Punchline

I want you to take a moment to think about the best joke you ever heard. Chances are, whoever told it, nailed the delivery. They first introduced the joke with something to get you hooked— “A Jew, a Christian, and a Muslim walk into a bar . . .”. 

Then they dropped some bread crumbs: “The Jew says this . . . the Muslim says this . . . but the Christian says . . .”. 

Finally, they deliver the punchline, the moment when everything you’ve been led to believe is flipped to make way for a “secondary, opposing interpretation.” The result, if the joke is told well, is gales of laughter. 

What if I told you that our first reading this morning from Genesis, the story about the two brothers Jacob and Esau (and the lentil stew), that this story is just one big joke? Our English translations don’t quite do it justice. If they did, we would’ve been killing ourselves laughing while Ian was reading! 

You see, our Jewish siblings, for whom the “Old Testament” Hebrew scriptures were originally written, have a long history of telling jokes, jokes that take “ironic digs” at God and humanity, highlighting the “disparity between God’s perfection and the imperfection of the world [God] created.” 

Take for example this joke (one of my favourites) told by a rabbi. 

A man goes to see his tailor and asks him to make him a pair of trousers. After dropping off some very fine material, the man returns a week later to pick them up. The trousers aren’t ready, so the man returns two weeks later. The trousers still aren’t ready. After waiting six weeks, finally they are ready. He tries them on. They fit perfectly. Nonetheless, when it comes time to pay the tailor, the man can’t resist a gentle jab. 

“You know,” he says, “it took God only six days to make the world. And it took you six weeks to make just one pair of trousers!”

“Ah,” the tailor says. “But look at this pair of trousers, and look at the world!”

Humour in the Bible is supposed to provide a kind of outlet for human beings to process the fact that the world isn’t yet as whole, isn’t yet as just, as it ought to be. Humour in the Bible is a form of prayer: it’s the Psalmist, the world burning down around them, saying, “God, why are you sleeping?”; it’s the disciples being rocked about in the boat by a storm, shaking Jesus to wake him up, saying, “Jesus, why are YOU sleeping!” Like, aren’t you supposed to be God? 

Humour in the Christian life, especially humour directed at God, is a way of waking not only God, but God’s people also, shaking us from complacency to to the reality of the world around us, that the world isn’t as it ought to be, and that we, even from positions of suffering or misfortune, maybe especially from positions of suffering or misfortune, have been empowered by God to go about setting things right.

If we were to retell the story of Jacob and Esau as if it had been written as a modern-day joke, I imagine it would go something like this:

Two brothers, twins, walk into a bar. One is an introvert and the other an extrovert. The extroverted brother spends the evening telling jokes about his younger, shyer twin.

“Hey, bartender?” he says, “How many introverts does it take to screw in a lightbulb? One, unless they need help, in which case it’s still one.” 

“Hey, bartender? Why did the introvert walk around the pond? Because they didn’t want to break the ice.”

By the end of the night, the introverted brother has had enough. He turns to his twin and says, “Remember when we were little and mom and dad were teaching us how to plant a garden?” 

“Yeah,” the brother says. “You couldn’t dig a hole to save your life!”

“That’s right,” the younger brother replies. “That’s when dad took the shovel, handed it to you, and kneeling down, he said to me, “Nevermind, son, sometimes you’ve just got to let the tool do the work!”

The story of Jacob and Esau is supposed to be funny, funny in the redemptive kind of way where the underdog, the one who’s forever been the punchline, reclaims a little bit of their power. Esau is the stronger, older twin—the one who’s been fighting his way to the top right from the start. He’s a hunter; a man’s man—a real meat and potatoes kind of a guy. He is dad’s favourite. Jacob is the “weaker,” younger brother—a “mama’s boy.” He came into the world literally grasping at his brother’s heel. When the boys were born, because Esau came out first, he is promised a greater share in the family inheritance. And, boy, he will not let his brother forget it! 

But, Jacob, knowing his brother is a bit of a meat-head (haha), tricks him into trading his birthright for . . . a pot of stew. And, not just any stew. The story reads, “Then Jacob gave Esau bread and lentil stew, and he ate and drank, and rose and went his way.”

Not only does Jacob trick his meat-head brother into giving up his inheritance for a simple stew; it’s a vegetarian stew!

Do you remember what Jesus says to the disciples when they wake him up in the boat? He says, “Why are you afraid? Where is your faith?” (Don’t you know you have power to meet the storms around you? Maybe not with lightning bolts, but certainly with lentil stew—with a little humour and a little faith that redemption in this story, redemption in the great Christian salvation story, comes when those who have long been the punchline claim their rightful inheritance as sons and daughters—children—of the living God. 

Amen.

Works referenced:

Victor Raskin, Semantic Mechanisms of Humor, Dordrecht - Boston - Lancaster: D. Reidel (1985), via “Punchline” in Wikipedia: The Free Dictionary, accessed online on 16 June 2023 at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punch_line#Linguistic_analysis

Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, “God and Jewish Humor: a Tradition of Poking Fun at the Master of the Universe” in My Jewish Learning, accessed online on 16 June 2023 at https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/god-humor/