
fighting his own private war with depression, was well-known for
his belief in that prescription. He had a great sense of humor.
There was a story that circulated around Washington during those
years concerning him and Jefferson Davis, the president of the
Confederacy. Two pious Quaker ladies were discussing the
relative merits and prospects of the two leaders. One said, "I
think Davis will succeed because he is a praying man."
The other replied, "But so is Lincoln."
The first responded, "Yes, but when Abraham prays, the Lord
will think he's joking."(3)
Once at a Cabinet meeting, the president read aloud from a
humorous book. The Cabinet members were amazed; not one of them
even smiled. "Gentlemen," Lincoln asked with a sigh, "why don't
you laugh? With the fearful strain that is upon me day and
night, if I did not laugh, I should die. You need this medicine
as much as I do."
Someone very wise has said, "He who laughs lasts." I read
once that Abbott and Costello took out a $100,000 insurance
policy with Lloyds of London in case anyone ever died laughing
during one of their performances. No one ever collected. People
do not die laughing, but we know all too well that people DO die
of despair.
A prominent doctor has discovered that cheerful people
resist disease better than chronic grumblers. His conclusion -
"the surly bird gets the germ."(4)
Have you ever heard of the Wellness Community?(5) If you or
someone close has been touched by cancer, you may very well have.
The Wellness Community was founded in 1982 in Santa Monica,
California, and has psychologically and emotionally supported
over 30,000 participants since opening, many of whom were
referred by their physicians. The Wellness Community is not a
clinic, just a support facility for those trying to deal with
their life-threatening conditions. The thrust of the community's
work is that a positive mental attitude can make a difference in
the progress of the disease. They sit, they talk, they cry, but
most of all they laugh on the theory that a joyful life actually
strengthens the immune system.
Years ago I saw them profiled on "60 Minutes." One patient
asked the group, "What do you call someone with an uncontrollable
urge to contract lymphoma over and over again?" And someone else
shot back, "a lymphomaniac," and everybody had a great laugh. We
think how in the world could they make stupid jokes in their
situation, but they are convinced this is one way of fighting
back.
A lawyer named Harold Benjamin founded the community after
his wife, Harriet, was diagnosed with breast cancer and they
could not find adequate psychological support services for the
family. Benjamin's theory was that there is a greater
relationship than we have ever known between our outlook and our
ability to heal ourselves.
That physical health is extremely dependent upon mental
health has been established for centuries. More than 2,000 years
ago, the famous Greek physician Galen was called in to tend the
wife of a Roman aristocrat. Her own doctor had treated her but
had been unable to help. While taking her pulse, Galen mentioned
the name of an actor with whom her name had been linked in Roman
gossip. Her pulse immediately quickened. Then Galen leaned down
and whispered something in her ear that made her laugh. That
laugh began her cure and is one of the earliest instances of
psychiatric treatment for psychosomatic illness.(6)
It is obvious that mind and body "talk" to each other over
neural and chemical pathways. What the doctors today want to
know is if a way can be devised for people to control the
conversations that take place over those specialized circuits.
They already know that "a cheerful heart is a good medicine, but
a downcast spirit dries the bones."
Can laughter, a cheerful heart, actually affect a cure?
Norman Cousins would say absolutely. For over a quarter century
Cousins was the editor of Saturday Review. He wrote a book
called Anatomy of an Illness(7)
which chronicled his own experience
with a massive heart attack. The doctors told him that he would
be an invalid after all the damage his heart sustained, but he
did not want to accept that. You know what he did? He spent
hour upon hour watching Marx Brothers and Laurel and Hardy
movies, and literally laughed his way back to life. Who woulda
thunk it?
With all that, you would figure that folks would take every
opportunity possible to get a good knee-slapper going. But we
know better. Calvin Coolidge had a reputation as one of those
old stone faces. When Will Rogers was about to be introduced to
him, a friend bet the humorist that he could not get the
president to laugh within two minutes, but Rogers said, "No
problem, I'll get a laugh out of him in twenty seconds."
The introduction was performed: "Mr. President, this is Mr.
Will Rogers; Mr. Rogers, President Coolidge."
Rogers held out his hand, then a look of embarrassment and
confusion stole over Will's face. "Er, excuse me, sir. I didn't
quite get the name." No big laugh, but at least Coolidge
grinned.(8)
Do you laugh enough? Do you try to cultivate a cheerful
heart? Does anyone, especially Presbyterians? Not many,
apparently. In a way, that might be understandable. Life is not
a bowl of cherries. It is tough to laugh when you have been
looking for a job for months and cannot find one. It is tough to
feel any joy when your body is wracked with pain. It is tough to
come up with a smile at the grave of your child. No, the reasons
NOT to laugh, to give in to the bone-drying crushed spirit, are
often overwhelming.
The story we read in our Old Testament lesson this morning,
even though there was laughter involved, was not funny, at least
not to the one doing the laughing. Poor Sarah had endured the
worst humiliation that an ancient woman could have borne - she
was childless. In her culture, it was just short of a crime for
a wife not to give her husband children. The bones were dry.
Finally, Sarah's biological clock had wound down. She was too
old now, so she encouraged Abraham to have a child with the maid,
Hagar. Not uncommon practice back then (even though we might
have a moral dilemma with it these days), so Abraham and Hagar
went to work and the result was a boy named Ishmael. Had things
remained the same after that, Ishmael would have been the heir to
Abraham's fortune.
But as we all know, things did NOT remain the same. One
day, when Ishmael was thirteen, God said to Abraham that he and
Sarah would have a son together. Abraham did not just chuckle at
that. Scripture says "Then Abraham FELL ON HIS FACE and
laughed..."(9) A little later, three men (heavenly visitors)
dropped by the tent, had a little rest, a bite to eat, and gave
that same message that Abraham had heard before. Like the
dutiful Middle Eastern wife, Sarah was inside, out of sight, but
not out of earshot; tent flaps are not soundproof. Actually, she
was eavesdropping. She heard about the promise of a son, and she
had the same reaction as her husband, only, demure little 90-year-old that she was, she did not fall down in the process.
One wonders whether or not Abraham had told Sarah about the
first promise. Perhaps he had simply kept quiet about it, not
wanting to open old wounds. But with this reaffirmation of what
he had previously heard, he probably began to believe, even
though it made no sense. Sometimes, folks need to hear God speak
more than once.
The rest of the story we know. Sarah did indeed have a son.
They named him Isaac, which in Hebrew means...he laughed. It
would be nice to say that Abraham and his wife thought that this
promise of a son in their old age was simply a funny story, and
that was the reason for their initial reactions. But the truth
is they were laughing to hold back the tears, laughing at the
thought of a woman with one foot in the grave and the other in
the maternity ward, laughing to get beyond the bitter
disappointment of having no children. It was the same medicine
we have all occasionally had to take when our hearts are not very
cheerful, when our bones have felt dry, when it has been all we
could manage to simply SURVIVE the "slings and arrows of
outrageous fortune." That Reader's Digest feature that has
appeared for years has been right on the money: laughter has not
only been the best medicine; sometimes it has been the only
medicine.
The story of Abraham and Sarah and the miracle that God
worked in their lives has been told over and over again, and has
made them heroes to the faithful of three great religions. But
they were just like you and me - with a faith that is regularly
shaky, and needing the reminder that came with the visitor's
question there at the tent: "Is anything too hard for the Lord?"
Abraham and Sarah thought so; you and I often think so, whether
we want to admit it or not. But when grace breaks through, when
we open our eyes to God's work in the world and see miracle after
miracle after miracle, even in the midst of all that is wrong,
the laughter can begin again.
Yes, it is a tough world out there, tough even to stay
healthy whether money is no object or not, and certainly tough to
find a reason to laugh, despite the reminder about the cheerful
heart being good medicine. But you have heard, of course, that
the one who laughs last, laughs best. Abraham and Sarah no doubt
laughed their fool heads off the first time they cuddled their
new baby boy. As Sarah came to say, "God has brought me
laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with
me."(10) She had the last laugh on a culture that for years had
given her grief.
Through the centuries that have intervened, it has been the
same for all of God's people. One night, Jesus was talking with
his disciples after supper. He had been telling them about all
that would occur with Him and with them in the coming days. He
would be leaving them, and there would be some tough times, words
they did NOT want to hear. But finally, he gave them a word that
comforted them, a word that continues to echo down through the
corridors of time, a word that allows us to maintain a bit of our
mental and spiritual health, to keep that cheerful heart, to keep
on laughing in the face of the worst that life can offer. Listen
to the word: "In this world you will have trouble. But take
heart...or as we learned it in the King James Bible, BE OF GOOD
CHEER...[I have the last laugh]...I have overcome the world."(11)
And that last laugh is the best laugh of all.
Amen!
1. Clifton Fadiman, Gen. Ed., The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes, (Little, Brown &
Co., Boston, 1985), p. 401
2. Proverbs 17:22
3. Little, Brown...Anecdotes, p. 358
4. Quoted in The Joyful Noiseletter from Lorin Whittaker, MD, Laugh Away Your
Tensions
5. http://www.wellness-community.org/our_story.html
6. ibid., p. 228
7. Norman Cousins, Anatomy of an illness as perceived by the patient : reflections on
healing and regeneration, New York : Norton, 1979
8. Little, Brown, p. 141
9. Genesis 17:17a (NRSV)
10. Genesis 21:6
11. John 16:33
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