did jesus laugh?

Did Jesus Laugh?

Jesus Never Laughed, or so the pamphlet said. An

adolescent boy at the time, I found myself laughing

at every little thing—too often during church

services. Reading that pamphlet I wondered,

So he never laughed? What was wrong with him?

Perhaps we’re accustomed to only thinking of

Jesus as “a man of sorrows, acquainted with

grief” (Isa 53:3). His crucifixion is certainly

no laughing matter. Or maybe the image of a

laughing Jesus offends simply because it makes

Him too human. Yet Heb 4:15 tells us that Jesus is

able to sympathize with us because He is exactly

like us (minus the sinning). God has gifted us

with a sense of humor; it stands to reason that

Jesus had one too.

Now, every culture has its own idea of what is

funny: Watch a random selection of German,

Spanish or Japanese comedy shows and

sometimes you’ll be rolling on the floor, and other

times scratching your head. Why is that funny?

First century Palestine would be no different:

It had its own comedic tradition, steeped in the

cutting irony of the Old Testament (Job, Jonah or

Ezekiel) and the over-the-top parodies of classical

Greece (Aristophanes).

Aristotle famously wrote that comedies end

with a wedding. That may be so, but the gas

that really fuels the fire of Greek comedy is

exaggeration: Take a simple gag and blow it out

of all proportion. Re-read some of Jesus’ sayings

with this in mind and you might find a chuckle or

two yourself: Your neighbor may have a speck in

his eye, but you’ve got a log. The blind are leading

the blind—right into a hole in the ground. A priest,

a Levite, and a Samaritan are walking down the

road …

Not Exactly the “A”-List

In the parable of the wedding feast (Matt 22:1–10),

the king throws a wedding feast in his son’s

honor. It’s the social event of the year. Servants

are dispatched carrying invitations to all the

vips. The powerful. The socially connected. The

“in” crowd. The kind of people who know how to

dress and how to act at a royal banquet.

But the glitterati—the Pharisees with their clean

robes and punctilious manners, the scribes with

their jots and tittles all in a row—simply can’t be

bothered to attend.

What’s a king to do? Fed up with those who

think they’re too good to come, he decides to

invite those who know they aren’t. He sends his

servants out to round up the the religiously and

politically incorrect. The powerless. The socially

disenfranchised. The “out” crowd. The kind of

people who hang out on the street late at night.

Imagine a royal wedding feast filled with

homeless people. Scandalous! This is a comedic

break in expectation, exaggerated to drive the

punchline home: The outsiders have become the

insiders. If you’re one of the insiders, the joke’s

on you.

I’ll Gladly Pay You Tuesday …

The parable of the unforgiving debtor (Matt 18:23–

35) makes use of what comics today call the

topper or call-back. While the audience is still

laughing at the last line, you hit them again.

Imagine a slave who owes the king some money.

Make that a lot of money. Ten thousand talents,

even. We may not get the joke, but Jesus’ listeners

would have: That’s more money than the

Roman Government had! It’s as if your freshman

daughter had called up to say she’d run a little

money up on the credit card you gave her. How

much? The national debt.

Better yet, when the man is called to pay, he says,

“Give me a little more time and I will pay all”

(18:26). This is like the girl telling her father that

she “plans to get a job at Christmas” to pay off

that maxed-out credit card. What’s a king to do?

Instead of laughing the slave out of his court (or

into prison), he simply forgives the debt. She calls

the credit card company and whines a little, so

they let her off the hook. Just like that.

“Jesus lays one exaggeration

on top of another.”

Then the topper: The slave leaves and finds

someone who owes him a hundred denarii—a

few months’ wages. Not only does he demand

the money, he chokes the poor guy. That goes

beyond merely uncharitable; it’s downright cruel.

One might even say comically so. In the end, the

unjust slave gets his comeuppance, tossed in jail

until he can pay in full, which he never can.

Here, Jesus lays one exaggeration on top of

another until the audience can’t help but see how

utterly ridiculous it is to hold a ten-dollar grudge

against a neighbor when God, the gracious king,

has wiped clean a fortune’s worth of sin.

The Divine Comedy

By Aristotle’s rule of thumb, God’s plan for the

ages is a comedy, because no matter how tragic

this world may seem, it ends with a wedding (Rev

19:6–10). He has chosen for himself a bride made

of people who don’t dress or act properly—drug

dealers, prostitutes, and even a few recovering

Pharisees—former sinners all. Snubbed by the

people the world counts as important, God

spends His incredible riches on the unwashed

masses instead, inviting them to join Him in an

exquisite meal. And, one would like to think,

more than a few good laughs.

The writer of this article Samuel Lamerson is Dean of Faculty and Associate
Professor of New Testament at Knox Seminary in Fort
Lauderdale. In a former life he was a comic magician
and juggler, appearing for IBM, McDonalds and the
Nickelodeon network. (Courtesy: Bible Study Magazine)