Theology
Posted Monday, October 01, 2007
Funny Faith
by Bishop Borsch
The blind see and the deaf hear. One-hour workers are paid the same as those who have toiled all day. The last are to be first while religious folk often teach one thing and do another in a kingdom whose Lord was crucified and where grace and goodness are full of surprises.
So begins the description for a course that I call “Funny Faith” at the Lutheran Seminary here in Philadelphia. Yet there have been a number of church ‘fathers’ and theologians who would tell us that there is nothing funny or comic about faith. Faith is about sin and the price paid for redemption. It is about righteousness and right living. Laughter could interrupt the seriousness of the Christian message. It could trivialize the consequences of sin and might even seem to condone immoral acts – not to speak of antiestablishment attitudes. Moreover, laughter can be cruel – laughter at the expense of others.
In a suitably serious essay, “Humor and Faith” (in Discerning the Signs of the Times: Sermons for Today. 1946), Reinhold Niebuhr took a mediating position. “Both humor and faith are expressions of the freedom of the human spirit, of its capacity to stand outside life, and itself, and view the whole scene.” Yet, he goes on to add, laughter is not right for the ultimate issues. Yes; it can be healthy. The saintliest people “frequently have a humorous glint in their eye.” But laughter and a sense of the comic have a kind of preliminary character. “That is why there is laughter in the vestibule of the temple, the echo of the laughter in the temple itself, but only faith and prayer, and no laughter, in the holy of holies.”
In his Redeeming Laughter: The Comic Dimensions of Human Experience (1997) Peter Berger sees the comic as having a more central and creative role for faith and faithful living, as does Conrad Hyers in The Comic Vision and the Christian Faith: A Celebration of Life and Laughter (1981. Reprint 2003.) (And recall Fred Buechner’s classic Telling The Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale. 1977.) The comic spirit can be found at the heart of life. We can be “fools for Christ’s sake”. Humor can be penetratingly moral – debunking authoritarianism, pride and hypocrisy. Jesus’ parables of reversal and surprise may make us laugh. The seemingly weak power of love cannot be put down. It will pop up again – and again. Laughter can help us gain new perspective. It can help us heal, ‘reframe’, revalue, redeem.
I want to assure you that this is a suitably serious seminary course. We quote Aristotle (quoting Gorgias): “Humor is the only test of gravity, and gravity of humor. For a subject which will not bear raillery is suspicious; and a jest which will not bear serious examination is false wit.” Some years ago William Austin Smith suggested that
Every Divinity School might well have in its senior year, along with courses in systematic divinity and homiletics, a course in the great masters of comedy; and, to arouse us from our sluggish wits and keep us on our guard, it might not be amiss to carve upon our pulpits, side by side with the lean Gothic saints, the figure of Aristophanes or Moliere with warning finger.
What do you think?
Bishop Fred Borsch
Professor of New Testament
Chair of Anglican Studies
Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia