Here’s a snapshot of my mental life. But first, a little context: I sat down to do my quiet time after long delay this afternoon (yes, I also slept in). As is my custom, I read a theological book over breakfast (or more technically perhaps–lunch), my friend Cort called me, we talked for an hour, and then I was really in the mood to get off the blocks—start work, get about my day. But I knew I had been interrupted and that I still needed time in prayer and the Word. I dithered. Finally, I conquered myself and sat down with my Bible and the Blue Book. My thoughts were all over the place, like a flock of sheep scattered by a bad border collie and a mischievous child. I watched the tumult for a bit and then began to “call my roving thoughts home”:
“Return to the fold, bright imaginings of the future,
Hail Grace, slinking shame for yesterday’s sin,
Control thyself, burbling reflections of pride,
Recall thy boon, ye who know your Shepherd;
Come back and enjoy his doting presence;
Harken to His strong and gracious voice.”
Overwrought, I know. Nevertheless! I asked God’s help in stilling my self to read the opening prayer. Seeing the reading for today, Isaiah 54:10. Just verse ten. I fizzled a mischievous thought. Intuitively, I knew it was safe; I still think it was okay, but it might seem bad—even blasphemous. I looked up at the ceiling and spoke to God:
“One verse. That’s my kind of quiet time.”
I then chuckled.
Offensive? Does your sense for God’s transcendence, holiness, and wrath kindle in outrage? The possibility of offense occurred to me, but I said it anyway (sill, I know). Why?
My friends and I use a similar mechanism to joke all the time. It’s irony. My friend Roderick and I were sitting on the patio of a corner coffee shop in Cambridge, MA, once, doing quiet times. The post-postmodern denizens of that intellectual capital swarmed around us. I was pretty distracted. The Blue Book had me in the Prayer theme that morning and the reading was actually Jesus telling people not to be hypocrites and not to pray on street corners, to go in their closets instead. I laughed. Rod asked, “What?” I told him. We acknowledged that we were gaining no social capital whatsoever by reading our Bibles in public next to the Law school. Jesus’ message to us would probably be almost opposite, something like:
“Walt. Don’t be ashamed of me. You’re afraid of being judged by these people—don’t be. You’re instinct in this moment, to not read your Bible, is the same instinct that prompted the Pharisees to pray loudly in public—they wanted men’s approval. You’ve got my approval. Be bold. However, a noisy street corners is probably not the best context for a quiet time.”
Roc and I talked about it later. We talked about the pious Pharisee persona, and we started making fun of it. To characterize it, Rod knit his eyebrows in sanctified earnestness, and in his best early 18th Century Puritan pastor voice, said:
“Dear-uh Gahd, I thank Thee…that I am naht like these sinful postmodern folk, and that I instead know Thy grrreat favah and grace.”
I immediately thought of John Cleese dressed up in his Pharisee outfit at the stoning in Life of Brian (which is, that scene and a few others aside, a film of questionable merit). All the time now, we say, “Dear-uh Gahd,” when we hear ourselves patting our own backs.
In fact, making fun of the milder instances of Christian hypocrisy or pious silliness is one of my favorite pastimes. If I tell a friend that I didn’t have a quiet time or that I said “shit” after stubbing my toe, and he tells me, “Don’t worry too much: Hell might not be that bad,” I will probably laugh in mirth. It isn’t that Hell is not a grave matter; it’s the absurd legalism that often gets associated with it. If I tell a friend that I accidentally cut someone off on the highway, I’m going to chuckle in delight if they respond: “Well, what’s another year in purgatory?” If someone asks me if I’ve seen a certain R rated film, I might reply: “Yeah, see, I love Jesus, so…movies like that aren’t my cup of tea.” My friend Rod and his Bible students call such replies Jesus jukes. If a kid in Rod’s class forgets to do an assignment, he’s likely to say: “Jumped right into the hellevator, huh?” If I ask my friend and pastor Dillon what he’s been up to on a Thursday, he’s apt to say: “I’ve been working on the sermon all morning…yeah, I’m a pretty good pastor. Pret-eh, pret-eh, pret-eh, holy, you know?”
It’s delightful irony, funny because it hits close to home and constructive because it implicitly affirms a rich understanding of God’s grace. So, when I jokingly say out loud to God, “One verse—that’s my kind of quiet time,” I am partially being honest and wholly being ironic, banking on his grace, the belief that he’s got a sense of humor, and that he can take a joke. He invented humor after all. Medieval monks and others were pretty sure Jesus never laughed. They are not without reason.
None of the Gospels record his laughter. He was a man “acquainted with sorrows.” His life was a life of suffering and passion. But how could he not have laughed with his understanding of the foibles of human hearts and the ironies of life on the earth? He was on a grave mission during the incarnation, but could He have avoided being wry when Nathaniel, who had just totally trashed his home turf (“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”), approached him, in response to which the Lord said, “Here is an Israelite indeed in whom there is no guile?” Could his love have been unmixed with amusement when Zacchaeus climbed a sycamore like a capuchin monkey to see him? Did He keep a straight face during the following exchange with Peter?
“Lord, do You wash my feet?”
“What I do you do not realize now; but you shall understand hereafter.”
“Never shall You wash my feet!”
“If I do not wash you, you have no part with Me.”
“Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head.”
Anyone else laugh? Jewish humor is famously ironic and subtle. I’m not saying Jesus was the Larry David of his day, but the forgoing conversation reminds me of The Princess Bride:
Westley: Give us the gate key.
Gatekeeper: I have no gate key.
Inigo: Fezzik, tear his arms off.
Gatekeeper: Oh, you mean this gate key.
At any rate, such joking is only made possible (or un-blasphemous) by a firm understanding of God’s grace. Hypocrisy can get ugly, but it’s inherit lack of self-awareness is the essence of comedy. Sin and Hell are serious subjects, but if you put serious stock in God’s grace, you can afford to joke about bad theology. At the end of the day, it’s all self-deprecating. Every who values righteousness has pharisaical tendencies, the more you know the Gospel, the sillier you see these tendencies in yourself and others. The innuendo can surprise the intellect; make you laugh, and thus help you connect with the Gospel implications.
I think God has a better sense of humor than any of us. So does my dad. Early one morning, he was walking on our “flowering lawns, amid the rustle of his planted hills” (Yeats, Meditations in Time of Civil War), pouring his heart out, praying to God in deathly earnestness (maybe taking himself too seriously–as both of us are wont to do). He was asking God for an answer; he heard a sputtering noise and got the high-powered sprinkler system stream right in the butt. My dad’s the first to tell the story and laugh.
So, what did I find in that easy quiet time, that completion-grade Bible assignment this morning?
“For the mountains may be removed and the hills may shake,
But My lovingkindness will not be removed from you,
And my covenant of peace will not be shaken,”
Says the Lord who has compassion on you.
A dead serious promise of God’s committed and unconditional love. I don’t know if He thought my joke about my own impiety was as funny as I did. As I read the verse though, my eyes watered a little.
See how pious my affections are? Pretty good theology, too, huh? Pret-eh, pret-eh, pret-eh good.
And for the record, I wrote all the way up to the end of this without…wait for it…getting struck by lightning. Whew.
P.S. Enjoy the following and laugh with the Gospel:
Gate key–Princess Bride Stoning–Life of Brian Classic Jesus Video–Vintage 21