Weebles Wobble But They Don't Fall Down

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Romans

Some of you have heard this before, but when I was growing up and would spend time with my grandparents, to try and get me to eat my vegetables, my grandfather would always say “it’ll put hair on your chest.” I never considered that an acceptable argument for doing something I didn’t want to do, and will note I still don’t. But that’s what I always think of when I hear Paul’s words that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character and character produces hope and hope does not disappoint.” But if that’s what it takes to get hope, wouldn’t you rather pass? Not that I don’t want to live without hope, but I don’t want to suffer either, and let’s also note that anytime someone says about something that it will build character, you can be pretty sure that it too will be an unpleasant experience, like having to eat your vegetables as a child. And so, with that, we move on to today’s toy, the Weeble. And again credit is due to Ron Hunter, Jr. and Michael Waddell for their inspiration for this series.

This is the newest of all the toys we will look at, and thus one that many of you did not grow up with because it wasn’t yet invented, but one that your children, or perhaps grandchildren did grow up playing with. It also happens to be the only toy we will look at that has not been inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame. But it is based upon a much older toy. The television show Romper Room, which began in 1953, introduced a clown punching bag that was weighed down by sand at the bottom so that when you punched it, it wouldn’t stay down but would right itself so you could punch it again, and keep going. Nothing violent about that. And some of you may know the toy because there was a duplicate that had Bozo the clown on it. When toy manufacturer Hasbro purchased Romper Room in 1969, they wanted to market the punching bag idea, with a twist, and so they shrunk it down, made it solid, and shaped it like an egg, and thus was born, in 1971, the Weeble. And what made them so unique was not only their shape, but the fact that when they got knocked over, that because of the weighting, that gravity would cause them to right themselves, thus creating the famous advertising slogan that “Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down.” Allegedly this helped introduce children to basic physics, perhaps a stretch, but it is there. Now I will note, first that I couldn’t find any reason why they were called Weebles, perhaps just because they wobble, and second now they are much shorter and squatter than the originals, allegedly because the originals posed a choking hazard, although that seems like a huge stretch to me, not because kid’s wouldn’t put them in their mouths, but because they were still really big and I can’t imagine a child actually being able to get it stuck in their throat, but there we are. And so that leads us back not really to the idea of suffering so much as to the idea of resilience because Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down.

Gallows Humor

Here is my message from Maundy Thursday. The text was Romans 8:18-25, 31-39:

In the remarkable documentary Capturing the Friedmans, director Andrew Jarecki tells the story of the Friedman family of New York who get caught up in the preschool child molestation prosecutions, or we might say persecutions, of the 1980s. The father, Arnold, and later his son, Jesse, are both arrested and plead guilty to the charges that are made against them. But, the film does a great job in exploring the idea of justice and truth, and how the criminal justice system doesn’t always seek those things, and more importantly about the stories we make up and tell ourselves to justify the positions we have taken, even if the evidence doesn’t actually match what we say. But, there is one scene in the documentary, which consists of home movies the family took about their lives during this time, that hits home for today. Just before entering the courthouse for sentencing, the brothers are all standing outside the courtroom joking around with each other. The prosecutors witnessed this activity happening from a distance and said that it just proved their guilt, because if they were innocent they would not have laughing before this serious event taking place. In other words, their view of the issue impacted how they saw and interpreted what was happening. But in response to that accusation, one of the brothers said obviously the prosecutor had never heard of gallows humor, the humor we have when things appear desperate or even hopeless. The humor we have at times when we have to laugh otherwise we would have to cry.

Since today is also April fool’s day, it got me thinking about that film and the idea of humor in dark situations, and it made me wonder if there was any gallows humor on this night in Jesus’ life. On the surface it doesn’t appear to be so, it’s all pretty serious, at least according to our accounts.  And yet, I have to imagine that there had to have been something happening, not only because we tell jokes in situations like this just to cut the tension, but also because of the traditions of Judaism, after all it’s not like Jewish comedians are a rare thing. I think some of this comes about, and the plethora of Jewish comics, comes about because there is something about suffering that leads to humor. I think that’s why there is such a strong comedic tradition in black culture in our country as well. Suffering leads to humor. If you look at the background of many comedians, not all, but many, you’ll find some tragic events that have occurred in their history that have led them to tell jokes, because the alternative was to break down. Stephen Colbert’s father and two brothers were killed in a plane crash and he said it became his job to make his mother laugh. Indeed, the whole reason Jarecki came upon the story of the Friedmans was because he was doing a documentary on children’s party clowns in New York City, and David Friedman was one of the best. Suffering leads to humor.

James: Patience, Suffering and Temptation

Here is my sermon from Sunday.  The text was James 1:12-18 and 5:7-11:

When I met my wife Linda, she had a black lab, Vivian, and Vivi was really smart.  All you had to do was show her, or tell her, one time what you wanted her to do and normally she would pick it up right then.  That was a smart dog.  I’ve had some other smart dogs, but the dog we have now, Yogi, is not in that category.  And this isn’t just that he’s being ornery or stubborn, he’s just not that smart.  And to make it worse, he is part terrier and possibly some beagle, and so he likes to get his nose going and then just go.  So if given the chance, whether it’s the door being left open just a bit, or if he can find any way out of the backyard, he’s going to take the opportunity and take off and run as far and as fast as he can, until he’s picked up by the dog catcher and he ends up in doggy prison.

Now if Yogi was human, or perhaps if he was a little smarter, he might try and give some rationalization for what he was doing and why he ended up in trouble, because that’s what we try and do.  Perhaps he might try and blame the devil, with the proverbial “the devil made me do it” excuse.  No personal culpability.  Everyone else is responsible except for him, not even for giving in to the temptation.  Or he might even argue that the temptation was put there simply in order to try and bring him down because of who he is, and so not only is he not weak, it’s because he is so strong and so good that it even happened.  He is suffering unjustly.  Or he might even say, and we certainly hear this all the time, that it’s God who led him to this point, either to tempt him to see what he will do, or even worse in my opinion, is to say that God has led him to this, and not just led them to it, but actually pushed him through the door to run for all he is worth and to doggy prison, but that God will get him through it.  It’s that whole, “God doesn’t give us anything that we can’t handle” cliché.  But regardless of what excuse is used for temptation and suffering, they all take patience, and for me with Yogi it takes patience for me so that I don’t try and kill him.  But what James tells us today is that all of this is wrong, and the truth is we simply don’t understand what’s actually going on.

When Why is not the Right Question

Here is my sermon from Sunday.  This was preached in reaction to the death of my 9-year-old-nephew Wyatt, who also attended the church. The text was Romans 8:18-39:

In order to be a good journalist, or really to be able to tell a good story, you have to be able to answer five questions: who, what, when, where and why.  Of those, the why question is probably the hardest to be able to explain or to find.  After all what do we hear all the time in the news about some criminal investigation, “police are still looking for a motive.”  The motive is the why question.  Why did they do this, why did this happen.  Sometimes the why question is never really fully answered, and even when it is it is often unsatisfactory, but that doesn’t stop us from asking it, especially when bad things have happened.  I remember one person saying that they didn’t ask why when their first child was born happy and normal, they didn’t think about it because that’s the way things are supposed to be.  But when their second child was born severe mental and physical handicaps they were asking a lot of why questions.  These are the cries we lift up not in the best moments of our lives, but in the worst, even Jesus asks these questions as we are told that he cries out on the cross, “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

We want things to be orderly, to be predictable, to be understandable, we want things to go the way we think they are to go, and when they don’t we wonder that question why.  That has certainly been flowing around our house the past week following Wyatt’s death.  I would have been perfectly content continuing to preach on the Sermon on the Mount, which we’ll have to come back to, and so I wonder why did this happen?  Why is a seemingly healthy boy no longer here?  Why did what seemed like successful surgery go downhill so fast?  Why did God let this happen?

I was just two months into my first pastoral appointment when I got called on to perform my first funeral.  I had assisted with one funeral in my internship, but it was for someone who was 96.  As Pastor Gerry said last week, when performing funerals for people who have lived long lives, it’s more of a celebration, there aren’t a lot of questions being asked, and certainly not a lot of why questions, but this was not one of those funerals.  Ethan had been born with a rare genetic defect called Spinal Muscular Atrophy.  It is a disease caused by a recessive gene which means that both parents have to carry the gene, and even if both parents carry the gene there is only a 25% chance of the child being born with it.  Jane and Anil had two children when Ethan was born, neither of whom had the disease, and they did not know they were carriers until they sought help from their pediatrician when around three months Ethan stopped growing.  They  were told the disease would cause his muscles to continue to deteriorate, that he would never be strong enough to lift his head, let alone walk or crawl, and his respiratory functions would be  most affected, and that with a good outcome he might live to be two years old.  He didn’t make it that long, dying at 15 months.