by David H. C. Read. New York: Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, 2005; available by order from The Hood Library at Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church (921 Madison Avenue, New York, NY, 10021; $20 plus $3 shipping and handling).
During a scheduled “free” afternoon of a continuing education event at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, David H. C. Read spent his “free” time reading the sermons of, and offering instruction and encouragement to, a pair of young pastors. Each chapter of his autobiography God Was in the Laughter radiates that same grace and generosity.
David Haxton Carswell Read was for thirty-three years pastor of Madison Avenue Church in New York City and perennially listed among the best preachers in the United States. His voice was heard regularly on the National Radio Pulpit. In 1973 he was the Lyman Beecher lecturer at Yale Divinity School. He published about a dozen books of sermons and a half dozen other volumes on preaching, evangelism, and as well an introduction to Christian faith. His sermons are bright and witty, theologically rich, wonderfully insightful to the human need for God, and though they were preached decades ago, they may still be profitably read as models of homiletical discipline and vessels of God’s grace.
Even granting the resilience of Read’s preaching, the genre of preacherly autobiography does not regularly promise an exhilarating read, but that only proves that God Was in the Laughter is a rare and rewarding volume
Read traces his roots in Scotland and its particular Presbyterianism, the influences of his parents and teachers, but throughout, and with not the slightest heavy handedness, he also chronicles the movement of God’s grace in his youth: “the God in our genes” (p.3), as well as God spoken of in youth groups and churches. His descriptions of theological study in the 1930’s reveal the excitement and furtive scandal generated from Bonn by a new young theologian by the name of Karl Barth. Read describes his own theology on page 45 as “Barth modified by Baillie” (the Scot theologian John Baillie). A bright student, Read was given opportunities for study not only at New College in Edinburgh but also Montpelier and Marburg on the continent, and on a trip to Palestine.
God Was in the Laughter gives the distinct impression, however, that David H. C. Read’s theology and preaching were fired in the furnace of the Second World War. Just as Read had begun to receive acclaim–speaking on the BBC, translating for the German preacher/professor Walter Lüthi, and invited to preach to the King at Balmoral–war interrupted. Serving as a chaplain with the 51st Highland Division, he and his division were overrun by the German advance through France. While other British soldiers were evacuated at Dunkirk, Read was taken a prisoner of war.
For five years David H. C. Read’s ministry was in POW camps. He has no mistreatment to report, but the accommodations necessarily fell somewhat short of luxury. Crowded camps left no room for empty piety, glib answers, or pretension. “God was cutting me down to size” (p.80), he reported. “Being taken prisoner means being stripped down. Suddenly everything you have come to rely on is gone. Your possessions, your job, your plans, those dearest to you, your country–all these are, in a peculiar way, no longer there. There’s just you–and God?” (p.74). And in the mystery of God, that sojourn also becomes an experience of grace.
The title, God Was in the Laughter, comes from Read’s reflection on the grace of laughter intruding into the boredom and fearful uncertainty of life in a POW camp:
“Looking back, I see that God was in the laughter, and in a mysterious way he was leading us to a new understanding of human nature. When one is stripped of the veneer of customary civilities and the assurance that the necessities of life are readily available, there is a raw reality about relationships in which true religion flourishes, and the pretentious, the insincere, and the fanatical stick out like a sore thumb” (p. 83).
The book is composed of abridgements of David H. C. Read’s earlier and now out of print autobiographical reflections, This Grace Given and Grace Thus Far, along with four essays on aging and death from a volume, Gracenotes, he was writing at the time of his death. One might wish for a greater number of these concluding reflections, for one never tires listening to David Read’s wise, witty and gracious voice, but we can be enormously grateful that Madison Avenue Church has made this beautifully published edition available.
Patrick J. Willson is pastor of Williamsburg Church, Williamsburg, Va.
