Did Jesus Have a Sense of Humor?

In our meditation on The Laughter of Christ, we talked about how Jesus must have had a great sense of humor. Finding examples of the Nazarene’s humor isn’t easy though when reading the Gospels. Some folks have pointed towards Jesus’s admonition that we shouldn’t worry about the speck in our brother’s eye when we have a beam in our own as one example. But that is a bit of a stretch.

All things considered, Jesus the humorist wasn’t likely a joke teller or smug connoisseur of witty epigrams. He undoubtedly was a satirist: the wielder of that eclectic humor which, to this day, continues to be the most effective way to speak truth to power and expose our petty egoism. Stephen Colbert proved this brilliantly in his now legendary take down of President Bush (and the journalists who cover him) at the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

Satire is an insiders’ game. Many people don’t get it, while others think that the satirist is actually serious. It would have been the perfect kind of humor for a prophet like Jesus, who loved to teach in enigmatic parables and metaphors, and who wouldn’t reveal the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven to just anyone.¹ He also of course hated hypocrites,² who are notoriously the subject of so much satire.

Jesus’s greatest bit of satire comes ironically (or perhaps not so ironically) in the episode we celebrate on Palm Sunday. Jesus we are told comes riding into Jerusalem on an ass, and afterwards, being hungry, gets angry at a fig tree for bearing no fruit, even though it is out of season.

Like those Republicans who think that Stephen Colbert really is a conservative Republican, many of the early Christians who passed down Jesus’s story simply didn’t get it. They interpreted it through their ordinary blinders of Old Testament prophecy, as well as the belief that prayer can literally move mountains or part the Red Sea.

Today, let’s go back and re-read Matthew Chapter 21 and imagine Stephen Colbert (or Mark Twain) riding the ass and berating the fig tree. Palm Sunday will take on a new, and perhaps richer, meaning.

—

Gain fresh insight into the Lord’s Prayer. Read our free online book The Lord’s Prayer for Daily Life. The prayer’s hidden teachings will enrich and inspire you. Click the following link to begin reading the Living Hour book now: The Lord’s Prayer.

1. Afterwards his disciples came to him, and said: “Why do you speak to them in parables?” “To you,” answered Jesus, “the knowledge of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven has been given, but not to them. – Matthew 13:10-12 [↩]
2. “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, hypocrites that you are! You pay tithes on mint, fennel, and caraway seed, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and good faith. These last you ought to have put into practice, without neglecting the first. You blind guides, to strain out a gnat and to swallow a camel! Woe to you, teachers of law and Pharisees, hypocrites that you are! – Luke 23:23-25 [↩]

The Three Laughing Monks

In China, there is the legend of the three laughing monks. They are also today sometimes referred to as the three laughing saints (but of course in a very SBNR way). The monks only ever did one thing: on entering a new village, they would stand in the market place and start laughing. They would laugh with their whole being (mind, body, heart, and soul) and suddenly people would wake up to the Life and Kingdom of God that surrounded them. A crowd would soon gather and everyone would start laughing because of these three crazy monks. Eventually, the whole town would get involved and be alive to joy. Then the monks would shimmy on to another town.

The three laughing monks were loved and admired very much. For their only sermon, their only message; was laughter. They never taught; they would simply create a situation. As the years passed, the laughing monks’ fame grew and grew. All of China loved and respected them. Nobody had ever preached the way they did: with laughter and nothing else. Yet they also remained an enigma. For they never laughed at anyone in particular, but rather as if they had understood a great cosmic joke. The three laughing monks spread joy all over China without using a single word.

After living long lives together, one of the three laughing monks died. When this happened, the whole village in which they were staying wondered what would happen next. They thought that when the monk had died, the other two would surely weep. The whole village gathered expecting to see this unusual sight. But instead of crying, the two remaining monks stood beside the corpse of the third laughing a great belly laugh. The villagers asked, “How can you be laughing at a time like this?”

So for the very first time, the two monks spoke and said, “We are laughing because our brother has won. We always wondered who would die first and he has defeated us. We are laughing at his victory and our defeat. He lived with us for many years and we laughed together and we enjoyed each other’s company. There is no better way of giving him a last send off. We can only laugh.

Nevertheless, the whole village remained sad. But then when the dead monk’s body was place on the funeral pyre, the whole village realized that the two monks were not the only ones who were joking, the dead monk was also laughing! At that time, the custom was to change the clothes of the deceased and bathe the body. But the dead monk said to his companions, “Don’t give me a bath because I have never been unclean. So much laughter has been in my life that no impurity can accumulate, can come to me. I have not gathered any dust. Laughter is always young and fresh.”

So just to respect his wishes, the two monks did not change their brother’s clothes. Then when the body was put on the fire, suddenly they became aware that he had hidden some Chinese fire-works under his clothes and had started going off. The whole village began laughing and the other two monks said: “You bastard, you’re dead, but you have defeated us once again. Your laughter is the last.”

—

Gain fresh insight into the Lord’s Prayer. Read our free online book The Lord’s Prayer for Daily Life. The prayer’s hidden teachings will enrich and inspire you. Click the following link to begin reading the Living Hour book now: The Lord’s Prayer.

If you appreciate the work of LivingHour.org, please support us today by linking to our website. We also welcome your financial support. You can make your secure online donation via PayPal by clicking the following icon:




Jesus Laughing

The Dalai Lama of Tibet is said to have an extraordinary laugh, one that rises frequently and joyfully from deep within his body. This is something we don’t attribute to Jesus much: laughter. We get so caught up with Jesus’s end game and the “man of sorrows” image that we lose sight of how much fun he must have been to be around.

After all, Jesus certainly wouldn’t have been welcomed to the dinner table of so many sinners and outcasts had he been a bore¹. He kept telling his disciples to “be of good cheer,” and he wasn’t the kind of teacher to be all talk. Jesus must have been full of cheer himself, with a spontaneous sense of humor and a hearty laugh.

When we laugh we leave ego and pride at the doorstep; we forget and forgive ourselves, as well as the trespasses of others. We move closer to Christ and the kingdom of heaven at hand. Eternity is a mere moment, said the writer Hermann Hesse, just long enough for a joke.

—-

Gain fresh insight into the Lord’s Prayer. Read our free online book The Lord’s Prayer for Daily Life. The prayer’s hidden teachings will enrich and inspire you. Click the following link to begin reading the Living Hour book now: The Lord’s Prayer.

To read about whether or not God is Winnie the Pooh, go to: God is Pooh Bear

1. Now that the Son of Man has come, eating and drinking, they are saying: “Here is a glutton and a wino, a friend of tax-gatherers and sinners!” And yet wisdom is vindicated by her actions – Mat 11:19 [↩]

Progressive Christian Sermons

The state of Christian sermons (be they Evangelical sermons or Progressive Christian sermons) has remained pretty constant for centuries now. What state is this? Well, in the words of singer and songwriter Joe Jones (circa 1960):

You talk too much, you worry me to death,
You talk too much, you even worry my pet,
You just talk, talk too much.

You talk about people that you don’t know,
You talk about people wherever you go,
You just talk, talk too much.

It is not so much that long-winded sermons cause us to worry (or nod off in the pews). Or that Christianity’s preachers talk too much about people they don’t know, even though they often do, even progressive clergy (who can forget Rev. Michael Pfleger’s comments about Hillary Clinton).

The problem is that excess sermonizing steals the revelation from us. Revelations born from the lips of preachers are will-o’-the-wisps that flicker in our minds briefly but rarely are internalized. For revelations to be transformative we must come to them on our own. That is why Socrates taught with questions, and Jesus taught with parables.

Questions and parables do not steal the “aha” experience from us. They encourage it. Now is the time for Progressive Christian ministers to begin rethinking their approaches to the Sunday sermon–those wordy monologues which all too often are but platforms to show off our erudition. The progressive pulpit should not be confused with the university lectern. Parishioners are not college students.

Let us dial back on the scholarship, the analysis, and the scripture, and increase the storytelling, the laughter, and the wonder. Let us be the river guide who lets the fishers make their own catch.

—

Gain fresh insight into the Lord’s Prayer. Read our free online book The Lord’s Prayer for Daily Life. The prayer’s hidden teachings will enrich and inspire you. Click the following link to begin reading the Living Hour book now: The Lord’s Prayer.