21st July, 2011

PAUL CLARK

I love to watch the comedy festivals when they appear on my television screens. To relax, laugh, and forget my troubles. Unfortunately, one does have to wade through a bit of crass, crude and disparaging material to find the good stuff. Because of this, comedy festivals are probably not the usual haunt of minister types, yet I believe that comedy and laughter are a gift from God. If we are made in God’s image, how can laughter not be an attribute of God? It does leave one wondering though, why should the Devil get all the good lines?

PICTURE: © Kurhan (www.istockphoto.com)

Most comedians would agree that the best humour doesn’t rely on crudity. That is the easy way to a quick laugh. Humour is actually a very hard beast to nail down. What is funny to one doesn’t rate a mention to another. But humour, used well, is a powerful tool in ministry. If you make someone laugh, you make a friend. Laughing helps us to let down our defences.

I actually think humour is something you find God and Jesus used, even though the Scriptures don’t contain any knock, knock jokes. You don’t believe me?

When I was a youth worker I had a youth group of 50 young people. Many of them were males with no church affiliation, who used to spent time wandering the town in groups. One night, after we had wandered around town and nearly got in a gang fight, we sat down in my lounge room and I read them some of the Sermon on the Mount. When I got to the bit about turning the other check and loving your enemies, these teens quite literally laughed out loud! “As if you would ever do that!”

There’s something refreshingly disarming about an innocent, first-time hearing of the Gospel. This stuff is laughable - humorous! We approach Jesus and the Scriptures with such piety and seriousness, we don’t see its ridiculousness. Yet I can imagine a Sermon on the Mount where Jesus, with passion and vigour, delivers the lines to raucous laughter! "The meek shall inherit the earth, tell us another one!" Yet mid-way through its delivery, the crowd realise Jesus is speaking compelling truth. (I wrote my drama book, The Sermon on the Mt Morgan Pub Veranda to try to get this idea across.)

Phillip Yancey in The Jesus I never knew, observed that Jesus is often portrayed as an emotionless, distant individual in movies, but then notes that the Jesus of Scripture is not less, but more emotionally engaged than most of us. Jesus was full of passion and charisma - why else would crowds flock to hear him?

I have even written a sermon where I argue that if Jesus were to come today, He would seem more like a modern comedian than preacher. Hanging around sinners, telling exaggerated stories and riddles, making a mockery of our current ways with biting, satirical comment - isn’t that the life of a comedian? (Not to mention He had a God complex.)

The book of Genesis is full of ironic and delightful humour; Abram, the old man who is told to change his name to ‘father of many’ and then to take a knife to his nether regions (doesn’t sound like a good idea); who giggles when told he will have a son and then is told to call his son Giggle (Isaac literally means ‘he laughs’ or giggle!) - all to show that the one who was the laughing stock, is now the hot new stock - because he put his life is God’s hands.

I haven’t got time to elaborate on Esther and the ironic rise and fall of Haman; the word play around Jacob, ‘pull the other one’, and his deceptive ways; or how riddle is perhaps the best translation of parable. Did Jesus walk the country saying, ‘riddle me this'?

The humour of the Scripture is not simple ha-ha jokes. It is the delightfully, delicious humour found in a great novel that stirs every emotion, and that should be found in a full and abundant life. The humour of the ironic twist, the unexpected ending, and the servant who finds himself king.

We seem to approach our faith with only reverence, seriousness and intellectual curiosity. Yet God commands we worship him with our whole selves. Shouldn’t we approach faith with playfulness and reverence, fun and seriousness, our heads and our hearts!

It’s interesting to note that the cross itself was considered a joke. Very few contemporaries of Rome ever wrote about the cross, such that some concluded that they were very rarely used and perhaps even a myth. The truth was no-one wanted to defile their writing with such a horrific reality – there were two exceptions – the Historian and the Comedian. The Historian for obvious reasons, the Comedian used the cross as the ultimate, punch-line in the ironic demise of the rich and self-important. Funny, it's because of the cross we know who gets the best punch-line, and who gets the last laugh.

Paul Clark uses humour in his ministry, noting that if you lecture the general public's eyes glaze over, but if you tell compelling, humorous stories people will even applaud your proclamation of the Gospel.

An edited version of this article first appeared in the July 2011 edition of Journey.

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