LORD, GIVE ME A SENSE OF HUMOR

THE WORLD AND ITS DESIRES PASS AWAY, BUT THE MAN WHO DOES THE WILL OF GOD LIVES FOREVER

Thomas More’s long and distinguished career in public service was capped by an appointment to Lord Chancellor of England – one of the highest and most powerful offices in England. 

That was in 1529. Six years later, in 1535, King Henry VIII, the same man who appointed More to office, had him beheaded. Henry wanted More to declare him as supreme head of the church in England. More refused, explaining on his way to the scaffold, "I die the king’s servant, but God’s first."

More had long been ready to die if need be. Beneath all the finery of his position, he often wore a hair shirt. This private penance was to impress upon himself the fragility of his life and the emptiness of earthly ambition; each scratch a whispering reminder that though he was in the world, he was not of it. "The worms," he often told his friends, "will one day have it all."

More was also comic, famous well beyond England for his practical jokes. He even kept in his home a pet monkey and a professional live-in jester. His sense of humor came from the same place as the hair shirt. The pretensions of the world will one day pass away; the only sure hope is in God. Hope kept More encouraged about the future; humor helped him cope with the present. Humor was the lens through which More could see clearly the incongruities and possibilities of this life, the gap between what is and what one day will be.

In a way, More was beheaded because of his sense of humor, or

at least because of what it helped him to see. When set against eternity, all the posturings of the most powerful person in England were laughable. Even in death. As he walked up the shaky steps of the scaffold to be beheaded, More said to the executioner, "I pray you, see me safely up, and for my coming down let me shift for myself." When his head was on the block, he asked the executioner to wait while his scraggly beard off the block. He quipped that his beard, after all, had not committed treason.

                                     THOMAS MORE (1478-1535)

In Christ,

Janet Irene Thomas

Director/Writer/Producer/Lyricist

Founder/CEO

Bible Stories Theatre of

Fine & Performing Arts

www.biblestoriestheatre.org