September 27, 2005
Forever
Humor, of course, is more than mere standup comedy, as important as that often is. For the difference between humor and comedy is the difference between the one that lasts forever and the one that evaporates as soon as it hits the air. It’s the difference, of course, between the ironic and the simply ludicrous.
Life’s deep mysteries keep company with such irony, for one of those mysteries is how so often life turns out to mean the very opposite of what it seems and requires of us special attention and insight to risk that discovery. Jesus taught this repeatedly in parables, those riddles that seem always so wry and so often laced with subtle humor. And the remarkable thing is that he did so never to create faith, but to call forth faith as the only way to discover their meaning. For faith, like love can come only from a deep sense of ourselves and of our own humanity.
Such humor reminds us that sooner or later at one time or another everybody is exhausted, wicked, afraid, frustrated, and desperately alone, even especially, perhaps, as when following St Paul’s admonition to be a “fool for Christ.” This is humor’s perspective and restorative power, its healing energy over life’s menaces, and ultimately, its comfort and strength.
It unites us with ourselves, our neighbor, and with the awesome roots of our beginnings, our purpose and destiny, nourishing our love and challenging our fear. Above all, it awakens our imaginations, the very medium through which love works its mysteries.
Nothing, indeed, can separate us from this presence of God in Christ in one another and in ourselves, especially among the poor whom he loved and cared for so deeply.
On the other hand, when our awareness of this sometimes fades, it is well, as Barney Fife might agree, that God raises up the trickster in our midst, the buffoon, the miscreant who lives in us all and allows us to laugh at evil and, as well, at ourselves, especially at ourselves. For in the seal of the cross at baptism we are marked as Christ’s own forever. Just what part of ‘forever’ is so hard to understand?
[Visit Episcopal Relief and Development at http://www.er-d.org/ to make a donation to Katrina or Rita Relief or Episcopal Migration Ministries at emm@episcopalchurch.org to volunteer to assist displaced people with housing.]