Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 1, 1992 TAG: 9201310370
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By GEORGE W. CORNELL ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
MONTHLY JOYFUL NOISEMAKER PROVES RELIGION CAN BE A LAUGHING MATTER
A mother, noticing her 5-year-old daughter drawing with crayons on some paper, asked, "What are you drawing?""A picture of God," the little girl said.
The mother remarked, "No one knows what God looks like."
The girl, busy with her crayons, assured, "They will when I get through."
A page full of such funny little episodes, with religious touches, are recounted in each issue of the Joyful Noiseletter, published monthly by the Fellowship of Merry Christians.
Here's another:
In Sunday school, a teacher asked a small girl why she thought the clergyman in the Good Samaritan story passed by on the other side of the injured victim.
Replied the girl, "Because the man lying by the roadside had already been robbed."
The interdenominational fellowship was founded six years ago to help bring more joy, humor and celebration into church life, and now has about 17,000 members around the country.
The "noiseletter" also regularly carries stories about the value and various uses of humor in ministry and religious education, about advocates of it and experts at it, as well as jolly elements in faith itself.
The late British writer Malcolm Muggeridge, a consulting editor of the publication, wrote shortly before his recent death, "There is a close connection between clowns and mystics. Laughter is indeed God's therapy.
"He planted the steeples and the gargoyles, gave us clowns as well as saints, in order that we might understand that at the heart of our mortal existence, there lies a mystery, at once unutterably beautiful and hilariously funny."
Cal Samra and his wife, Rose, who edit the noiseletter, say humor is particularly needed during hard times. He said many congregations reprint the noiseletter's jokes and cartoons in church bulletins.
"A pastor told me a lot of people come to church in a bad mood, and something is needed to tickle their spirits and get them in a better mood to hear the Gospel," Samra said.
The organization also stocks an array of books, scholarly and otherwise, on religious humor, including that of Jesus and elsewhere in the Bible.
However, it is those regular pages packed with funny religious stories, plus a page of cartoons, that offer some of the choicest pickings for the pulpit or dinner table.
Some samples:
A boy was watching his father, a pastor, write a sermon. The boy asked, "How do you know what to say?"
"Why, God tells me," the clergyman replied.
"Oh," said the lad. "Then why do you keep crossing things out?"
Another:
At a wedding, a pastor asked the groom: "Do you take this woman to be your wedded wife, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness or in health . . . "
"Please, pastor," the bride interrupted, "you're going to talk him right out of it."
And another:
After a pastor's wife took her overworked husband to the family physician, the doctor took her aside and whispered: "I don't like the way your husband looks."
"I don't, either," she replied, "but he's always been a good father to the children."
In Ireland, a young farmer named Mike wanted to get married, and he and his Maggie went to the priest to arrange for the wedding. The priest prepared them with all the instructions and then said, "Now, Mike, do you want the new rite or the old rite?"
"Aw," said Mike, "let's have the new rite."
After dressing up in his best suit on the morning of the wedding, Mike remembered that he had to feed the cows, so he rolled up his pant legs and went into the barn. Then he went to church, but forgot to roll down his pant legs.
As the priest began the ceremony, he whispered to Mike: "Mike, pants down, pants down."
Mike looked at him and said: "Father, can't we have the old rite?"
The address of the Joyful Noiseletter is P.O. Box 668, Kalamazoo, Mich., 49005.