I spend a lot of time thinking about what makes something funny. Don’t worry. I don’t propose to write about the technicalities here. Books on that subject are about as much fun as reading the tax code. It’s best left to the professionals. People like me do it so you don’t have to. You can watch a sitcom without having to know how it works, or why it doesn’t.
Besides, as I argued in the Sacred Art of Joking, you already know how jokes work. You know a joke needs a ‘set up’ where you give all the information needed to ‘get’ the jokes. And there’s a punchline. You also know what a running joke or catchphrase is. And that it’s the way you tell them.
I frequently argue that the Bible contains way more jokes and funny moments than you think it does. And that to laugh at them is not laughing ‘at’ the Bible or God, but with it. In fact, if you don’t find anything funny in the Bible, you’re not taking it seriously.
Evangelicals, like me, are big Bible fans. We like to think the Bible is our thing. We tend to be rather serious and literal. But evangelicals also want to tell people about Jesus. They/we understand the power of comedy, and the delight it brings. How can it be harnessed to spread the word? And where on earth are these jokes I keep referring to?
There’s a lot of work to be done. Almost everything that an evangelical church does pours more cold water on the subject than Elijah at prophet convention.
Chunking God’s Word
Lots of evangelical churches practice expositional preaching. What that means is this: each week, the pastor or preacher works his way through a book of the Bible, dividing it into little chunks, explaining one chunk each week. Maybe it’s five verses. Maybe it’s half a chapter. (Maybe it’s several chapters, in the case of the second half of Joshua which no-one ever preaches on.)
The upsides of this expositional approach are manifold. One is that we have to face difficult passages in the Bible, which tend to be the most challenging and fruitful, as well as the plum ‘greatest hits’. You can’t have Jesus feeding the five thousand without him also cursing a fig tree.
In the Long Run
This series of sermons might last months, in the case of Matthew’s gospel, or a few weeks in the case of Habakkuk. Over the course of a few years, a responsible pastor will take his congregation through a gospel (eg Matthew), an epistle (eg. Paul’s Letter to the Galatians), a book of the Pentateuch (one of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy – although hardly ever Leviticus), and a book of one of the prophets. Normally a short one, like Nahum. Never a long one, like Jeremiah.
The official lectionary, of course, already does all this, taking churches through the whole Bible every three years. But Evangelicals never saw a wheel they didn’t want to reinvent.
Sidenote: Epistles are heavily favoured (especially Pauline ones) because they’re literal. They just tell you theology, how to think rightly about God, the Church, society, family and culture, and what to do and how to live in the light of Christ’s birth, death, resurrection, ascension and promised return. What’s not to like? It’s easy to preach an epistle. It might contain some puzzling verses, or culturally sensitive ones, but at least you’re not having to deal with anything slippery, messy or ambiguous, like a story. Evangelicals like clarity. They want to know what the stories mean.
The Comedy Vanishes
The downside of this bite-sized approach is the comedy vanishes. Trying to explain a story is already pushing you towards the expression about explaining a joke being like dissecting a frog, in which the frog ultimately dies. Stories, especially Bible stories, have a power of their own before explanations need to be offered. This includes shock, tragedy and surprise, which is often where the comedy is.
Here’s the question: Do we actually experience the story ?
In his wonderful book (that I think I need to read every year), An Experiment in Criticism, CS Lewis explains how to appreciate art.
“The first demand any work of art makes upon us is surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way. (There is no good asking first whether the work before you deserves such a surrender, for until you have surrendered you cannot possibly find out.)”
This is applies to all art and storytelling. Of course, we need to be careful to whom we surrender. But can we really judge a work of art of a story unless we let it do its work on us? Moreover, the Bible contains stories to which the Christian can readily surrender without hesitation. But do we do that?
The Art of Reading
We’re open to the idea of it. Maybe we think we already do. But we don’t really – because we don’t actually read the stories well. It’s a bit of hobby horse of mine, but I don’t think it’s an irrational obsession: we publicly read scripture badly. I’ll go further and give this assertion its own paragraph:
We publicly read scripture consistently extremely badly.
We have much higher expectations of church music, expecting someone to at least know how to play an instrument if they are going to participate in the worship through music. Many churches spend thousands of pounds on musical equipment and salaries for musical directors or organists. I’ve been to many churches with sound desks that look like a control panel for an aircraft carrier.
The public reading of scripture – God’s inspired and inerrant word - is put on a rota, often sightread and seen as a way of involving people in the service. It’s not that we’re putting the light of God’s word under a bushel. We’re just surrounding it with barely translucent bits of dusty Perspex.
Inspiring Actors
In this way, Christian actors have ended up with the same ambitions as secular ones: to perform Shakespeare at the Globe or with the RSC. Shakespeare’s good. The Bible is better. Much better. I’ve often wondered about directing a touring production of pure scripture almost a play, but it seems like a very steep mountain to climb. (Contact me if you have some resources to alter this). I also have personal experience that unadorned scripture is a hard sell.
Bruce Kuhn is an actor who performs scripture. As he was planning a rare mini-tour of the South West, I invited him to perform Luke’s Gospel at my church. I didn’t want to charge the church, so paid Bruce out of my own money and sold tickets. I lost money. In general, people were very puzzled at the idea of someone essentially reciting a whole gospel. What was the appeal of a Broadway actor performing a whole book of the Bible? The story of Jesus from birth to death and resurrection. In the end, one of the main attractions was to witness an amazing feat of memory.
Those who came to see Bruce were probably most surprised by something they had not expected: the gospels are funny. Not only were incidents, scenes and snapshots from Jesus’ ministry brought to life, they were suddenly joined up. Into a story. In their original context. And they were spoken out loud. Their original method of transmission. People were laughing at loud. In a good way.
The Comedy Plank
The gospels don’t seem funny because comedy requires context, shared information, and often repetition. None of that stands a chance of coming through in an expositional preaching series. We’re invited to guffaw at Jesus talking about taking the plank out of your own eye, but that really isn’t the funniest bit of the New Testament. Not by a long chalk. Or plank.
I’m still in favour of expositional preaching, but we need to be clear that these short, digestible Bible passages are not stories. Not really. They’re incidents. They’re events. They’re scenes. There are plenty of ‘stories’ running through the individual gospels, like the story of Nicodemus in John, with whom we check in three times. We see him change. That’s a story.
Taking the time to read the whole story isn’t just a nice thing to do but essential. But we do have an anti-Bible cultural problem, even within churches that like to think they are evangelical. Preachers often try to put the passage or Bible scene of the day into context. But the context hasn’t been read aloud – because ‘the service is already too long’ - and what has been read aloud has been either spoken with no intonation or butchered with numerous mispronunciations.
Enjoy Yourself. Your Attention Span is Longer Than You Think
Pastors sometimes urge the congregation to take a couple of hours or so to read the whole book of the Bible being preached on. It’s great advice. I suspect few act on that advice. I know I haven’t done that. (We’ll cover how lockdown radically improved my Bible habits another time.)
We have the time to read, especially given the data about how much time each of us spends looking at screens and scrolling on social media - reading disposable content, rather than God’s unchanging but inspired word.
Netflix is far more tempting that the Bible, not least because it contains entire stories. And these stories are powerfully told. Netflix demonstrates that our desire for story is insatiable. We are a box set culture. We are happy to watch an hour of TV, and then decide to watch another, and maybe start a third before eventually admitting that we should probably go to bed. This is what the CEO of Netflix said to FastCompany:
“You get a show or a movie you’re really dying to watch, and you end up staying up late at night, so we actually compete with sleep… And we’re winning!” Reed Hastings, CEO, Netflix
We don’t have an attention span problem. Or a time problem. I don’t think our church services are in danger of ever being too long given what else we do on a Sunday. If only we’d immerse ourselves in God’s word, and take a long read, or a long listen, we might be surprised - not just by the comedy, but the effect on the Church. And then the nation.
For further comments, try Was Jesus Funny? Cooper & Cary Have Words: Episode 4
The Answer To A Quiz Question
Clearly it’s been a very troubling time in the USA as well as the UK. It’s right that people fell over themselves to condemn the protestors breaking into Capitol building. After all, that hasn’t happened for… a couple of years? I’m hazy on the geography and the internet isn’t helping me, but didn’t this happen in September 2018? “U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing in the Senate this week was frequently disrupted as protesters were removed from the hearing room by police, with more than 200 people arrested.” But that’s Reuters, so maybe it didn’t happen. No-one’s mentioned it in the last few weeks.
As a rule of thumb, I propose not to make a habit of addressing the issues immediately in this newsletter. This is mostly because it’s almost impossible to establish what is important and significant while everyone is running around with their hair on fire.
It used to be that all the news fit into a newspaper. Then a news bulletin. And now there’s enough for rolling 24 hour news. Except, of course, there isn’t. Most of these crises turn out to be of limited significance.
That’s why my favourite American President is the famously taciturn Calvin Coolidge. Herbert Hoover once recalled that Coolidge said to him:
“Mr. Hoover, if you see ten troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you and you have to battle with only one of them.”
That’s the kind of guy I want in charge. Like Francis Drake who hears the Spanish are coming, but finishes his game of bowls because he knows the wind is against him. But he wasn’t a nice man, apparently. But it was 1588. A long time ago. It’s history.
Just remember this: Give it enough time and Donald Trump will be the answer to a quiz question. That someone will get wrong.
I’ve Been Busy
I’ve just resumed writing a novel, Newton’s Gold. It’s based on the characters from The God Particle and should be done in a few months. No publisher attached yet, but it will see the light of day. Somehow. It’s set at the semi-fictional Cambridge College of Michaelhouse (which was dissolved to form Trinity College by Henry VIII. True fact.) But we begin with Gilbert and Bex trapped in the Tower of London, suspected of trying to steal the Crown Jewels.
I’ve also been writing blogposts about writing sitcoms, including how, despite their huge success, Netflix haven’t changed the sitcom as much as you might think.
Did you really read this whole newsletter? Well done, you. I am honoured to be worthy of your time. Now go and read the Bible. A whole book. (Not Jude. That’s cheating. Actually, read Jude. It’s super weird) Go!
What's So Funny?
I could not agree more about the Bible being read aloud badly, it really annoys me! I often wonder if folk really think about what they are reading, rather than just the words. I remember being tasked with sorting out the readings for a secondary school Christmas service when I was teaching there (science teacher but as a Christian I got the job!). The head boy was reading the passage where the shepherds are afraid of the angels and could not have been more monotone in practice. I suggested he imagined that it said 'and the shepherds were bricking it and needed a change of clothes' and read it like that... One of the greatest compliments ever when an elderly lady, at the end of the service, was overheard saying 'Well, I have been to this service every year for 72 years but have never realised how scared the shepherds were until this year. I might have to think a bit about God now.'
Bruce Kuhn is incredible (I still remember the first time I saw him by the Moot Hall at Keswick, many years ago).
Looking forward to the novel, and now off to read Jude!
Thanks for the brain food James.