Healing will come; until then, there's laughter

It has long bothered me that the Bible never tells us that Jesus laughed. It tells us he cried once (John 11:35) at news of the death of his friend Lazarus. But no reference to laughter. In my office is a portrait from a not-for-profit group called the Fellowship of Merry Christians. The portrait's title is "Laughing Jesus by the Seashore." The expression on his face is that of a man who just heard a rib-tickling story or perhaps an anecdote that called for a burst of chuckling. But there's not a single reference in any part of the New Testament that Jesus found anything funny.

That's just not possible. It is certainly likely that the Gospel writers omitted this part of his personality. The Gospels are not, after all, biography or documentary. Instead they tell us what we need to know about Jesus, the one who proclaimed the kingdom of God and who died in our place to make reconciliation with God and to make eternal life possible.

There is a marvelous story of the rich young man (Mark 10) in which we can infer that Jesus found something humorous. The callow lad told Jesus he had kept the commandments since his youth. Verse 21 then notes the reaction of the Master: "Jesus, looking at him, loved him." That's about the closest we get to a laugh from Jesus.

It strains credibility to believe that Jesus could have kept 12 men together for more than three years unless he had a sense of humor. Whether that humor was droll and dry or sidesplitting is beside the point. The lives these men lived would have been intolerable for such a long period without something to break the tension occasionally. I choose to believe the Gospel writers simply omitted this for their own reasons.

There is a not-for-profit organization called RxLaughter that believes in the healing power of laughter. It was founded 10 years ago by Sherry Hilber, a former producer of television comedies such as "Roseanne" and "Home Improvement." Hilber founded the organization because of, in the words of RxLaughter's Web site, her "distressing personal experiences with the medical community and her belief that a more humanistic, personal approach to medicine was desperately needed."

Wisely, RxLaughter doesn't believe laughter is a cure-all. Some people in pain, whether it be emotional or physical, are not able to laugh or are too sad to attempt it. I must say that it has been my experience to spend a lot of time with sad people. As a clergyman, I've done quite a few funerals under all manner of circumstances. I will do many more before I'm through. If there is laughter at the wake, at the funeral, at graveside, at the bereavement meal and especially in the most difficult weeks of adjustment when everyone goes home, God has been present.

My wife has a good thought about this. Laughter, she says, doesn't heal. But laughter signals the promise of healing. When we smile, chuckle and laugh, we acknowledge that healing will come.

No, the Gospels don't show us Jesus laughing. But I'm sure he did. He must have. He was in the healing business.

Jeff Long is pastor of Centenary United Methodist Church in Cape Girardeau. Married with two daughters, he is of Scots and Swedish descent, loves movies and is a lifelong fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers.