The pastor stood behind the pulpit. He was only a few minutes into his sermon. With the accumulated experience of decades of homiletic endeavor he was prepared to lead the people in a step-by-step journey through the carefully planned and theologically enlightening revelation of the deep meaning of the scriptures.

It was about four minutes and thirty-seven seconds into the sermon that the pastor began to escort the congregation across the bridge called humor that spanned the gulf between introduction and the sermon’s first point.

“So,” said the parson to the assembled, “a man comes up to a doctor and says, ‘I want to thank you for the benefits I have received from your treatments.’

“The doctor replied, ‘I don’t think you are my patient.’

“‘I certainly am not,’ said the man, ‘but my uncle was and I just inherited his entire estate.’”

Immediately a wave of chuckling rolled over the room that was punctuated by the occasional splashing of outright laughter. The humor was appreciated. The pastor with a pulpit maturity born of four decades of leading the listeners along the oratorical journey that is the sermon was pleased as once again his accumulated experience began to ease the congregation into an understanding of point one.

It was then the song leader, sitting off to the side and behind the organ, let forth with a loud guffaw and an audible comment of “The uncle died.”,  that was followed by what could only be described as a cackle of laughter.

The pastor, being the erudite proclaimer of the Word he is, attempted to continue without even the least hint of hesitation, but his resolve was interrupted by another exclamation of loud laughter from behind the organ accented by stammering words, “You’re not my patient. Oh, Lord help us.” This was echoed by three people on the third pew on the left giving forth with their own expressions of humor, two with an obvious attempt at restraint and one with an unbridled exuberance of laughter.

The chuckles and laughing on the third pew on the left bounced over the aisle and into the seventh pew on the right which then bounced to the eleventh pew on the right and then to the fifth pew on the left.

The pastor stood behind the pulpit wrapped in his decades of experience watching the assembled followers of the risen Lord giggle and laugh, bend over in unabated expressions of happiness, which was interrupted only be the occasional wiping of a tear from the eye. The entire assembled saints were completely out-of-control.

Not to be defeated by such an unrestrained expression, the pastor smiled and calmly waited until sanity returned to the congregation. Then he completed point one without any noticeable interruption. Whereupon he began to escort the saints across the bridge that led from point one to point two. He was halfway across that span when the eighty-year-old widow sitting on the eighth row on the right looked over at her matronly sister sitting on the seventh row on the left at which both of them began to giggle, which led to the song leader losing control of his restraint and the entire congregation giving way to whatever had been let loose in the sanctuary.

Perhaps here it should be noted that being the staid United Methodists they are the assembled did show enough self-restraint to resist rolling in the aisles.