Wed. Dec 7 - Telling Better Jokes (Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros)

Photo courtesy of Anand Balasubramaniam

In Spanish, one way of saying that someone is really funny or quick-witted is to say "tiene mucha gracia."  Gracia basically means "wit" or "quickness" in this context, but the same word also means and is used for what you'd guess: "grace," as in God's grace.  I love the way humor and God's work in the world are so intertwined in this one small word.

One thing that's been helping me a lot recently is thinking about how funny the Bible is, or at least, many parts of it. Sometimes I wonder if humanity doesn't realize that we're God's straight man, and God keeps cracking jokes we don't quite get.  Ever heard the one about the big fish?  What about the man who had a wrestling match with God?  Or what about the one where God walked around as a human and told jokes all day long about the amazing, backwards, looney grace of the Reign of God and no one understood?  That was a good one.

I'm not trying to be flippant.  All of these stories are ultimately deadly serious, having to do with forgiveness and death and struggle and fear and hope -- but so are all the best jokes.  The role of the jester in most Shakespeare plays, for instance, is often to tell truths in the form of jokes and riddles, not to be obtuse, but to reveal what's hidden by flipping it inside out.

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros have gained a huge following in my area, mostly based on the exuberance of their music and lyrics, but what I love most is their dual interest in celebrating wonderful things like connection and love, and also talking about terrible things like war and brokenness.  They even admit in their "manifesto"-style song, Janglin', that, 'once we were the jesters... and now we're out to be the masters/ for to set our spirits free.'

"We want to feel ya' 

(We don't mean to kill ya'!)

We come for to heal ya' janglin' soul..."

                     - Janglin' by E.S. and the M.Z.  (Full lyrics HERE) 

Janglin' by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros

There's something freeing about recognizing that life's seriousness and pain has an edge of humor to it, that the grace of God sometimes comes in the form of a joke.  One of my favorite meditations on the resurrection, by H.A. Williams, compares Jesus' rising to a punch line: all the solemn important Powers that Be have put down the Man of Nonsense and are congratulating themselves... while not knowing that he has risen again and is gaining even more followers than ever before.  They were trying to stop the nonsense of Jesus' inside-out stories of radical love, and don't know they just helped him create the most inside-out one of them all: one that traveled all the way to the cross and back.  As Williams says, "if that isn't funny, nothing is."

What if Advent (and even Lent?) had more jokes in it?  What if our ultimate goal as Christians was to tell more jokes: with our lives, our priorities, our hopes?  What if we weren't so stuck on serious and were able to welcome God's promises with relief instead of angst?  What if we let the humorously "weak" powers of love and forgiveness do some powerful healing for us and others?  What if we recognized that the jokes themselves (wolves lying down with lambs, the meek inheriting the world) are the biggest threat to the Powers that Be because they use ammunition that no vest can stop: truth and a little bit of grace.


The wolf shall lie down with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them...
                                    - Isaiah 11: 6

May we tell better jokes and ease our hearts with laughter at the surprising Grace of God who, at Christmas, came as a baby instead of a regal King - not in spite of the difficulties of this world, but because of them.

                                 - Anna