First, a look at the big picture. Could we look at the grand sweep of redemptive history as a comedy? Northrop Frye asserts, "The entire Bible, viewed as a "divine comedy", is contained within a U-shaped story of this sort, one in which man loses the tree and water of lie at the beginning of Genesis and gets them back at the end of Revelation."4 While it might take a bit of getting used to, it is true that the story of salvation tracks us from the time of our creation and through to the experience of our misfortune (humanity's rebellion and fall) on to the point when this calamity has been reversed through a gracious turn of events (through Jesus Christ) so that our initial standing with God has not only been restored but enhanced (so we anticipate a heaven that trumps even the Garden of Eden). While this understanding may not cause us to double up with laughter, it should at least bring a smile to our faces.

Creation contains evidence of a humorous perspective as we see a self-existent God freely and graciously creating the world "for no apparent reason."5 By speaking the world into being we have the first example of divine word play and the biblical record of these events is punctuated with puns and subtle ironies.6 Following this dazzling display of creativity, God celebrated his work by sanctifying a time of rest designed to enjoy and appreciate all he had made.7 Such a perspective might bring some balance to what may appear to be dry and dusty doctrines.

While the next chapters of the biblical story unfold, humorous devices are never far from the surface. These remind us of the joy God takes with even a fallen creation as well as the futility of mere humans usurping divine prerogatives. The drama of salvation peaks with the coming of Jesus, born in Nazareth, the proverbial home of fools in first century Palestine, and who apparently could enjoy humor, especially camel comedy (Matt 19:24; 23:24). It was the death and resurrection of Christ, the saving event, that was described by Paul as "a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles" (1 Cor 1:23b). This same Jesus had come preaching a redemptive kingdom where the 'normal' values were reversed-where the 'first' will be 'last' and the 'last' 'first'; where you give up in order to gain; where the greatest is the least; and where you die in order to live. While this is not a full-blown call to enter the quest for the 'hysterical' Jesus, it is an invitation to view God in the flesh as One who appreciated the incongruities of life. These profound and playful truths should bar us from an antiseptic view of our faith and spur us on to a joyful recognition of the God we serve. To the one willing and able to see it, our faith does have a humorous side.8

Those Who Have Gone Before Us

If we can see the theological merit in the humorous perspective to faith, how might that be applied in ministry? One model, and again a seeming unlikely one, is that of the holy fool. Since this is a post-biblical term, we need to define it. The holy fool is not to be confused with the 'fool' found within biblical wisdom literature. The sages condemned the fool because of his lack of self-control, moral incorrigibility and resistance to wisdom,9 rather than his ability to enjoy the humorous and ironic aspects of the faith. So the holy fool is no ordinary fool but one with a message and a rather unconventional way of delivering it.