Is there room for humor in the pulpit? Is it proper to chuckle in church? Ought a Christian to laugh at himself?
A recent congregational poll on the appropriateness of laughter in the public worship service showed that one-fourth of the members had never thought of God as ever laughing. It was probably not coincidence that most of these same members also thought that a joyous resurrection hymn is out of place at a funeral service.
In this time of lamentation over the alleged death of God, Christians ought to re-examine their view of the Deity. Is it possible that stereotyped pictures of God have obscured essential passages of Scripture that help make him accessible to human understanding? Humor is of the essence of life, and some of the supposed irrelevance of the Christian message may be charged up to failure to appreciate the biblical perspective of humor and laughter.
“He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord has them in derision” (Ps. 2:4, RSV). “The Lord laughs at the wicked, for he sees that his day is coming” (Ps. 35:13). Thus the Psalmist describes the divine reaction to the pompous self-assurance of the wicked. The most devastating satire ever written on man’s vain attempt to rule God out of his existence is found in Isaiah 44. The smith works on his idol until he is ready to drop from exhaustion. The carpenter takes part of a cypress and laboriously outlines the figure of a man; the rest he pitches in the fireplace for warmth, and for roasting his meat. Then he turns to the image he has made and says, “Save me, for you are my god.” “Such men,” says the prophet, “are ignorant and senseless; their eyes are bedaubed till they cannot see, and their minds closed to knowledge; none of them calls to mind—none has sense and wit enough to say to himself, ‘Half of it I burned in the fire, baking bread upon its embers and roasting meat for food; and am I to make the other half a horrid idol?” (vv. 18, 19, Moffatt).
The laughter of God is a theological fact that is often ignored for what seems at first to be a more somber appreciation of the divine wrath. Yet it is God’s laughter that puts the plight of man in proper perspective. What is it that makes the Psalmist say that God sits in the heavens and laughs? Is it a sadistic delight in seeing the wicked perish? Indeed not. The anthropomorphism is itself an expression of the sense of humor man must have as he examines his relationship with God. God is described as laughing because the Psalmist understands the absurdity of man’s puny attempts to play God, to emancipate himself from the divine claim. It is tragically hilarious that man, who owes to God the understanding not only of his environment but also of himself, should attempt to make his journey without that One who is the key to his existence. Alone, defiant, with an “I-am-the-captain-of-my-soul” complex, he drifts his aimless way on the seas he cannot chart out toward the harbor of the night.
The ancient Oriental eye catches the ridiculous solemnity with which man sentences himself to doom. There on a level shady plain a tower is a-building. Higher and higher the ziggurat lifts its head, an eternal monument to head off the inevitable disintegration of pomp and circumstance.
With incisive satire, Genesis 11:5 puts the scene in proper perspective: “And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower.…” It is the weariness of One who has put up with much foolishness, and there is no point in straining his eyes and squinting to see this tiny molehill. God conies down, and the amusing character of human arrogance is countered by a most compassionate sense of humor. “Let us make a babble of their language on the spot” (Moffatt). In place of devastating judgment, God puts a merciful end to the fools’ play by scattering those who thought to gather. Who can sketch the panic? The foreman curses, but who knows the name of the gods? Bewilderment creases the brow of the slave. Confusion is the only command of the day. And then the sands take over. “Therefore is the name of it called Babel.”
Millenniums later the twinkle in God’s eye is seen again. The place is Bethlehem. “To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:11). Surely the angel of the Lord must be joking. Why waste celestial music on country bumpkins?—so Jerusalem’s liturgical elite might have put it.
“And this will be a sign for you: you will find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger” (v. 12). This is just not the way kings come. And then there are all the centuries of rules of Levitical cleanness, all shattered at one stroke of midnight. “This is my gift to the world,” God says. The baby is every inch a King, but in the way God gives this King he shows his sense of humor. The juxtaposition of the expected and the unexpected is the essential ingredient. The Pharisees could have seen only a man-child; the shepherds saw the Word made flesh.
Why were the publicans and sinners glad to hear Jesus? His language was spiced with humor. It takes only a little imagination to reconstruct from his sayings scenes that must have provoked waves of Galilean laughter.
Can you see the man whose worst enemy is a self too heavy on his hands? Watch him as he takes a sieve and strains out mosquitoes while gulping down camels head first (Matt. 23:24). Or watch the man with a log in his eye (Luke 6:39–42) as he goes to a friend who has a speck in his eye and says, “Don’t worry, I’ll get it out.” This is the kind of thing we expect to see in a Jerry Lewis skit. It reminds us that we need to laugh at ourselves and our ridiculous efforts to change others without first knowing what it means to be changed by God. Or recall the story of the man who couldn’t come to the great dinner party (Luke 14). Why? Well, he had bought oxen—five pairs. Think of it! Another said, “I just got married. Count me out.” As if women didn’t like parties.
His opponents’ lack of a profound sense of humor that, being humble enough to laugh at self, is an ingredient of repentance, finally spells the destruction of Jesus. At the crucifixion, the world has its turn. There we find how Satanic ingredients may pervert the world’s humor. “This is a good one! He called himself the Son of God. Let’s see whether God will have him. Let him come down from the cross.… You’re the Saviour of the world. Come on, save yourself.… Here, take a little vinegar.… Ah, he’s calling for Elijah. Hurry up, save this fellow!”
They seem to have forgotten that Elijah was not to be trifled with, and that a greater than Elijah was there. Recall the scene at Mt. Carmel (1 Kings 18). There stand two altars. At the one, the devotees of Baal are slicing themselves. At the other, there is Elijah, calm as the hour before the storm. “Cry a little louder,” he taunts. “After all, Baal is a god. He may be on vacation, or perhaps he is sleeping off one of his Baal-size hangovers.” With such words Elijah drowned in laughter the orgiastic rites of Canaan.
But back to the hill of skulls. Pilate has his own little joke. “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews” (Matt. 27:37). With that sally he hoped to be rid of all this messy little business that cluttered his political agenda. But God turned the tables and on the third day sprang his great surprise. “Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age?… For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe” (1 Cor. 1:20, 21). For it is written, “He catches the wise in their craftiness” (1 Cor. 3:19).
And what about this quip that God is dead? It is as hoary as the pyramids; Pharaoh long ago headed the cult. “Who is the Lord? In Egypt we have all the gods there are, and I am chief.” Now watch the divine repartee as Moses’ God touches all the sacred things of Egypt. Here is divine humor, compassionate, with salvation as its objective. When the frogs get to be too much for him, Pharaoh reluctantly calls in the exterminators—Moses and Aaron. Confidently they say to Pharaoh, “Just tell us when.” Still stubborn, Pharaoh hopes that time will take care of things and says, “Tomorrow”—a brilliant invitation to another day of croaking frogs. Finally, in one of his rare spells of clear-sightedness, Pharaoh says, “This time I have sinned.” Tripped by his own arrogance, he does not know how funny it sounds. And then, after the ninth plague, Pharaoh says to Moses, “I don’t want to see your face again.” Moses flashes back, “Don’t worry, you won’t.” The patient humor of God has run its course. And there is mourning throughout the land of Egypt.
This is the same God who permits men today to celebrate his “funeral.” We are reminded by a daring bit of dialogue (Gen. 18) of the unsearchable depths of his mercy. See Abraham—the man who once fell on his face before God in laughter—bargaining with God. The stakes: Lot’s city, Sodom. “Suppose there are fifty good people in the city. You won’t destroy it, will you? Not with your reputation for justice.”
“No, if I can find fifty, I won’t destroy it.”
“I am a nothing in your presence, Lord. But what if there should be five short?”
“I’ll save it for forty-five.”
“How about forty?”
“Find forty and the city is safe.”
“Don’t be angry, Lord, but what if there are only thirty? Will you save it for thirty?”
“Yes, if I can find thirty the city will survive.”
“Forgive me for presuming to speak to you, but perhaps there are only twenty. Will you save Sodom for twenty?”
“If there are twenty, I won’t destroy it.”
“Just once more, Lord, and then I’m through. What if there are only ten?”
“Give me ten, and the city is yours.”
This was an auction in reverse. Generations of hard bargainers—those buyers who say publicly that what they got is worth nothing and then go their way rejoicing (Prov. 20:14)—must have chuckled over Father Abraham’s getting the better of God in a bargain. Yet they knew the story did not end there. This same God meant business. And the dreadful destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was a clear demonstration that God’s sense of humor is not to be trifled with.
God indeed is a party-loving God. He is like the shepherd who finds one lost sheep and then calls his friends and neighbors to help him rejoice. He is like the village woman who invites everyone about her to share the happiness of finding one little coin (Luke 15). Yet God looks out over the city and weeps. Both the joy and the sadness—this is the story of God’s encounter with man. But only those who laugh with God can truly laugh. Only this laughter is enduring, for it is the laughter of the living God.
David knew the joy of the Lord. According to Second Samuel 6:5, “David and all the house of Israel were making merry before the Lord with all their might, with songs and lyres and harps and tambourines and castanets and cymbals.” Where is the like in our public worship? Our services often resemble a funeral. David’s worship was more like a fiesta. And before the Ark of God at that! Holy awe and hilarity are not mutually exclusive. And those who clap their hands in rhythm, shout out the “Hallelujah” and the “Amen” with spontaneous joy, or at a funeral cry out, “She’s free!”—these know the laughter of the Lord.
Psalm 2:11 tells us to fear the Lord and rejoice. The Hebrew word used here means to “spring about with great joy.” St. Paul, so often interpreted as a man who found no fun in life, reminds his Christians time and again to rejoice. And we must not forget that it was he who encouraged them to show mercy and generosity with hilarity (2 Cor. 9:7; Rom. 12:8). Unfortunately, his word has been tamed down to “cheerfulness.” In writing to the Corinthians, he delights in telling of his visits to the best jails in the Roman Empire, and of his escapade at Damascus (2 Cor. 11:32, 33). Of all things: an apostle coming over the wall in a basket—and telling it in a canonical letter for all time to read. How unapostolic can you get! Imagine an important church official locked up in his headquarters after hours and coming down by rope out of a fifth-story window.
Paul’s humor had integrity. He could say, “This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God” (1 Cor. 4:1). Smaller men later changed the script: “Let men look up to us as his official guardians of Truth and Sacrament.” To dissension-ridden Corinth, he writes these withering words: “There must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized” (1 Cor. 11:19). Ego-diluting ink is on his pen: “You put up with fools so readily, you who know so much! You put up with a man who assumes control of your souls, with a man who spends your money, with a man who dupes you, with a man who gives himself airs, with a man who flies in your face. I am quite shamed to say I was not equal to that sort of thing!” (2 Cor. 11:19–21a, Moffatt). Only a man who loves as strongly as Paul did can write satire like that with the ring of one who cares. Only one who knows he is the least has a right, in order to reach out the hand that heals, to trim others down to size.
Is it proper to laugh in church? Some Christians may not think so. But the Incarnation means that the Lord Christ also embraced in his Person the very endowment of a sense of humor, and that through his Atonement he redeemed this essential ingredient of our emotional life. The clergyman must not rely on humor as a substitute for preaching that goes deep. On the other hand, no one should feel guilty if, in response to an anecdote that enlivens the divine-human encounter, he breaks out in laughter. Indeed, only one who is willing to laugh at himself, as he hears how ridiculous it is to stretch his head out of his neck to add a foot to his stature, is prepared for honest worship. Is there not in repentance the element of a good hearty laugh at these attempts to find in our own selves solutions to our guilt, anxieties, and problems?
Forgiveness—it is from a God who laughs, but with the joy of One who finds the precious thing he has lost. For the prodigal, God brings out the best robe and the ring and puts the calf saved for the occasion on the huge spit. Never mind the elder son who lacks a sense of humor. God will hold his party!
