On Low Sunday last year, I was helping out a friend by preaching in their church so they could be in mine. It was an interesting experience. It was congregation of which I had very little knowledge, although at one time in the early 20th century my great-grandfather had been their minister.

It had been a little bit of a journey to get there, and I thought I had covered all my bases. The sermon was on the iPad, and the night before I had spent practising the Children’s Address. As I reached into the back of the car I suddenly realised that the items needed for the children’s address were not there. In fact I knew exactly where they were – on the dining room table 50 miles away.

It being Low Sunday, I quickly sat in the car again and looked up some jokes that could be told in church. Perhaps I could wing it with “Holy Humour Sunday”. One or two children and I should be able to persuade them to help me with jokes. Sadly it didn’t work. Unlike my then congregation, they were quite obviously uncomfortable with informality with the children, and so I had to move swiftly on.

The experience made me think a lot about “Holy Humour Sunday” which is an American practice that some have adopted at times here. On the Sunday after Easter, when the celebration of the past two Sundays is over, and with many people on holiday, it can seem a quiet, unspectacular day. There’s none of the fun of Easter, and instead an opportunity to wrestle with doubt.

I don’t think there will be jokes this year. Instead of trying to put the celebration back into a day when it might be quiet, it could be an opportunity to think about the moments that dent our confidence. Those times we thought we knew just who were were, and who were in relation to God, only to have that certainty slide away so that we could explore the un-ventured regions of all we had been given by God. The lows of life and liturgy should be allowed to be part of the flow of a church experience if we are to enable those who venture through the door to encounter the God who invades every part of creation.