The other day my dad gave me a book that meant a lot to me in my childhood and teenaged years. It was a book I handled reverentially because within its pages there were many wise lessons for a well-lived life. The book was Best Religious Jokes and when I opened it up, I realised that forty years later some of this material is still in my repertoire. Here’s one:

In the Sunday school class the teacher was going through the Ten Commandments and had just explained “Honour thy father and thy mother.” The teacher then  made the mistake of asking the children if they could think of a commandment that teaches how to treat our brothers and sisters. Little Jenny thought for a moment and then answered, “Thou shalt not kill.”

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The broadcaster and writer Garrison Keillor is the person who first springs to mind when I think of the word ‘humourist.’ I have been a fan of his for years and finally saw him live last year. He once said, “Humor is not a trick or a joke put into words. It’s a presence in the world, like grace, and it’s there for everyone.”

As many people have pointed out there is humour in the Bible. If Jesus was working in comedy now he wouldn’t be winning Perrier comedy awards but he did use humour to make his point. The one that immediately springs to mind is his illustrating a message about hypocrisy with these ludicrous images: “Don’t try to take the speck of dust out of your neighbour’s eye when you have a plank of wood in your own.” “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eyes of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” Or how about, “Be one guard against false prophets, who come to you as wolves in sheep’s clothing?” It’s like a scene from a Looney Tunes cartoon, this image of the wolf putting on the sheep outfit.

Elsewhere in the Bible we have the writer of Ecclesiastes effectively lampooning a overly negative world view with verses like: “Everything is pointless. The river flows into the sea but the sea is never full.” Other religious traditions also do comedy. The rhythm of this Buddhist joke is a little off but it is a funny two-liner:Ling-ien was asked: ‘How were things before Buddha came into the world?’ Ling-ien whacked the questioner with a stick.

In my own case, humour has always been a way of making sense of the world. It can build bridges between people who are quite different, and sometimes taking ourselves a little less seriously makes us easier to live with. For example, one of the things from this year that is still making me smile is the fact that a few months ago I wrote an email to a student that was meant to read ‘I’d like to apologise in advance…’ but I was typing too quickly and not very carefully so when the student received it, the message read, “I’d like to apologise in a dance.” It seemed I’d invented a whole new genre of apology and both I and the student were amused. My mistake broke the ice very effectively.

So today I’m grateful for all the people and incidents in life this year that have made me laugh or smile and I leave you today with a line from Sam Sanders:

If you feel the weight of the world on your shoulders, remember:

That’s not how gravity works.