Jesus and the hidden joke
by Peter Mullen, The Conservative Woman:
I ONCE wrote a book about the thirty-four parables of Jesus and titled it Jesus’ Jewish Jokes with the subtitle The Amusing Short Stories of the Son of God. There is a widespread notion put about by the Bulstrodes and Sowerberrys in our churches and chapels who make a misery out of Christianity. These are people for whom jokes are no laughing matter. They imagine that jokes and serious things don’t belong together. Of course they do! Life is not divided into compartments, but the funny and the tragic, the rough and the smooth, are all mixed up together – as you know very well. As Charles Lamb said, ‘Anything awful makes me laugh. I once disgraced myself at a funeral!’
There is a good joke in today’s gospel and I’ll tell you what it is in a minute. But first let’s read the gospel together:
‘There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day: And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores, And desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table: moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried; And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented. And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence. Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father’s house: For I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment. Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent. And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one should rise from the dead.’
It’s a terrific punchline: ‘If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.’ Now I come to the great joke hidden away in a few innocent words in this parable: ‘For I have five brethren’. So here is is the background to Jesus’s joke.
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