Did Jesus Laugh? Finding Humour in Faith

Oh hi there! Those of you who know me might know that I dabble in the comedic arts. You may have even seen me perform in St James’s Church! Comedy has always been a huge part of my life and so when I was asked to write a Thought for the Week it seemed like a good starting point. It was either that or a short ramble on the prospects of Nottingham Forest in this year’s Premier League. But that seemed somewhat harder to link to the Christian faith…

So, the season begins with a 3-1 mullering of Brentford at home…kidding….

Church and comedy. What exactly lies in the middle of the Venn diagram between Church and Comedy apart from jokes about priests, ministers and rabbis walking into bars? Here’s a question: did Jesus laugh? If so what kind of thing would make him laugh? Did he make others laugh? Did he make jokes? Quips? Whitty remarks? Did he do bits? Impressions? Was he a funny man? It’s quite interesting to think about this (for me at least) as it makes you wonder what Jesus was like ‘in between’ the bible verses. We are provided with a lot of information about what Jesus did and said, but there’s nothing akin to an introductory character bio. Something that tells us what he was like to be around, how he held himself, his mannerisms, the way he spoke. I think we all fall into the trap of imagining Jesus as a perennially pious and serious guy, whose every uttered sentence is loaded with at least 16 layers of meaning. But just as a thought experiment, why not try and imagine Jesus as a man who also had a sense of humour.

Now you could rightly say that Jesus was, in fairness, quite a busy man with a lot of serious work to do. And I’m not suggesting we re-imagine him as some sort of class clown, buffoonishly slapsticking his way around the Middle East. But he was, so we claim, fully human. Humans get tired, they need to take breaks and they need to let off steam. And I think Jesus would’ve had quite a lot of steam to let off. Laughter is a big part of that – especially when you’re tired. Playing too. Perhaps Jesus liked playing dice games? Maybe he magicked himself a Nintendo Switch from the future and played Mariokart whilst no one was looking? That might be a bit far, but you get the point…

It’s also interesting to ponder what we mean when we think of Jesus as fully God and how we link this to the idea of perfection that we attribute to God. If Jesus is both God and human, did he have human flaws and foibles? Was he clumsy? Did he have a hopelessly weird sneeze? Was he a terrible singer? We often say Jesus (and thus God) shares in our humanity by sharing in our suffering, but there is more to being human than just suffering. As a comedian – especially as a British one – a big part of the joy of life is laughing at our imperfections and failures. You can’t really have laughter without imperfection. And I don’t really want to imagine a world without laughter. But if the world is imperfect and God will make it perfect eventually, in that hypothetical perfect world does that mean no-one will ever do anything wrong? Will there be nothing to laugh about? No custard pies to the face? No cats leaping away from cucumbers in terror? Maybe we need to rethink what “perfect” actually means. Maybe God has a different definition of perfection. Or maybe that’s a topic to leave for another thought for another week….All I’ll say is that it’s nice sometimes to take a brief break from Jesus the Epic and lean more into Jesus the Human. It can just make him feel a bit more accessible and relatable. Of course none of what I’ve said here is really based in anything theologically concrete. It’s just a musing. But perhaps a useful one. I like to think of Jesus as a person you could hang out with, have banter with, even make fun of (I think he could take it) and most importantly someone you can talk about Nottingham Forest’s prospects in the 2025-2026 league season with…Come on you Reds!