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It’s OK to Laugh!

When we are presented with images of Jesus they are often sombre and pious, but what about his less serious moments?

There is a painting entitled Jesus Laughing by a contemporary American artist called Ralph Kozak. His depiction of Christ is relatively simple, technically ‘average’ at best, and was never a runner for inclusion in the National Gallery’s Seeing Salvation exhibition last year. But it does stand out in marked contrast to the mainstream imagery of Christ dreamed up by our creative forerunners of the last two millenia. It simply portrays a man laughing heartily. I like this picture very much, probably because it takes us away from a view (I would say the prevalent view) of Jesus as a pale, sombre character and in its place squarely confronts us with a down-to-earth, easy-going, fun guy. Is it possible that Jesus laughed?

As every confessing Christian would unhesitatingly say, Jesus is God entirely. This is true, and in view of his perfect life, sacrificial death and glorious resurrection we must assume an attitude of awe and humility before the most sacred person that has ever walked our planet. Nonetheless, Christians will also note the paradox of Christ’s identity. The apostle Paul in his letter to the Philippians grapples with this divine concept when he reminds us that Christ “being in very nature God … made himself nothing, being made in human likeness.” (Phil 2:6–8). Yes, he was all God, but he was also all human. He walked, talked, slept and ate. He had emotions. We know from the Bible that he got angry at injustice, he wept with those who were grieving, he experienced joy. He frequented parties, chatted to small children, enjoyed breakfast on the beach and rather than carrying a reputation for piety and peace, he and his followers were labelled as radical and rebellious. It was necessary for God in the person of Jesus to share in our humanness totally so that his sacrifice on the cross could be all consuming for every person that has ever lived ever. The only way for God to clean the barrel of humanity was to come and spend time with us dregs at the bottom.

So, did Jesus laugh? Of course, because he shared in our humanity. More than this, I think Jesus engineered laughter from the situations he created and spoke into.

Obviously, we find humour in Christ’s teaching and in his parables. In his Sermon on the Mount (note even here the overbearing title we have: why not, “Jesus talks from a hillside?”), Jesus makes the point that people find it so easy to blame others for mistakes instead of first self-examining themselves for their own errors. He remarks: “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?”. A few verses later, in making a new point to do with the generosity of the Father in Heaven Jesus asks: “Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or, if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?”. Ludicrous situations are being painted for those listening — a chap who points out a speck but fails to ignore the wacking tree-trunk stuck in his face, a baffled little kid examining the stone he’s got to gnaw on for his tea, and a poor fellow trying to deal with a snake when all he wanted was a fish! The joke wouldn’t have been lost on those there the day Jesus spoke even if our modern Bible translations do squeeze the humour out of the situation.

Secondly, Jesus hung about with very funny people. We read in Luke about a short chap called Zacchaeus who shinned up a tree to get a better of view of Christ coming along in a crowd. Jesus, in a different event, had a lot of time for the four blokes who made a hole in the roof of a house to get their sick friend down to be healed. In particular though, one of Jesus’ closest friends, the gruff fisherman from Galilee called Peter must surely have been the comedy genius of the twelve disciples. He got himself into all kinds of trouble: he had a stab at walking on water but soon found out he couldn’t do it as well as Jesus could. On another occasion, having caught no fish all night Peter agreed to the ludicrous suggestion from Jesus to put his net out in deep water, only to catch so many fish that his boat began to sink. Most memorably, at the Transfiguration where Jesus stood in shining light with the prophets Moses and Elijah a dumbstruck Peter made the off-the-wall suggestion to set up three tents for them to stay the night in. Years later, no doubt, the other disciples would still have given Peter a hard time about it. Standing in the presence of God before some of the greatest men from Israel’s history, all Peter was interested in was building shelters. These examples have other ‘serious’ lessons which need to be drawn out but they do portray a real side, an often comical background, to the lives of Jesus and his companions.

Christ was a specialist at turning tables. He did this in the Jerusalem temple but he also did it in conversation. Those that came to Jesus with an agenda often went away afterwards with a fresh headache of their own and no group of people felt more headaches than the Pharisees and teachers of the law. “You hypocrites!” Jesus once called them. “You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean”. Matthew records for us a time when the Pharisees intended to trap Jesus in a question over taxes. “Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” they asked him. With the crowd assembled, a pregnant pause awaited his answer. If he said “yes” he would risk the mob turning against him for supporting the Romans. If he said “no” then he could be arrested for inciting rebellion against Caesar. What would Jesus’ reply be? “Show me the coin used for paying the tax” Jesus replied. The temperature crept up a few degrees. The crowd were growing restless, the disciples agitated. Was Jesus stalling? Why did he need to see some money? Typical to form, Jesus answered unexpectedly — with a question. Holding up the coin, he asked “Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription?”. The Pharisees now on the back foot, had no choice but to tell the truth: “Caesar’s”, they replied. “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s” concluded Jesus to the crowd, as the Pharisees slinked away through the crowd, tail between legs. Jesus had diffused the situation meticulously. By simply using a coin he had snookered the Pharisees into answering their own trap question. To the disciples this was hilarious. From a sense of relief at a potential ugly encounter averted, and from the thrill at seeing the highbrow Jewish authorities humbled by a Galilean carpenter the situation would certainly have spawned much laughter. In his dealings with people, Jesus knew about comic tension.

Putting aside our often dry-as-dust reading of Scripture which can suck any emotion out of Biblical text and instead looking deeply into the actual interplay of the characters in the gospels, what they did and what they said we can find much that is actually human, down-to-earth, even (dare I say it) amusing in the accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Again, this is not to take away from the seriousness of Christ’s rescue mission to earth — a life, death and resurrection defined in the saving of people from darkness into light. But Kozak’s Jesus Laughing is useful in introducing us to “Christ the human” in new and challenging ways. The painting and similar ones like it have been most welcomed by the Christian poor and those least well off in society (especially in South America apparently). Should it surprise us that those who have least reason to laugh should prefer to see their saviour laughing? Not at all. Laughter is about hope, and in the face of Jesus all of us can see a new, permanent and lasting hope of eternal life.

David Maclure

If you are interested in ideas about rethinking our conceptions of Jesus Christ, a good starting point is Philip Yancey’s book, The Jesus I Never Knew.

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Last modified: 25th November 2005