The Humour of the God-Man

Every year for Lent, I read the Four Gospels as a Lenten devotion. Nearly every year, I get behind at some point and need to find creative strategies for catching up. One year, I took to listening to the Gospels on audio while I was driving. On one such occasion, I was listening to Luke 13, and came to the passage where certain Jews warn Christ that Herod is looking for Him:

"The same day there came certain of the Pharisees, saying unto him, Get thee out, and depart hence: for Herod will kill thee. And he said unto them, Go ye, and tell that fox, Behold, I cast out devils, and I do cures to day and to morrow, and the third day I shall be perfected. Nevertheless I must walk to day, and to morrow, and the day following: for it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem."

— Luke 13:31-33 (KJV)

As soon as that passage was read in the full Jacobean register, I involuntarily burst out laughing.

"Why would you do that?" some might ask. The answer is very simple: because Christ is obviously being sarcastic in this passage. It can be difficult to pick up in the King's English, and even in modern translations, but what the passage essentially says is this:

"The same day there came a couple of Pharisees, who said to Jesus, 'Hey! Get out of here! Herod wants you dead!' And he said to them, 'That dog? If you see him, tell him that I'm busy casting out demons, healing people, and on the third day my job will be done. But, you know what? I'll go ahead and leave. FAR BE IT for a PROPHET to DIE outside of JERUSALEM!'"

Christ is doing three things here: rolling His eyes at Herod; explaining why He, as the God-Man, is not afraid of him; and foreshadowing His own Passion in a way that is immediately recognisable to His audience and that they are sure to remember because He's making fun of Jerusalem's long track record of killing the prophets. This is not the only place Our Lord makes His literally immaculate wit and humour obvious. If you begin to read the New Testament with the idea that Christ sometimes uses humour to teach us, you will not only find that the New Testament is dripping with humour, but you also might find a new and edifying approach to your prayer life.

Christ's Exaggerated Imagery

The first time I ever had this thought was watching a clip from a movie called The Miracle Maker. The clip in question was an adaptation of the Sermon on the Mount, and it portrayed the famous passage about the speck in a brother's eye:

"Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye."

— Matthew 7:3-5

In the clip, it cuts to an illustration of what this actually would look like: one guy, sitting at a table working some wood, when he stands up suddenly, trying to get a bit of sawdust out of his eye, while a Pharisee carrying a big pallet of logs says, "I know what's wrong with you!" before tripping and falling over. The people hearing this begin laughing, because that's what they were supposed to do. The Greek word for "log" here denotes a support structure: "Why do you notice the splinter in your brother's eye when you have a support structure protruding from your face?" That's funny, and it's supposed to be because Christ wants to a) show how ridiculous the Pharisees are, and b) make sure His audience remembers the teaching. Imagine a person listening to this Sermon, coming home to his family, and saying, "Hey, listen to what this Jesus guy said about the Pharisees! Know what's better? He knows! He's a carpenter!"

The Seven Woes of the Pharisees

This is not the only time Christ uses exaggerated imagery in His teaching. Later in the Gospel of St. Matthew, Christ gives just about His worst condemnation of the Pharisees we have recorded: the Seven Woes. Each of these is exaggerated, over-the-top language aimed at showing just how hypocritical and backwards the leaders of the Jews were. Now, not every woe is funny: by the time He gets to "whitewashed tombs" and "building the tombs of the prophets," He has gone decidedly from pointed criticism to biting condemnation. However, even in a passage where Christ has decidedly had enough of these people, He still colours His criticism with a measured bit of humour as He builds to the final punch.

Three examples come to mind in the First, Second, and Fourth Woes:

"But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves... You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!"

— Matthew 23:13-15, 24

"You stand outside the Kingdom, decide not to go in, and when someone else tries, you say, 'Nah, you don't wanna do that.'" It's not as funny, admittedly, but it is witty and clever. "You're willing to travel the whole world to make a single convert, but by the time you're done, he's double-damned!" Biting? Oh yeah. Funny? Unless you're completely humourless, yes. He is 777% making fun of them here.

The last one is the clearest bit of humour. For historical context, the Pharisees would always drink with a thin cloth over their drinks to strain out gnats, the smallest of the unclean animals. Gnats are drawn to water and, in a desert, your drinking cup will be a favourite place for them to congregate, so it makes sense to practice this custom. In English, it is easy to see how the idea of going to extreme lengths to not accidentally eat a small animal while scarfing down a huge animal like a camel (the largest unclean land mammal they knew of at the time) is ridiculous. In Aramaic, which Christ was actually speaking at the time, it becomes clear that this is not just a ridiculous image to point out the Pharisees' hypocrisy, but is also indisputably a joke: the Aramaic word for gnat is "galma," whereas the word for camel is "gamla." "You strain a galma and swallow a gamla!" That's a pun. In the middle of His harshest rebuke, Our Lord told a dad joke.

Nicknames

Christ also, on more than one occasion, gave His Apostles nicknames. The clearest example of this is Matthew 16:17-19, wherein He renames Simon bar Jonas to "Peter," meaning "Rock." This is not to deny the deeper theological significance of name changes in the Bible: name changes often signify a change in covenantal status reflected by the meaning of the name. So, Simon (lit. "hearing") becomes Peter, meaning the "one who hears" the revelation of God (that Jesus is the Christ) becomes the rock upon which the Church will be built.

However, this is to say that Scripture is polyvalent, and humans can use both seriousness and irony at around the same time. A perfect example is just two verses later, wherein Christ tells them that He will die and St. Peter tells Him not to say such things. Christ responds by saying, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.” The humour becomes apparent when you realise the word being translated as "hindrance" is "skandalon," which literally means "stumbling block." That is, "a rock set up to trip someone." Simon was just renamed to Rock, and the first time he screws up, Christ tells him that he's become a rock that Christ is trying not to trip over.

There's also humour in the nickname itself. A rock is steady, unswerving, and solid. Peter, until the Book of Acts, is anything but this. He is extremely hot-headed, resorting to violence against Malchus in the Garden of Gethsemane. He is action-first, thinking-last, jumping out of the boat in a storm to run to Jesus on water. He is shaky in his faith, sinking into the waves soon after literally treading water (and, as an aside, that's funny too — the Rock? Sinking? Who could have foreseen this?!), and ultimately denying Christ three times. The nickname, thus, is not mean-spirited, but at the same time a prophecy of what St. Peter will become, as well as an occasion for a reminder of the higher calling that Christ has given him. The latter is where the humour becomes obvious: if Christ does not intend to make the Apostles — and Peter himself — chuckle when He calls Peter a rock that you trip over after immediately calling Peter the devil, then Christ is just being mean to one of His closest friends.

This is also apparent in the nickname Christ gives to Ss. James and John of Zebedee. In Mark 3:17, we're told in a brief aside that Christ named these two "Boanerges," which means "Sons of Thunder." We're not given any context for this in this Gospel at all. We are given the probable reason in Luke 9:

"When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him, who went and entered a village of the Samaritans, to make preparations for him. But the people did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. And when his disciples James and John saw it, they said, 'Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?'' But he turned and rebuked them. And he said, 'You do not know what manner of spirit you are of; for the Son of Man came not to destroy people's lives but to save them.' And they went on to another village."

v. 51-56

If we are to believe the stock, two-dimensional portrayals of Christ we get in bad adaptations of the Gospel, we have to imagine that Christ said this either stone-faced with no hint of emotion, or that He got a bit weepy like an overwrought high school teacher realising he's not reaching his students. If we imagine that the New Adam is any kind of human at all, we could more easily imagine that the moment James and John mentioned fire, Christ got wide-eyed and said, "WHOA! You don't know what spirit you're talking from. That's not what we're doing here." You could also imagine "Boanerges" coming up either right then and there, or even later over supper, as an inside joke calling back to this moment. In fact, why wouldn't you? All these are guys in their late 20s and early 30s. That's what men do. They joke around with each other.

The Gentile Woman

Recently, I learned a bit of new information in a YouTube video linked here that made me further realise how much changes when we read Christ as being a good-humoured man. Mark 7:24-30 is one of the more difficult-to-read passages in the Gospel. It follows:

“And from there he arose and went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon. And he entered a house and did not want anyone to know, yet he could not be hidden. But immediately a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard of him and came and fell down at his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, a Syrophoenician by birth. And she begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. And he said to her, ‘Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.’ But she answered him, ‘Yes, Lord; yet even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.’ And he said to her, ‘For this statement you may go your way; the demon has left your daughter.’”

If we read this as Christ being a stoic, how downright mean is this? This woman comes and throws herself at His feet, begging Him to do what He does best and heal her daughter of a bad case of possession, and the Man insults her? A myriad of interpretations follow from this understanding, rightly trying to explain why Our Lord is not just being needlessly cruel to this woman. Some say He's testing her faith, while others say He's expressing His call to preach to the Jews first, and on and on. Again, I'm not saying these are wrong, but there is another way we can read it if we understand better what is being said in this passage, because Christ is not simply calling her a dog.

In the Greek, the word that Christ uses for "dog" is “kynarion.” “-Arion” is a Greek suffix that means “little” or “small.” It’s what you put at the end of a word if the thing being mentioned is cute or babyish, like adding “-y” or “-ie” at the end of an English word. In other words, Christ is not saying, "You're a mongrel." He's basically saying, “Why would I take children’s bread and toss it to puppies?”

This shifts the context of the entire passage immediately. As said, Scripture is polyvalent, and the traditional interpretations can still definitely be valid. However, this paints a much different picture than it usually does in English translations. Instead of harshly threatening rejection to a woman who throws herself at Him for the sake of her daughter, Christ is probably teasing her for her Gentile background, which could also be read as self-deprecating because Jews were known for not associating with Gentiles. It also changes the meaning of her response: she's playing along. I heard one deacon explain that, in asking for scraps, she's recognising that this great and magnificent thing that Christ does in healing demoniacs is no big thing for Him. For people, it's a meal. For Christ, it's a crumb. She's not rebuking, arguing, or further pleading with Christ. She's yes-anding Him because she knows He's going to follow through and is playing with her.

Imagine a paraphrase of this passage, if you will: “Immediately a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard of him and came and fell down at his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, a Syrophoenician by birth. And she begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. And he said to her, ‘Hey, let the kids be fed first! Why take their bread and toss it at puppies?’ But she answered him, ‘Why, yes, Lord! But can't a puppy at least get a crumb?’ And he said to her, ‘Hey, that was pretty good! Go on home. The demon has left your daughter.’”

Someone might point out that in Matthew's version of the story, Christ says, "O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you desire.” This would admittedly tend towards an interpretation that Christ is, in fact, giving her a test. But as mentioned, this is not inconsistent with the interpretation that Christ is joking with her. Giving someone a test doesn't necessitate that the examiner is harsh. In fact, why would Christ give a hard test to someone who has already thrown herself at His feet? Does she need such a hard test that He has to come off as rude to her, or does He just need her to recognise that Christ is merciful and she can relax a bit around Him? For my money's worth, I'm betting on the latter.

Blessed Are Those Who Laugh

Almost two years ago, I was diagnosed with OCD. Around the same time, I went on a silent retreat to a Benedictine monastery. At one point, I was sitting in adoration, praying mental prayer, and talking with Christ in the tabernacle. I remember praying to Him and thanking Him for this diagnosis, because it was such a relief to my soul that the numerous intrusive thoughts that come with OCD were not whispers of demons or my unrepentant conscience coming out, but just a small cross to bear in my life. I then remembered a moment from high school: a close friend was also struggling with OCD, and I saw very personally how difficult that made her life. In a moment of compassion, I prayed, "Lord, make me understand what it's like for her so that I can help her, even if it means I have to suffer from the same thing she does." Upon remembering that prayer, I audibly chuckled, looked up to the tabernacle, smiled, and prayed, "I shouldn't have done that, huh?"

When you realise that Christ has a sense of humour, you are free in prayer to be playful with Him. Instead of being on your knees all the time, using thees and thous (which I admittedly do), you can approach Him as you would a friend — which is exactly what He wants. You can recognise that the God-Man is extremely down to earth. How could He not be? He literally came down to earth!

This is not to say that the New Testament is a Divine Joke Book, or that your prayer life should basically be Heavenly Ha-Ha Hour. As the Preacher says, there is "a time to weep, and a time to laugh" (Eccl. 3:4). All things come in their due course. Sometimes one must rejoice before God in thanksgiving. Other times, we must approach in mournful repentance. Still, in others we may approach in anger and confusion, because God lets us do that too (see Psalm 88). But sometimes, we can look at the trials of life, or even the good times, and laugh. Why wouldn't we? What other person that we like being around would we not do that with?

Our Lord is not a schoolmarm. He's not walking up and down the pews with a ruler in hand, waiting to rap the fingers of the first person who cracks a mischievous grin. Granted, He's not the class clown either. His humour does serve a purpose. Instead, He's the perfect balance — serious when the occasion calls for it, happy and jocular when He needs to be. And that makes sense. He's perfect God and perfect Man. That would mean that He has the perfect sense of humour. For anyone still in doubt that Christ has a sense of humour, reflect on one thing: how could He not have a sense of humour and still make you?

For those who didn't get it, the last sentence was a joke.