Fr Bryan Writes

Dear Friends

THE HUMOUR OF JESUS
A cheerful heart is good medicine (Proverbs 17:22a)

Do you think that Jesus had a sense of humour? This is a very important question, if only because so often people are inclined to speak of Jesus as ‘a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering’ (Isaiah 53:3). Further, many of its critics are apt to say that Christianity is a narrow, puritanical and joyless religion. I must add that in my experience such critics rarely have had the common decency to personally explore our vibrant faith and shy away from embracing the living Christ. If we believe that Jesus was the perfect man, the complete example of the humanity God means everyone to have, surely Jesus must have had a sense of humour. There is something sadly lacking in anyone without it, and humour must be considered as one of God’s gifts.

The evidence of Our Lord’s sense of humour must come from the Gospels, and we must remember what the four Gospel accounts are. They are not a collection of the wit and wisdom of Jesus Christ, nor are they gossipy biographies. They are the collection of what the early Christians believed to be the absolutely essential details about Jesus. The remarkable thing is that in spite of this restriction to their scope, the Gospel accounts give us such a rounded picture of the kind of man Jesus must have been.

First of all, there is no doubt whatsoever that He was a leader of people. I do not believe you can have many leaders of people who are devoid of a sense of humour, and I am quite certain that Jesus had one in His relationships with His disciples. Bring to mind some of the nick-names He gave them – Simon was to be Peter the Rock; and that impulsive, hot-headed pair, James and John; were called the Sons of Thunder. Jesus knew his people. He surveyed them with a candid and compassionate eye, making allowance for their weakness, bringing the best out of them, and always being prepared to salt His relationship with humour.

Jesus was a leader, but Jesus also loved people, and – for the greater part – people liked Him. We read, “The large crowd listened to him with delight” (Mark 12:37); ‘When Jesus had again crossed over by boat to the other side of the lake, a large crowd gathered round him while he was by the lake’ (Mark 5:21); ‘When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching’ (Matthew 7:25); ‘When the crowd saw this they were filled with awe’ (Matthew 9:8). We could go on with many more references such as these. If there is one thing to which ordinary men and women respond and which they love – it is a good laugh.

Do you imagine Jesus could have held them as He did – and you can read about the great crowds who came to listen to Him as He taught by the lake or on the hillside; you can read about the crowds who followed Him from place to place – unless His words were laced with wit and humour? Something else we need to keep in mind is the fact that Jesus loved children and children came easily to Him. If you are going to deal with children at all, you must have a reasonably good sense of humour. There are some very worthy people who just do not seem to have the ability to link with children. They are not able to relax, they lack a sense of humour and children, being sensitive to such things, are not at ease with them. But they came so gladly to Jesus and they sat on His knee.

There is also the evidence of His teaching to be considered. You will remember how Jesus used parables, those vivid pictures of the ordinary life of people, and very often you can just imagine the twinkle in His eye when He told them. He took a look at the man who is very critical of other people, and He said: How can you say to your brother, “Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,” when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye?” (Luke 6:42). Or there is the man who is concerned only with outward appearance, with putting on a show. Jesus said he was like someone who carefully polished the outside of a cup and did not care that it was left filthy inside. Or there are those people who are fussy about avoiding tiny breeches of the religious law, but then go out and commit some injustice of cruelty with would-be enormous consequences. Jesus pictures them as carefully putting a piece of gauze over their cup to strain out that which is minute and may get into their wine, and then happily swallow a camel – a delightfully humorous comment recorded in Matthew 23:24.

Jesus looked at people with kindliness and humour. He never condemned them cruelly; even when He spoke to the Pharisees about their hypocrisy, He was not given to tearing them to pieces with sarcastic words. It was rather that He was sorry for them and was saying something like: “Oh dear, my brothers, it is a profound pity and a great sadness that you waste so much of your time on silly and unnecessary things like this, when life with all its outstanding opportunities is facing you every day of the week.”

Jesus never used His sense of humour to wound but always to heal. Like all God’s gifts, humour can be used either for good or ill. Humour is not meant to be used in any sick or degraded way. A clergyman once made reference of his elderly aunt who said after she had read what turned out to be a rather disappointing and unpleasant modern novel: “You know I feel that I have been in bad company.” There are some ways in which humour can be used today which leave you feeling unhappy, if not soiled, because it is as if someone has smeared the surface of life with filth.

The great clowns; and I believe we should be profoundly thankful for them, people like Charles Chaplin, Tommy Cooper, Eric Sykes and the ‘Goons’; are people who left you happier for having seen and heard them. Their humour was clean and straightforward; their humour would have you convulse with laughter time and time again, and there is nothing perhaps so effective in dispelling the mists of depression as an unrestrained fit of laughter. As God’s gift, humour must not be cruel. It is very easy to laugh at someone else’s discomfort, at someone else slipping on the proverbial banana skin – but it is not funny if we are on the banana skin ourselves.

As God’s gift, humour must be clean, and also humour should not be cruel. I have a particular dislike for so-called humour that feeds upon illness, disability or death. We need to be aware of this, because if we are honest with ourselves, we can all find a streak of cruelty lurking within us. I have been made aware that representatives of the press and television have said to the victims they have perhaps pilloried rather unmercifully, words to the effect of: “You should not mind too much; remember that it gives the public a good deal to laugh at.” Such behaviour – if what I have been told is true - is both scurrilous and totally unprofessional.

Time and again we see the victims of injustice subjected to a pretty severe kind of torture. Humour never needs to be cruel, and it is significant perhaps that the only deliberate jests the New Testament records are cruel ones. You remember how the Roman soldiers blindfolded Jesus and hit Him in the face: The men who were guarding Jesus began mocking and beating him. They blindfolded him and demanded, “Prophesy! Who hit you?” And they said many other insulting things to him. (Luke 22: 63-65). As He was hanging pinned and helpless on the Cross, His enemies made fun of Him: The people stood watching, and the rulers even sneered at him. They said, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, the Chosen One.” The soldiers also came up and mocked him. They offered him wine vinegar and said, “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.” There was a written notice above him, which read: THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS. That was how they thought they could kill the young Prince of Glory.

They momentarily silenced the sound of that splendid voice, they momentarily stopped the beating of that loving and Sacred Heart, they momentarily closed those wonderful eyes of compassion that had been lit with gaiety and love. They though they had finished Him off and got Him out of their hair. But we are dealing with none other than the victorious and mighty Son of the Living God; we are dealing with the only one who had that special power – Divine Power – that overcame the bonds of death. Little did they know that Jesus Christ was, in fact, alive for evermore. Little did they know that this King would not reign from a throne – but from the Cross of Calvary. Little did they know that this King would not rule by force – but by love. Little did they know that this King was going to change the course of the entire world.

Because Jesus lives, let us believe that there is a spirit of gladness and gaiety and love at the heart of the universe, part of the very essence of things. As an elderly Indian mystic is reported to have said: “If there was no spirit of joy in the universe, who could live in this world?” Saint Augustine once said: “The Holy Spirit is a glad spirit.” Let us be thankful for those who have hearts that are truly joyful. Let us be thankful for the faith that enables us to have this gladness from Jesus Himself, the Great Physician, who came that we might have life and have it in all its fullness.

Fr. Bryan