Enough for Laughter
Thumbnail Image by Markus Kammermann from Pixabay
Clare L. Hickman
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church
June 14 2026—Proper 6A
Genesis 18:1-15; Psalm 100; Romans 5:6-11; Matthew 9:35-10:8
Where does it come from, this fear that we are less than we need to be? That we aren’t worthy, aren’t good enough, maybe even aren’t good at all?
There was once a monk, who felt this down deep in his soul. For all his prayers, all his dedication, all his efforts to be righteous, he still found himself plagued by thoughts of God’s judgment, to the point that he found himself hating the God who punished sinners. Because there was simply no way to be sure that he was good enough, (or that anyone else was good enough) so if God’s righteousness meant God’s intention to punish those who deserve punishment, then all was lost, and God was to be feared and despised.[i] He was plunged into depression. Until Paul’s letter to the Romans saved his life and changed the course of the Church.
Because that monk was, of course, Martin Luther. And his reading of Romans revealed to him that the righteousness on which we depend is not our own, but God’s. And God’s righteousness, as Juli preached back in Advent, is essentially about God being, well, like God! Which is to say, as Luther realized: not about punishing the unjust, but about mercy. About what we see in scripture of God’s unquenchable desire to gather all people to God-self.
We are justified, we are brought into right relationship with God, not by our own efforts toward goodness and obedience, but by faith: by trust in God’s faithfulness. And because of that, we can let go of the twin convictions that (1) we need to earn our place with God, but (2) we will never be able to earn it. Having let go of those, like Luther, we can finally find peace (Romans 5:1).
It’s unsurprising to me that Luther found his solace in the writings of Paul, because they both seem to have seen their religion as a test. But while Luther despaired of ever passing it, Paul was the kind of over-achieving student who aced every test, and STILL did extra credit. “If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh,” he reports in Philippians, “I have more: … as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless”(Phil 3:4b, 5b).
He hadn’t just kept all of the commandments (even all that really complicated stuff in Leviticus and Numbers), he’d taken up arms to protect God and Judaism against blasphemers and heretics, devoted himself to wiping out these Jesus-followers! But still, after all that, he realized that all he’d gained was the right to boast about what good grades he was getting (which was less spiritually satisfying than he might have hoped). And even then, even HE hadn’t followed it all perfectly. So what hope can the rest of us mere mortals have?
Which led him to the revelation which released Martin Luther from the grip of despair: that it is God’s righteousness, not our own, that justifies us; that it is the very nature of God, revealed to us in Jesus, that invites us into kingdom life. We don’t have to earn it; we just have to accept it. And all our goodness and obedience will flow out from there, as a grateful response.
Which is good news. There is freedom here, hope here, salvation here for people like Paul, who worry that a merit-based system has simply made them self-righteous; and for people like Luther, who are afraid that no one will ever be good enough. People who are trapped, one way or the other, in a system God never intended to impose upon us, and from which God deeply desires to release us.
Consider the story of Laverne Cox,[ii] who recently released a memoir that I heard her discuss on the Modern Love podcast. Cox, if you don’t know of her, is stunning and fabulous, and the first openly trans actor to be nominated for a primetime Emmy, for her work on the series Orange is the New Black. Her memoir is one of those breathtakingly brave things, the kind that don’t shy away from the hard stuff.
She writes about her mother, who worked so hard, four jobs to get her kids the life they deserved, and also very much showed the stress of doing that as a solo parent. Cox’s voice breaks as she recalls it for the podcast host: Every day, “I would wake up to her yelling…. always telling us what a burden we were … Childhood was about trying to do everything right so that she wouldn’t go off … I wanted desperately for her to see and love me, so it felt like I had to—if I perfected, if I made all As, and won this talent show, and cleaned [the house] properly, that she would love me, that she would see me and want me. I never felt wanted by her.”
School was no reprieve. From age three, kids called her things like sissy and the f-word, and the teachers were no help. She remembers this fan that she bought at Six Flags, and if you can imagine this creative, theatrical 6th grader, sitting in class fanning away, in full Scarlett O’Hara reverie. Seeing this, the teacher marches Cox out of class and calls her mother to tell her, “Your son is going to end up in New Orleans wearing a dress if we don’t get him into therapy right away!”
Up until then, she had been free, a free spirit. She would dance everywhere. But suddenly this was a problem, she was a problem for the teachers and for her mom, and she needed to be handled, fixed. So she put the fan away. And she didn’t bring it back out until college, until she was out on the dance floor on the club scene in New York.
By that time, she had stopped asking herself, “What’s wrong with me?” Or, at least, not so much. It was still some years before she realized that “If she was to stay in this world,” she would have to medically transition, to claim her trans-femme identity. And then still more years to claim herself in her body, worthy to love and be loved.
The Modern Love host, Anna Martin, ended the show by inviting her to speak to little Laverne, the girl who didn’t feel wanted or seen. This is the message Cox sent to her younger self: “You are safe, Laverne. You are protected, you are seen, you are loved. You’re so adorable and infectious and just really, really special, and you should always know that, and don’t let anyone tell you that you’re not.”
Far too often, the world tells us we’re not enough, that we’re wrong somehow. It comes from the mouths of parents, from kids at school, from preachers. Sometimes those people even have the audacity to put that judgment into the mouth of God. But God never stops trying to break through that noise. Reaching out to Sarah, who has faced decades of knowing she has failed to give Abraham an heir. Reaching out to Paul, a self-righteous crusader on the road to Damascus. Reaching out to a troubled monk, praying to be able to love God again. Reaching out to a little trans girl, and the woman she grew into. Reaching out to you, if you happen to need to hear it.
And just maybe, you will laugh, as Sarah did. At first, in disbelief and derision. A ridiculous idea: that you are enough, that you are not broken! But then, as the holiness, the truth of it takes root within you, you just might begin to laugh with joy. With abandon at the sheer audacity of it. Like Laverne on that dance floor with her fan. Amen.
[i] https://pages.uoregon.edu/sshoemak/323/texts/Luther%20Tower%20Experience.htm
[ii] Laverne Cox content taken from Modern Love Podcast, episode 449, “Laverne Cox is Ready to Tell the Truth, Even if It’s Messy.” Published June 10, 2026.