“Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.”
Luke 6:21b

There is a scene from the 1986 film The Mission that stirs me each time I see it, in part for what it teaches me about laughter.

The film takes place in the remote jungles of eighteenth-century Brazil among the indigenous Guaraní people. It tells the story of a Spanish Jesuit mission working to evangelize the Guaraní. At the center of the film is the story of the reformed slave-hunter, Rodrigo Mendoza, played by Robert De Niro. 

The high point of the movie takes place as Mendoza undergoes penance for his murderous past by dragging a bundle containing his armor and sword on his own back through the jungle, and up a ravine. When Mendoza reaches the outskirts of the tribe, threadbare and covered in mud, the Guaraní recognize him as their slave-hunter, and a young man runs up to him with his dagger brandished. After holding the knife to his throat for a few moments, the young Guaraní man suddenly cuts the pack from Mendoza’s shoulders, allowing the weight to fall from his back into the ravine far below. After a stunned silence, Mendoza breaks down in sobs, the Guaraní break out into smiles, which turn into laughter, which spreads to the Jesuit priests in their midst and to Mendoza himself, who is shown half-sobbing, half laughing for full minutes as the scene closes. 

Laughter arises from a violation of our expectations–so say a number of researchers who’ve looked into the matter, and that seems to be borne out by experience. In this scene laughter is a response to the unexpected reconciliation between Mendoza and the Guaraní tribe, brought to life through a series of contrasts: A murderous slave trader is reduced to sobbing like a baby. Instead of slitting the throat of their oppressor, the Guaraní release the burden from his shoulders. Enemies embrace. The parties to this preposterous scene can hardly believe their own actions, it seems. For in response to these incongruities all sides break out into laughter. What they are responding to is, of course, grace. The unexpected, incongruous, receipt of undeserved favor.  

In light of this truth, it is perhaps not surprising that Jesus should speak of laughter and even command rejoicing as the proper response to his announcement of the series of reversals at hand with the arrival of God’s Kingdom. In a startling turn of events, the poor inherit the kingdom, while the rich walk away empty-handed, the hungry feast, while the fat cats nurse empty stomachs, and it is the mourners themselves who have the last laugh. This is the divine comedy told by Jesus. 

When we look around us today, there are an ever-growing number of reasons to be worried. We see nations attacking their vulnerable neighbors, crushing the poor in their midst. We see the rich and powerful helping themselves to the stores of wealth while adding barrier upon barrier to keep out those without means or influence. We see the planet itself being used up and disregarded. In the face of so many problems, we might well wonder if we should never stop being serious. Maybe laughter is a luxury we can’t simply afford. 

Swiss theologian Karl Barth has written that 

Humor means a great bracketing of the serious side of the present. There is humor only in our struggle with the serious side of the present. But we, as children of God, cannot possibly remain entirely serious about and in this struggle. God’s future makes itself known as that smile under tears, as that joyfulness in which we can bear the present and take things seriously within the bracket, because the present already carries the future within it. 

According to Barth, real humor comes only by first taking life seriously, acknowledging the outrageous conflict between God’s order and our own, and engaging in the muddy problems of this world. We are called to struggle for justice, to get our hands dirty, but to place that struggle within a bracket, knowing that beyond the bracket it is God who has promised to deal with evil and suffering once and for all, to turn the world on its head. Knowing that our struggle takes place within a bracket, allows us to come up for air. To breathe and to laugh.  

We can afford to bracket out the seriousness of the present in light of the much more weighty promise of God to take it seriously, to redeem its brokenness from the inside out. 

There is a day coming, when justice for the most vulnerable will not hinge on another’s lust for power. When the sick will not have to beg for money online to cover their medical bills. When politicians will not hide behind twisted facts and half-truths. There is a day coming, when the earth will flourish, and we will become the caretakers of it we were intended to be. When we will care for another’s child just as our own, and when no one on earth will be considered a stranger or unwelcome.  

In the light of that coming day, we are called to struggle against injustice, to love our neighbors, to work for good, and yes, to laugh.  Like all genuine laughter, this is the laughter of heaven.  The unmerited and undeserved presence of God gracing us again and again. Like a seed planted in the soil, like the sleeping blossoms of a budding tree, God’s new day takes shape among us, with us, and sometimes even against us.  Thanks be to God.
 

Source: Karl Barth, “Humor” in Insights, ed. Eberhard Busch, trans. O. C. Dean Jr., (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2009), 6.

 
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