Laughing With God

You can have a sense of humour in church. Sometimes, you have to. Really.

There’s even a long-standing tradition of the Sunday after Easter being Holy Humour Sunday. In the early days of the church, the week after Easter was observed as a time of joy and laughter with parties and carnivals, full of practical jokes and fun, to celebrate Jesus’ resurrection. They called it Bright Week, and the custom came from the idea of some early church theologians that God played a joke on the devil by raising Jesus from the dead. Easter was God’s supreme joke played on death - they called it the risus paschalis in latin: “the Easter laugh.”

Maybe early church theologians were trying to find a new path to joy. Perhaps we need that, too.

Maybe it can seem like church has no sense of humour because people often find themselves there searching for something that seems far removed from joy. We could be looking for comfort in our grief, strength when we’re struggling, affirmation when we feel marginalized and alone. 

Maybe it just seems like church has no sense of humour sometimes because we're looking at the institution and not the people. Just like people sometimes seem to think they know what church is all about even though they've never been. Church has a lot of baggage, both for itself and for those that have no real experience of it.

Maybe we're confusing a sense of humour - the universal giving of  joy, laughter and light-heartedness - with what we, personally, have judged to be funny. Or not. Then we might judge it to be dismissive, inappropriate and disrespectful.

It's funny, really, that we're often just as judgemental about how we communicate the message of God's love as we are about how people are living it out. And I don’t mean funny in a humorous way.

The first Easter Day wasn’t full of joyful alleluias, it was full of fear and doubt, maybe some wonder, at best. I think that’s why the author of John’s gospel thought it was so important to make an example of Thomas. Thomas, the story goes, doubted Jesus was alive when the others told him because he hadn’t been there to see it. Jesus later appears to him as well (and many others) but reminds us all that “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

Sure. But what if Thomas already believed. That’s why he wasn’t there, he was out telling everyone about Jesus, just like Jesus told them to. He was already making sure Jesus was alive. What if he thought the others were pranking him and he made fun of their fear and their lack of belief because they were hiding rather than boldly sharing the story of Jesus with others. That could be a funny story for Bright Week, couldn’t it?

Later, on Pentecost the story goes, everyone around the disciples heard them speaking in their own languages. Isn't that really what we're seeking, a way to communicate the message that speaks to people in a way that they find most understandable, relevant and meaningful?

Maybe the road to true joy in our faith needs laughter as much as tears. “A good God-themed joke,” to quote singer Regina Spektor (in “Laughing With”), can bring comfort as well as joy, relief to tension and anxiety, maybe even a little more openness to faith in a heart full of doubt. After all, real faith isn't about believing without question, it's about believing enough to question more, to seek deeper truth and find deeper love.