June 13, 2005
Humor
Humor is not comedy. The difference between humor and comedy is the difference between the one that lasts forever and the one that evaporates almost on contact. Humor gives, comedy takes. Humor has character, comedy, mere personality. Humor doesn’t fool around, and that is the ironic paradox.
This mystery in which we live and which we call life (as if we know what it is) draws on irony to reveal its story. That’s why life often seems to mean the opposite of what it seems to mean and requires we give it special audience for understanding, audience that takes the risk of understanding. Faith is a pretty good name for that risk.
Humor reminds us that everybody sooner or later and maybe more often than not is sometime exhausted, wicked, afraid, frustrated, and desperately alone. That is its perspective and its restorative power, its healing energy over life’s menaces. By identifying us and identifying with us, humor can be redemptive.
Humor always wishes us well, and there is much to say for that. At times, it may condemn us and make us livid, often embarrass us, but always it instructs us, informs us, not simply pedantically, but by shaping us and giving us form, preparing us to receive it, breathing spirit into our clay. Humor unites us with ourselves, our neighbor, and with the roots of life, the awesome mystery of beginnings and endings, purpose and destiny, love and fear.
Humor works best through story. Such story takes a mythic form that creates our worlds for us, that reveals to us our role in the drama, and that prepares us for it, as well. Listen to the parables of Jesus. And don’t just listen to them, envision them, put them on. Be the lost sheep. Be the mustard seed. Be the importunate woman banging on the judge’s chambers. Be that guy on the other side of the road beat within an inch of his life. There can never be enough of that kind of humor. Maybe one of the big impediments in our national life and for sure among us churchers is that we just don’t get it because we’re too damned serious.