A few years ago I was asked to draw up a proposal looking at the role of humour in the Bible. It was a fascinating project but had one significant advantage – there was little or no actual humour in the Bible. I found one joke in the book of Acts describing the Feast of Pentecost. The onlookers saw the disciples speaking in other languages and came to the conclusion that they must be drunk. Peter replied with the immortal words – “We are not drunk; it is only nine in the morning”. The inference behind what he is saying is – give us some more time and we might be!’ It is hardly rib-tickling stuff. In the Old Testament Isaiah and Ezekiel both used mime: Isaiah once entirely in the nude (Is 20: 1-6) and Ezekiel once with a sketch lasting more than a year (Ezek 4:18). However these two examples could just as easily be seen as strange rather than funny.

Sermons can be notoriously bad at humour. A story is wrenched out of its context to make a point – I went to buy a train ticket and the person at the Ticket Office said to me ‘where are you going?’ I thought ‘Good point – ‘where am I going – this brings us to out text for tonight… I wondered whether I could get any mileage from my having to wait in for an Argos delivery. This is the season of focused waiting living within the already/not yet tension of our faith. Many of us are waiting for parcels to be delivered. Parcel delivery services are playing a waiting game of their own as well – waiting until you nip out for a paper or even pop to the loo, so that they can stick one of their failed delivery notices through your letter box. It is trade wait v faith wait. We might not know when the Second Coming is going to happen but I would like to think that it is at least more certain than an Argos delivery.

In the absence of any developed humour religion falls back onto what it is good at. We do well at both extremes. We are good at the dramatic overstatement and at silent and profound moments. Rt Rev John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York criticized "unmerciful" immigration policies and in particular outspoken Immigration Minister Phil Woolas – it is just what you expect religion to do. Desmond Tutu gives an example of the latter. He says that God has low standards – he accepts any of us. If all fails religion turns back on its traditional role of offering comfort, meaning and purpose God so loved the world that he gave his only Son Jesus Christ to for us. 

There have been some notable successes in the comedy field. There is an episode of Father Ted when the sacking of Pat Craggy, Craggy Island’s milkman, leads to Dougal taking over the milk round. When Pat places a bomb in the milk float Ted has to keep his nerve to try and save him – predictably all he can think of doing is to say a Mass. In the Vicar of Dibley Dawn French plays Geraldine (Rev. Geraldine Granger) the new Vicar in a small town in England called Dibley.  The town’s folk are not ready to accept a female Vicar, but she eventually wins some of them over –

However even Father Ted and the Vicar of Dibley can appear more laughing at rather than laughing with. I would love to see us better at humour than we are. The art of humour is breaking someone’s expectations. In a joke you are lead down a line of thought only to have something unexpectedly jump out at you: for example – ‘two dogs are together; one says ‘woof woof’…the other says ‘I knew that you were going to say that’.

There is no more extreme example of this than God becoming a baby and being born to a 14-year-old virgin. The etymology of humor (as also of humility and human) is the Latin word 'humus' meaning fertile ground. Rubbish is thrown down and decomposing matter creates fertile ground able to give life to plants. The sense for humour is of absorbing and recreating the best of all that is surrounding. I would love to see the church able to become more humorous this Christmas.