A Divine Comedy, of Sorts: On Banana Peel Theology

“He laughed, he, Jorge. For the first time I heard him laugh.”
                                              The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco

Rarely does one leap from slumber at 3 a.m. eagerly. But that Summer of ’96 morn, a sacred moment beckoned me. Soon, after a rigorous, wee-small-hours hike, I would reach the peak of Mt. Sinai and behold the rising of the sun across the Sinai Desert.

To stand in the place that Moses stood. To behold the same view that may have preceded the delivery of the Decalogue. For this, one hops into cargo shorts and ties one’s bootlaces quickly.

In the dark, I marched—like so many characters in a Tolkien novel, onwards and upwards toward the 7,500-foot summit.

A turn in the mountain path ahead. I trudge on. In the Egyptian dark.

So dark that I have no idea I am about to plant my head into a camel’s derriere. Straight on. Going where no human face has gone before—which neither I nor the even-toed ungulate before me appreciated in the least bit.

Laudato si, mi Signore, per sora Luna!

…

And now these three remain:  faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is…

Drum roll, please.

If you ask me, laughter is a theological final frontier.

If you ask Dante Alighieri, he won’t have much to say. He’s been dead for nearly 700 years.

But if you had asked the vulgate poet in his day, he might have looked at you askance, eyebrow cocked, as it wasn’t for more than two centuries after his life that Lodovico Dolce added the descriptor “Divina” to the remarkable Commedia in print.

Thus, not even the Divine Comedy was ever intended by its author to be all that godly.

…

We praise God for many things—but rarely, if ever, for his sense of humor.

In fact, the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead once observed that “the total absence of humour from the Bible is one of the most singular things in all of literature.” Of course, one might note that Whitehead was the father of process philosophy—which no one ever accused of being a gas:

Knock-knock!

Who’s there!

Yet another interrelated process of which we’re all integral parts.

Personally, I think Whitehead simply never bothered to read the Bible while wearing Groucho Marx glasses. How can one not experience the life & times of Jonah “You Can Run But You Can’t Hide” the Prophet without yucking it up?

Poor ol’ Jonah, after receiving all that mercy, sitting in the shade of the vine and still hoping for Nineveh’s destruction. Of course, to me, the funniest part of the tale is that Jonah walked 3,000 kilometers (an eight-hour flight today!) from Jaffa to Nineveh smelling like fish guts.

Also, how could Whitehead come away from the fated tale of Onan without cracking a smile? Sure, ’tis an X-rated tale forever disqualified from Sunday School flannelgraphs. A man spills his seed rather than impregnate his dead brother’s wife, for which God strikes him down! Seriously, what more proof does one need to counter the argument for “traditional biblical marriage?” A first-rate, irony-swirled zinger if there ever was—now if only someone were daring enough to bring it up on Sunday morning.

Whitehead was hardly the first thinker to posit there is nothing funny about Christianity. (Be honest, how many giddy systematic theologians have you met?) Christian history is unfortunately peopled with humorless apologists—individuals upon whom Umberto Eco molded the Benedictine scribes and monks in his famous novel The Name of the Rose. King of the Poopy Pants is of course Jorge of Burgos, the puritanical librarian who will stop at nothing to prevent Aristotle’s lost Book on Comedy from surfacing and who permits himself rare passion only to defend St. John Chrysostom’s mantra that “Christ never laughed.”

And what precisely did the great archbishop liturgist say on the matter of messianic mirth? Let us turn to the Patrologia Graeca, where we find SJC’s Homily on St. Matthew (VI:8):

“If thou also weep thus, thou art become a follower of thy Lord. Yea, for He also wept, both over Lazarus, and over the city; and touching Judas He was greatly troubled. And this indeed one may often see Him do, but no where laugh, nay, nor smile but a little…”

Keep reading, if you will, and St. John Chrysostom will remind you that neither laughèd the Apostle Paul (not really a stretch) nor “other of the Saints.” But only did that wicked creature Sarah laugh when God informed her that she would bear a child post-menopause. (Seriously, can you blame her?)

Of course, SJC is correct in that there are few references to laughter in the Bible. It may be worth noting that there are also few biblical references to farting—despite G.R. Driver’s (now widely discredited) insistence that Acsah broke wind when she dismounted from her ass in Joshua 15.

Thus, while God may have intelligently designed us to expel CH4, clearly he didn’t want us to read about it in holy writ—let alone laugh about it with holy wit.

(However, let me slyly introduce you to Valerie Allen’s On Farting: Language and Laughter in the Middle Ages. Also, Martin Luther’s quote, “A happy fart never comes from a miserable ass”—clearly just a reference to Balaam.  And, finally, let us not forget Ecclesiastes: “All flesh is gas.”)

…

Forget Ecclesiastes! What about Ecclesiasticus: “A fool lifteth up his voice in laughter!”

And the Benedictine Rule’s insistence that humility is speaking “gently and without laughter?”

Sorry, Protestants are on the hook, too, as I find no evidence of comedy clubs in Calvin’s austere Geneva.

Though at least Jonathan Edwards argued in “Pleasantness of Religion” that religion is “above” laughter:

“The pleasures of religion raise one clear above laughter, and rather tends to make the face shine than screw it into a grimace; though when it is at its height it begets a sweet, inexpressibly joyful smile, as we know only a smile is begotten by the great pleasure of dear friends’ society.”

One wonders just how much Edwards’ face might have screwed upon witnessing some good ole fashioned slain in the Spirit holy laughter.

…

Frankly, I can see how it’s easy to buy into the biblical blues if you believe in Original Sin and Hell and the Whore of Babylon. And even if you don’t, there is absolutely nothing funny about passenger ferries capsizing in the Yellow Sea nor about Haitian earthquakes nor Russian despots nor Roman Catholic sex scandals nor all the other slings and arrows of the outrageous 24-hour news cycle. Beyond this, when I consider how comingled the faith has become with the military industrial complex, I myself am nearly tempted to go with a Benedictine tonsure.

But, then, I pause and wonder what St. John Chrysostom meant when he said that Christ smiled “but a little.” What was it that Jesus found just a wee-biteen funny?

I’m guessing it wasn’t that old Lenny Bruce joke: “If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses.”

Before you hang me for blasphemy, consider the poignancy of Bruce’s words. What sentence ever more vividly highlighted the significance of the cross—which, like any symbol, loses its punch over time in mortal minds?

Is it a joke? Is it lexical electric shock?

All I know is I laughed my Acsah ass off the first time I heard it. Yet, now, through these words, I see the Cross afresh. An irony, considering the source.

Finally, back to Jesus’ itsy-bitsy teenie-weenie laugh. I think I know its source.

…

The same summer that I planted my face in a camel’s backside on the way to the summit of Mt. Sinai, I spent several weeks living in Old City Jerusalem on Suleiman’s Wall.

I will never forget my first Mass in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. I am an Orthodox catechumen at the time. I arrive early in the morning; it is just me and the monks and nuns in attendance, with the bushy-bearded Bishop of Jerusalem presiding.

Near the beginning of the liturgy—St. John Chrysostom’s, for what it’s worth—I hear cooing. I look up and notice that scaffolding runs all the way to the top of the dome. Clearly, there is some sort of reconstruction project taking place, and a flock of pigeons is squatting in the temporary rafters.

During the homily, someone—or something—taps me on the top of my head. I turn around. Nuns and monks are snickering.

Who touched me? I wonder. And why are the nuns and monks losing it? Must be one humdinger of a homily.

I face the front again and feel something with the consistency of a three-yolk omelet begin to slide down the back of my head.

A monk taps me on the shoulder and points up at the dome.

The pigeons! “Shit!”

Literally.

The Bishop of Jerusalem pauses. He’s trying to contain himself, but finally lets out a snort. Then everybody simply loses it.

Humiliated, I flee the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and make for my temporary apartment at breakneck speed. Down the Via Dolorosa awash in pigeon poo.

And there you have it: divinely punked during my two most sacred Holy Land experiences. (Thank God I remembered to wear pants to the Western Wall.)

I will forever be convinced that when Jesus laughs “but a little,” he does so with such moments of our lives in mind. These little Jonah moments, keeping our holiness humble.

As for me and my house, we will laugh a lot. Humor brings clarity and definition to the tenets of the faith and provides comfort from all manner of theodicy. Laughter is metaphysical medicine.

Thus, I am proud to consider myself, in part, a banana peel theologian.

Laudate et benedicete mi Signore et rengratiate
e seruiteli cum grande humilitate et whoopee cushions.

Arik Bjorn is a writer who lives in Columbia, South Carolina. His educational background includes archaeology, ancient languages, and biblical studies. He has run the gamut of Christian experience, from Evangelical to Orthodox catechumen to live-in Episcopalian sexton to Roman Catholic. Follow Arik on Twitter @arikbjorn and on Facebook. And check out his website, Viking Word.