The very old man “fell on his face and laughed, and said to himself: ‘Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old?’” His name was Abraham and his wife was called Sarah. He went on to ask, “Can Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?”
For her part, Sarah, when she heard the news that she was to bear a child, also burst out laughing. The impossibility of it made her greet the announcement with hilarity.
The announcement came during a visit one hot day to the couple’s tent in the desert. The visitors were three mysterious men whom Abraham treated with warm hospitality, inviting them to sit in the shade of a tree and serving them a fine meal. It was during the course of this dinner that they told Abraham that his wife would bear a son.
Sarah was listening from behind the door of the tent that she and Abraham shared. That’s when she could not help but laugh at the absurdity of a woman her age engaging in sexual intercourse and giving birth.
This event, told in the Book of Genesis, tells of people who lived thousands of years ago. They occupy a central place in the story of salvation recounted in the Hebrew Bible. The laughter of these people chosen by God for a crucial role resounds down through the centuries. It’s meaningful that the son born to them was given the name Isaac, which in Hebrew means “he laughs.”
This story can teach us that spirituality and humor are deeply connected. At first sight, they may seem to have little or nothing to do with one another but, on closer examination, they are revealed to be closely linked.
With humor you learn to laugh at what you can’t understand. Not only do the welcome events that come to you often merit laughter, but also sometimes the afflictions. But it takes rare spirit to be able to find and appreciate humorous elements in pain and suffering.
For this to happen, our vision must be widened. “Humor reveals that there is a ‘more’ in human life,” writes Kathleen Fischer. “Humor reminds us that there is a larger perspective on life than our own.”
Fischer adds: “Humor recognizes that limitations and failures are not final and un-redeemable tragedies. Like a ray of sunshine piercing a dark and overcast sky, humor suggests God’s abiding presence and brightens our human prospects.”
Seen in this way, humor can be appreciated as a spiritual gift, closely related to the gift of wisdom. It enables us to recognize and feel both the absurd aspects of human life and God’s power enabling us to draw good out of them.
The philosopher Ronald Manheimer, in a new book called A Map to the End of Time, says that “spiritual insight is sometimes heard in the laugh, the jest, the comic par-able of traditional elders such as the Zen masters, Hasidic rabbis, and Sufi sages.” Their responses “suggest the limitations of their own knowledge.”
Manheimer also points out the connection between the Abraham/Sarah story and the account of creation with which Genesis begins. “It’s the miracle of creation all over again,” he says of the conception and birth of Isaac. In both instances, God’s power is wonderfully at work in making something out of the apparently impossible.
The nineteenth century Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard even thought that humor comes before faith. According to Manheimer, Kierkegaard believed that “humor is an outlook. You accept your flawed nature, but you don’t give up, because there’s some-thing that keeps gnawing at you. That’s your godly aspect.”
He saw humor as a basic step on the way to spiritual maturity. For a person to go past being merely ethical and become truly religious, he or she would first come to appreciate humor on the way.
If this seems to be attaching too much weight to humor, look around at some of the people you know. Those who are able to laugh at themselves display a sense of perspective that helps preserve their own health of mind and body. Their approach to life of-ten proves contagious as well, and makes others appreciate being around them.
Richard Griffin