Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“When he knocked at the outer gate, a maid named Rhoda came to answer. On recognizing Peter’s voice, she was so overjoyed that, instead of opening the gate, she ran in and announced that Peter was standing at the gate.”
NL Daily Devotion for Saturday, April 24, 2021
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
Oh, how I love this moment of comic relief! I was just talking to my other Clergy Stuff peeps this morning and one of them pointed out how full of humor the Bible really is. And it is. We don’t get a lot of it, because we miss all the fun word plays in the Old Testament, or because the satire gets lost in translation. But there are clear moments of sublime levity and this is one of them. It reads like a scene out of a sitcom. Peter is miraculously freed from prison and wanders home. He knocks on his own front gate and when the maid comes out to see who’s there, she gets so excited, she runs back into the house completely forgetting to actually open the gate. You can just see Peter standing there in the pale lamplight of the street going, “Uh…Rhoda? Hello? You…you, uh…you didn’t actually open the…the front…” (Are you seeing Bob Newhart? Because I’m totally seeing Bob Newhart.)
It’s been said a thousand times that God has a sense of humor, and I know it’s true. After all, human beings are funny, funny creatures, and we’re created in God’s image after all. And, sure, it’s not funny at all the Peter was being persecuted for preaching about Jesus, and was thrown in jail for it. But maybe that’s a reminder that even in the midst of our struggles there is room to experience joy and laughter. In fact, can we ever hope to come through our struggles intact without it?
What do I find most humorous about the Bible?
![1 Kings 17:1-16 [17-24], God’s Care for the Widow](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/56b39b61ab48de92d991a40a/bf37035e-33d5-439f-a0d6-a68b02d0f1bc/24-11-03.jpg)
