Jesus' humor, mirth, charm, and playful sense of irony..

Maybe it's just me, I don't know, but doesn't Jesus come across in the Gospels as possessing an absolutely wonderful sense of humor, mirth, charm and a delight in the ironic, even at times to the chagrin of many?

So many Christians think of Jesus when he's speaking as all serious and even dour and rather lacking in humor, mirth and charm, as evidenced in their reading of him in the Bible, the way it's said and repeated (albeit some people are better readers than others).

This view of Jesus is rather prevalent in modern day Christendom, and sadly, it can place a dour face upon many a Christian, or a pious, dour face, that isn't animated by the love of God in Jesus and free and full self expression that Jesus invites us into with the very things he's saying, often with a smile and not without some chuckling even while he's saying it.

To listen to him would have been to listen to a person who's voice just rings with good-natured, good-willed humor, mirth and charm, inviting you into a certain confidence that's capable of rendering everything else that's absurd by comparison as nothing but the brunt of ridicule and scorn, and this is what we fear, really, when it comes right down to it, the fear of being ridiculed, because to accept the invitation might open up a blindspot in ourselves, about ourselves and our lack of humor mirth and charm and why that is, which for many implies also tears of sorrow and regret and a fear that there is no hand capable of wiping away our tears, while consoling what mourns us.

We are afraid to laugh with Jesus, at ourselves, and in that particular bind and predicament, that Jesus places us into directly and intentionally, we either become self deluded and bound, or ultimately, set free maybe even because of the original bind.

They say a perfect gentleman is someone who never hurts another person's feelings, unintentionally.

But what was he to do, what is He to do, but to be so heavy handed with us, and so utterly courageous in his stand for the truth, that in the final analysis, even if it were to take 2,000 years, or 10,000 years, that eventually we would "get it" what he was really up to, and then, for those who will or those who can and who are not lacking in both the sufficient level of imagination and reason -- we will laugh again (for all the right reasons) and come to know the truth that sets us free, and if we are freed for his sake, and by his hand, then we are truly free indeed! lol

I'll return later with a few examples of scripture, which when read with this mirthful chuckle underneath half the time, then it really comes to life by appealing to our senses and our emotional center the way that Jesus intended to render it, and rather heavy-handidly at that, because you just can't mess around in matters such as love and goodness, and righteousness. And if in the end it binds the strong man and even the one within us that resists the compelling argument of utter reasonableness, however unreasonably reasonable it might appear, then so be it, and boom, just like that we can be brought to our knees in tears both of repentance, and hilarity (at our absurdity and ridiculousness in the low estimation of our value, before) and then right there, like Isaiah we can say at the throne of God's reason, logic, and love - Lord I am undone! I am an unclean man of unclean lips! Have mercy!

But isn't that state of brokenness precisely what God was waiting on as the preparation ground in order so that we will also come to understand and recognize (re-cognize) the incredible loving joke that he's both played on us while inviting us to enter into as the new pasture of freedom and love, wherein we can be at last truly free, to be ourselves, even as we are. How satisfying. How comforting. This is the wonder of God's love for us. Sadly, it's so far ahead of us generally speaking, that we never stop to consider it at the most intimate level where hey, we all are in need of some serious consolation and some hearty laughs, for the love of God!

Without authentic Justice, humor dies, but with Justice and Mercy, humor lives again, and in so doing never dies, and there it is, Jesus' own circle of joy completed in us, with his in ours and ours in him. Who can break that?

This makes perfect sense. Nothing is forgotten, nothing of value anyway, and, the fight and the battle and the triumph has already been won. Claim it, it's your own birthright, prepared from before the beginning of the world for me and you as a free gift of eternal life, which only Jesus could offer, but the offer still stands.. he didn't rescind it, not as far as I know, or I sure hope not! (JK)

It is therefore time to celebrate, and absurdly and in a strange and interesting and rather humorous twist of fate, we ourselves were the guest of honor all along and the catch of all ages. We're a part of it, thereafter working the ropes of the nets (from one angle) and shouting out to one another with expressions of excitement and enthusiasm at the magnitude of the catch.

It's funny, and ironic.

This is what I get out of reading Jesus, then re-reading him (the red parts) until I truly get it and come to understand.

Am I a good "wife" of the Lord?, no, I'm not, but for better or worse he loves me as his son, because of Jesus, and even if it makes me cry a bit, it also fills me with the comfort and love that comes to those who have the courage to mourn, but he doesn't leave us in that state for too too long, not if reason, logic and love is to prevail, and then we're know and in knowing him, we are known in him. It's not an exclusive club. It is a hand of friendship extended to one and all even if only to consider as a proposition. That it's irresistible isn't it's fault either. It's blameless, like Jesus.


The alternative is to lock yourself up in a subjective prison of your own making, from the inside, while throwing the key to freedom beyond reach of the bars, and then cowering in the farthest corner just to avoid the implications of what such a freedom might mean or signify, even if that mean mean leaving the prison behind? It's not worth hanging onto those bars but we also need an outstretched hand from the opened door, which is the very same one that wipes away all the tears from our eyes while restoring our humor, and with Justice served so that it cannot be undone or destroyed or nullified. It's everlasting or it's no good at all to begin with.


Who among us would sacrifice their own personal sense humor on the alter of reason, rather than get to keep and new, just to avoid the truth of just who and what we are in God, with Jesus (and he also lives in me, and in us). He is with us.

This is both incredible, and absurd, and the only thing that makes any rational or reasonable sense at the end of the day, and that too makes it even FUNNIER!

God is a very good and loving prankster. Let him punk you in just the right way. It has to happen at some point, you need to fall apart, as we all do from time to time, it's ok, you'll be accepted and reintegrated the moment you do, as a lone tears begins to dry upon your face with a smile.

Forgive me for going off on a stream of consciousness tangent. What were we talking about?

Jesus. Funny.

Very much so.

What's your own experience and have you encountered this aspect that I perceive about the person and character of Jesus?


Be blessed,

Ankh

a reply to: AnkhMorpork

Yes, Jesus seemed to have had a very eccentric sense of humor...very dry at times, sometimes playful. It pissed the Scribes, Sadducees, and Pharisees off so much. The entire bible is chock full of sarcasm.

Its not so easy to see in the English translations, but in the Hebrew and Greek of the older manuscripts, its very prevalent, and it is designed to work in conjunction with heptameter.

S&F for raising a subject that many legalistic Churchians are afraid to address.

Jesus definitely had a great sense of humor.

Here's to Jesus Christ rip

a reply to: Neith

I see it as an almost wicked sense of humor. Almost. Right on the edge. So your joke would qualify then, particularly if Jesus and the Jesus in you cheers you back.

It's not a dark devilish laughter though, but in a fictional story that's another matter (saw your sig link to the story you wrote).

Almost. But not quite, more a belly laugh like Santa Clause maybe, that quality of hearty laughter, but you know, at the higher dimension or whatehaveyou..

Which raises the question that if God laughs, can God be provoked to laughter?

a reply to: AnkhMorpork

Thank you did you enjoy my story?

Dark yes, but as you said, borderline dark. Something with balance.

Which raises the question that if God laughs, can God be provoked to laughter?

Yes i believe God can be provoked to laughter if indeed he's who we think he/it is.

We may have created him ourselves as a way to understand this crazy place we may have created purely by accident, and God keeps us sane until we figure out what the hell went wrong.

That's how I prefer to view it. Nothing is as it seems here in this world someone named Earth, floating in the middle of nowhere. If we created God then I could easily imagine the Universe being the Mind of God/Us. The Great Void beyond the Veil.

originally posted by: Neith

Thank you did you enjoy my story?

Dark yes, but as you said, borderline dark. Something with balance.

Yeah, because what you resist persists.

There is no hell in Christ or in this new domain beyond the point of condemnation.

Your story was pretty good, yes, reminded me a bit of "The Great Divorce" by C.S. Lewis except a little more spontaneous and playfully fun but the reverse in the form of an inevitable ascent from the descent, whereas in Lewis' work the bitter clingers just wouldn't let go of the hell of their own making upon which the sun eventually set. He said in it that "hell is locked from the inside" so that's where I got that idea from in the imaginary prison cell I evoked in the OP

I like your style. You're a good writer.

You should keep going with a structured storyline, I'm sure your cup is overflowing with ideas..

a reply to: AnkhMorpork

some of them are quite funny

www.buzzfeed.com...

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

He was quite witty

originally posted by: kibric
a reply to: AnkhMorpork

some of them are quite funny

www.buzzfeed.com...

I can't explain why, but this one really got me laughing when I saw it on more than one occasion as I went through the laborious task of taking a screen capture, modifying it in paint, then uploading here for the enjoyment of my fellow men and women.

a reply to: AnkhMorpork

we need some Jesus meme's for this thread

I laughed out loud the first time reading about Jesus walking across the troubled waters toward the boat of fearful disciples..
"Fear not.. it is I"
I don't know why but the imagery and the thought of Jesus booming that line just made me laugh..

His first miracle was to bolster the mirth of the world- water to wine..

Asking his disciples what they were just talking about when he know they had been agruing over who would sit at Jesus's right hand.

Going around causing civil disorder to the intense disapproval of all the officials and religious leaders.. lol!

Talking about spiritual and earthly bread to me is funny as well! Well so now that I've filled your bellies.. allow me to fill your cup

All his put downs were hilarious. He really put those pharisees in their place..

Oh yeah and disappearing from his family pilgrimage at 12 and reappearing at the temple surrounded by priests.

Yep, hilarious. I did read somewhere and loved it though that Jesus was never known to laugh but openly wept..

Still struck to the core when I picture Jesus weeping over Jerusalem a few days before his death/rebirth.

originally posted by: kibric
a reply to: AnkhMorpork

we need some Jesus meme's for this thread

Careful. We have to respect the sacred nature of it at the same time, or it loses some of it's charm.

It better be good in other words, because I do not wish to make a mockery of either Jesus or God who I respect more than anyone or any thing.

It would have to rise to a level of humor and ingenuity which would please the Lord.

It's a fine line. Just try not to cross it if you introduce a Jesus meme.

That last thing I would want to do would be to make an appeal to dark Jesus humor, which debases something of absolutely breathtaking, magnificent splendor in its charm and appeal.

Oftentimes the temptation can be to try to reduce the truth to try to shrink it down to a size that's small enough to be dismissed with nervous laughter or in Pontias Pilate's case, a vigorous washing of hands.

The meme would have to carry a lot of weight and water, and raise all our boats in the process and fill us with a sense of awe and wonder that the unfathomable and inscrutable was yet somehow rendered comprehensible and fathomable.

A Jesus meme that would provoke the mind to loftier considerations and bring us into a sympathetic harmony with Jesus' own reason and logic, while making us laugh with him, at us, now that would be something because I for one have become convinced that there is a great joke just waiting in the wings that in and itself might be capable of saving the world and restoring us to our true nature as children of a loving, and a laughing (for all the right reasons), God.

a reply to: AnkhMorpork

well said

yes tasteful of course
no 4chan crap here

a reply to: zosimov

Great contribution and observations. Thank you.

I like how he mixed it with a high degree of strategic cunning by anticipation.

I often wonder if he didn't master the art of debate at the Library of Alexandria during the missing years after hitting the trade routes.. (forgive me all who think such speculation heretical), and perhaps tracing the lost tribes of Israel all the way to the Indus River Valley Civilization where they'd settled before Abraham's ancestors settled in Ur and went on to help found the city of Jerusalem. Yet, Buddhist or Taoist thought, while disciplined, doesn't teach the skillful art of debate and of argument, that's an ancient Greek and Egyptian discipline and methodology.


I feel that by the time that Jesus and John colluded together to bring about his destiny in that terrible fated wedge they knew full well was coming well in advance - "Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!" (John the Baptist, pointing) that at some level, Jesus, very likely teased unrelentingly as a child, travelled around and become an absolute master of a multitude of disciplines, and returned to his homeland armed to the teeth to nearly single-handedly, do battle with evil empire and somehow resolve the age old problem of human evil in a satisfactory manner.

That kind of thing takes some serious thought and consideration and a lot of planning.

To illustrate what I'm talking about, although I have to go to bed now, I will come back and make a short presentation regarding the passage known as the Woman at the Well, to illustrate the level of ingenuity and strategic planning involved in Jesus' party plans involving a desire to bring back the lost sheep of Israel, at the local level.

Here's a hint or a clue.

A gang of Jews would not have been well received by entering, uninvited, the Samaritan town of Sychar situated not far from Jacob's well on the road from Judea back to Galilee.

Jesus was a brilliant tactician in his practical "jokes" which he turned into teaching tools, as with his disciples upon their return holding bags of food and starting open-mouthed at a field across which could be seen an approaching crowd after a strange women was seen first talking to Jesus, then leaving her water bucket and running at high speed to inform her fellow villagers that a prophetic psychic man who knew all about her checkered past and who said he was the Messiah was sitting out by Jacobs well, as they all made their way across the fields to see what all the fuss was about.

That Jesus. Brilliant!

and then the elders, on their departing Sychar after three days of celebration and teaching, and great food and music, the works (and the disciples thought that the food they brought back was everything - "c'mon master, please eat some of this food we brought.."), they (the elders) make a point of saying - "now that we've heard you we believe that you are the Messiah but NOT on account of what SHE said, as if to repudiate her claim "but only because of what we've heard directly". They knew what he did and how he did it and they understood.

A gang of Jews cannot enter a Samaritan town uninvited.

So how do you make that happen while making sure that you run out of food and water at just the right time near about the half way point. Hmmmmm, said Jesus, as he instructed his disciples to stock up enough supplies for only half the journey - "boy are they going to love what I have in store for them when they return from shopping!" he thinks, the woman at the well days away and perhaps not even yet known precisely at what hour certain women come to the well for water or what kind of past they might have (although salacious reputations do have a way of preceding people). "God will provide a way" and lo and behold, it all worked out precisely according to plan, including God's plan for this woman, who had some serious man problems.

He was just an absolute master, but he took it all in stride and appears to have had a lot of fun with it, with these skills of his, like slipping unseen through crowds of people about to stone him, stuff like that.

They didn't know what hit them, even when they saw him coming and laid all their plots and schemes to trap him and to kill him.

So many steps ahead of everyone, and in the end, at some level, he punk'd us all while also inviting us to have a share in the joy and humor and love of it all.

Talk about a trail blazer, all the way to heaven and back in search of the one lost sheep.

How did he know?

That's what the "elite" would have been left asking themselves, that and "oh what did we do?!"

He got them too, right where it counts, and in so doing brought many to repentance for their wicked ways while felling an empire by, in large measure optimising the little man, prostitutes, sinners, tax collectors, the "dregs of society". Again, hilarious! Well done Jesus. Well done!! And thank you!

I don't think that anyone can deny the level of genius involved.

Good night, time for bed.

Be blessed,

Ankh

a reply to: AnkhMorpork
I think C.S. Lewis made a comment to the effect that humour is the recognition of absurdity, and God s in the best position to recognise absurdity.
Examples in the gospels include "camel through the eye of a needle" and "blind leading the blind", which would have made the point easier to remember.
When Joseph is reconciled with his brothers and sends them back to collect Jacob, he remarks in parting "Do not quarrel on the way"- in the AV, "See that you fall not out in the way". I often think that must have been said and heard with a wry smile, the first joke in the Bible.

a reply to: DISRAELI

Heh, yeah, the last time they quarreled, he ended up robbed by his own brothers and left in a hole in the ground even to die.

Don't argue or fall out on the way! Well, he certainly deserved to get the last laugh, but he still didn't hold it over them, was just razzing.

Great observation.

This kind of textual criticism, lends a great deal of cred to the stories, as with how he orchestrated the situation with the woman at the well as I pointed out above.

It's both in what's said and what isn't said, but it's there, between the lines, God's humor and playful sense of irony.

I'm so glad that other people really "get it".

Do you have any others you could share?


Good night (again),

Ankh

a reply to: AnkhMorpork
I used to have a copy of "Humor of Christ", by Elton Trueblood.
Some of the best jokes are digs at the Pharisees.

The following passage taken from Guru: My Days with Del Close has always resonated with me:

"We stood on the precipice of revolutionising theatre as we knew it. Improvisation had not only taken on the state of being of an art form but had also begun to feel like spiritual enlightenment. As a group, we elevated each other to a state where we were collectively thinking on multiple levels while engaging in a gestalt intelligence that was leading us into directions we would never have explored on our own.

It was intoxicating, the feeling of euphoria we felt on those nights we were improvising. The audience was taking the ride with us. We had broken down the fourth wall and asked them to become part of the process we were building."

Maybe "faith" was all that was required?!

Taken from The Man Who Quit Money:

“If we're following our path, then worrying about what could or should happen is a worse illness than what could or should happen. And it's more likely we're going to be out of balance if we worry. The idea is that the future will take care of itself if we remain in the present. I really don't know what I'll do and I don't think about it that much.”

"The best-laid plans" and all that...

His is the love that never fails, the light that never goes out, and the sense of humor and mirth and charm that is what makes life worth living, and to be a more freely and fully self expressed human being, even if by implication and on account of Jesus we are counted as sons and daughters of God, for most of us even in spite of ourselves!

Oh what did he do?

For me, this goes right to the very heart of what Christianity really means and signifies, and in that joy there is also a fellowship and a shared joy, but it's not a fake smile, or lack of one, because once the truth has been encountered as the knowledge of personal experience, there isn't anyone who would prefer to be or to remain entirely inauthentic. True life, true joy, true humor, as the basis for all creative actions and activity, even in the mind and the heart and the mind's eye.

The mustard seed or faith that's planted in rich soil or the water that wells up from within to eternal life, really does contain imbedded within itself, the giggle of our child within recovered, yet with the full knowledge and awareness of adulthood so it's like something both old and new and made new again wherein the love of God being steeped in it all becomes our new condition, while the things and attachments and faulty assumptions and presumptions and defence mechanisms are rendered in the new light, as the brunt of humor. We are absurd, and in many ways still are. But, and here is the distinction, if you can be authentically absurd for all the right reasons, then you are free. Inauthentic absurdity for all the wrong reasons spells death, not life. Life in abundance, life overflowing is the way.

Christianity, properly understood, is just SO GOOD, that it's almost, I repeat, almost, too good to take! Like some precious thing that you spent your whole life seeking and searching out, which, to find at last provokes the response or reaction in you, and in this new field of awareness, to immediately and without hesitation, re-bury it, then go off and sell it all to buy up the whole field )just to make darn sure that it can never be lost again or forgotten ie: you move into it and make it your new home.

And yes, it's also so reasonable, however unreasonably reasonable it might appear.

Thus, even the invitation itself contains an invitation to a party for which you yourself were the awaited guest of honor, because God loves you, and there's laughter and love and fellowship in that domain, but never with a forced smile, and never without lots of fun and enjoyment and good laughter and love.

Who slaps away a hand of true friendship?

Don't be absurd.

extends the loving and mirthful hand of Christ, kills thread.

LOL