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Edited on Mon Feb-14-05 05:10 PM by KCabotDullesMarxIII
much of Christ's ministry shares fundamental characteristics with the situation comedy.
You have an infinitely loving, all-powerful, all-knowing God who chooses to become a mere mortal, accepting the limitations of human nature that are all-too familiar with us.
He gathers a group of disciples, who while most of the time, witnessing his human limitations and the suffering that they and his own generosity of spirit cause him - a man of sorrows and acquainted with suffering - occasionally shows them that he is, in fact, omnipotent.
I can't help bursting out laughing when I read of the reactions of his disciples on these occasions. I even do so *in anticipation*, when I recognise the passage ... not unlike with favourite comedians. One example was when he checked the wind and the waves, since they seemed to be sinking. All the more so, as I have a strong feeling that their faith was quite robust really, and Jesus would have let the boat begin to sink, and still have reproached their lack of faith.
Then there are the many occasions when he "shoots" the scribes and Pharisees "down in flames". You know when he's going to "lower the boom", you see it coming, and again find yourself laughing with delight, in anticipation. Perhaps none is more bitter and understandably so, than when he asks them for which act of kindness they want to kill him!
I had an uncle who had such a bitter sense of humour that he actually got quite shrirty when I laughed at a joke he made. At his workplace, they had to write a report on every thing they did, how long it took, when it could be expected to be completed, etc. And he told me a pal of his called it "examination by intraspection"! But my Uncle Bill didn't think it at all funny.
Some of the funniest situations occurring as a result of this true God and true man interacting with his own normally-created human beings, arise from the extraordinary depth of his understanding, and what seems to him, the extraordinary limitations of their understanding. There is almost an element of the Bowery Boys on occasions, when he rounds on them disparagingly.
And it's not that they were mostly manual workers - spiritual truths are the deepest truths and are only perceptible by the heart - the forte of the poor, historically, chiefly manual workers, who are called to be "rich in faith(/knowledge). Without that, the brain is a liability.
Jesus' astonishment at their failure to understand that he is in the Father and the Father is in him - a primary axiom of the most primordial of truths, the Holy Trinity - which it took centuries for the Church fathers to tease out, seems particularly humorous. Unfortunately, it also one of the passages when the body of a deceased Christian is brought into the church, prior to their funeral and interment.
In the Old Testament, I found particularly funny, the king of Israel's reaction to the request of the King of Syria that he cure his favourite general, Namaan. He meant via Elisha, the prophet, who he had heard tell of from his wife's young Jewish maid servant, but the king of Israel assumed it was a way of picking a fight with him, an excuse for a war. A bit like the baddie in the Western asking if a good guy is calling him a liar! Or making him dance by shooting at his feet. The kind of black humour of bouncers.
I came across another hilarious passage the other day, when one of David's older brothers, on hearing David had volunteered to fight Goliath, said he was up to his old tricks again, full of himself. David obviously knew how to wind his older brothers up and must have got a buzz out of it many times.
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