It's a spoof of the Born-Oppenheimer approximation.

This Sunday is one of those times that I step away from the Lectionary and do something a little different, because I like to observe Holy Hilarity Sunday the week after Easter.  According to The Joyful Noiseletter:

Many American churches are resurrecting an old Easter custom begun by the Greeks in the early centuries of Christianity-"Holy Humor Sunday" celebrations of Jesus' resurrection on the Sunday after Easter. 

For centuries in Eastern Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant countries, the week following Easter Sunday, including "Bright Sunday" (the Sunday after Easter), was observed by the faithful as "days of joy and laughter" with parties and picnics to celebrate Jesus' resurrection. 

Churchgoers and pastors played practical jokes on each other, drenched each other with water, told jokes, sang, and danced. 

The custom was rooted in the musings of early church theologians (like Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa, and John Chrysostom) that God played a practical joke on the devil by raising Jesus from the dead. "Risus paschalis - the Easter laugh," the early theologians called it.

I myself am all for it!  Well, maybe not drenching each other with water.  It's been a cold spring around here and my robe and suit are dry-clean only and...  Well, anyway, you get the point.  It's absolutely appropriate to get a little silly after all the seriousness of Lent.  Besides, the Bible is chock full of jokes and puns!

That part wasn't a joke.  The Bible really is one of the punniest pieces of literature around.  It's just that unless you read ancient forms of Hebrew and Greek that are no longer spoken, you'll just have to take my word for it.  Kind of like that early scene from The Big Bang Theory where Sheldon points at a board full of physics equations and says, "That part right there?  That's just a joke..."  I have it on good authority that it really is a joke of some sort—but I can't read it!

Adam, for example, is a pun on the word for mud, adamah.  It's kind of like if I made sculpted a ceramic man and named him "Clay."  Or take Paul's letter to Philemon.  In that letter, Paul talks about how he meets this runaway slave named "Onesimus," converts him to Christianity, and then sends him back to his Christian master, Philemon, along with the letter which is meant to convince Philemon to receive Onesimus as a beloved brother.  Part of the argument is, "Once he was useless to you, but now he is useful to both you and me..."  Get it?  No?  It's a spoof of the Born-Oppenheimer approximation!  No, wait...  that's Sheldon's joke equation.  The pun is that in Greek "Onesimus" means "useful."  Literally!

There are others, but I won't pull them out for you today.  Just keep in mind that it's not only ok to tell jokes or even laugh in church—it's actually divine!

Be good to each other,
Rev. Josh
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