A couple of weeks ago, I quoted from the movie
The Life of Brian in my sermon. Specifically,” It reminded me of that
wonderful scene from Monty Python’s The Life of Brian, where someone listening
to Jesus deliver the Sermon of the Mount asked the person beside him, ‘what did
he say, was it blessed are the cheesemakers. That doesn’t sound
right. Why should the cheesemakers be blessed? But I guess that’s
what he said.” That is the first time I have done that i.e. quote form the
Life of Brian, but it probably shouldn’t be the last.
I did this in the context of preaching on the
parable in the Gospel of Luke in which Jesus seems to be commending the
dishonest steward who cheats his master. One possibility in understanding
this puzzling parable is that people did not hear Jesus correctly. I must
admit that this was probably something of a stretch, but it brings up the issue
of what the role is of humor in religion.
Often the religious among us take everything
about religion and theology deadly seriously. There are, of course, many
things about religion that should be taken seriously – deadly or
otherwise. Many of us believe that we are dealing with issues of
salvation and matters of life and death and eternity. There is no account
of Jesus laughing in the bible. He did weep a few times, but not laughter
that was recorded. A great example of people taking religion and
themselves too seriously is the famous debate about the Life of Brian between
two Pythons (of the Monty variety) on one side and Malcolm Muggeridge and the
C. of E. Bishop of Suffolk on the other hand. The two representatives of
religion – and I must note specifically Christianity – insisted that this was
an attack on Jesus Christ despite all protests that it was not about Jesus but
about Brian who was mistaken for the Messiah. They considered the movie
the height – or rather depth – of low humor making jokes at the expense of
something essential to humanity. It was on reflection rather a sad and
mistaken view of the movie in my view and shows the nee for some to just
lighten up form G’d's sake.
Lorna and I have seen the movie in the past and
decided to obtain our own copy of the DVD (I know we are technology dinosaurs)
which we recently watched and enjoyed immensely. The humor in it
is, admittedly, sometimes low as British humor can be. But it is a
triumph of satire on the follies and foibles of people who look for something
to believe in, in all the wrong places and in the wrong ways. One of the
many wonderful scenes in the movie has Brian speaking to the crown outside his
house. He tells them, “You’ve got it all wrong. You’ve got to think
for yourself. You are all individuals.” The crowd responds in
unison, “Yes we’re all individuals.” Brian responds, “You’ve all
different.” The crowd in turn replies, “yes, we’re all different.”
One lone voice, “I’m not.” Brian tries again, “You’ve all got to work it
out for yourself.” The crowd in unison, “We’ve got to work it out for
ourselves.” Thank God that we all got the point and don’t have the mass appeals
of demigods today.
I realize that this missive on Holy Humour
has been rather serious, so let me give you an old joke about Anglicans.
Question - how many Anglicans does it take to change a light bulb. Answer
– we don’t change, we’re Anglicans and anyway that is a memorial light bulb so
we can’t replace it.
So, what then do we make of Holy Humour? Can
there be true humor in such a serious thing as religion? One author who
explores this is Helen Luke in her collection uof essays, The Laughter at the
Heart of Things. One commentary I came upon summarizes the essence of
what Luke is saying very well:
What is at the heart of the matter, according to
Helen Luke, is a sense of proportion. Luke quotes T.S. Eliot and notes
that, “Eliot is, expressing here (in the quote) the identity of a sense of
humour with the sense of proportion and the humility that this
engenders”. What is at the heart of things the joy of seeing
disproportion restored to proportion.
At bottom, the humour is getting us in touch with
joy – the joy of being part of God’s creation. After all, to quote a
group of musical religious sister – the Medical ones, joy is like the
rain. Perhaps those are raindrops on roses to bring in another
song.
May you be blessed with holy humour on your
journey. Remember joy is a serious matter not to be taken too lightly –
too much of the time.
