Did Jesus enjoy performing miracles?  Although I am 61 years old and have been through seminary and have been ordained for 35 years next month, I confess I never asked this question before that I can recall.  What made me tumble to ask the question and wonder about it is my recent exposure to the TV series The Chosen.  This show began well before the pandemic in 2017 but I never checked it out and did not have much interest in checking it out.  But in a seminar I co-led this summer several pastors whose recommendations I respect suggested watching the series so I began to do so in late July and am still watching.  Apparently it will go another couple of seasons yet.

Yes and of course, this is an interpretation of the gospels not the gospels themselves.  And although some episodes have hewed very closely to the narrative and language of, for instance, the Gospel of John, there are characters and narrative threads not found in scripture at all.  Even the spin the writers put on very biblical gospel scenes are as much a guess as to just how something took place or how something was said as when those of us who preach suggest “Maybe Jesus said these words this way . . .”   The Bible rarely throws in adverbs to tell us how anything was spoken.  You don’t read “He said merrily” or “She replied tartly” or “He said sadly.”  So, we can guess at the acoustics based on other elements in the text but we can’t know.

I also will say that though I have been enjoying The Chosen, there are some things I think the producers and writers got wrong.  The Sermon on the Mount was one.  Matthew clearly tells us that when Jesus saw the crowds, he turned from them and taught the disciples.  Yes, the crowds overheard it all but Jesus’s pedagogical focus was on those whom he had already called into his kingdom with the grace-laden invitation “Follow me.”  Theologically that is pretty important.  But The Chosen instead depicted Jesus practicing the sermon and having Matthew write it all down ahead of time even as other disciples sought out a proper venue for the sermon and once they found one, they set it up like a theater stage replete with a makeshift curtain through which Jesus makes his entrance before the crowds.  But initially at least the disciples (to whom Matthew tells us Jesus turned) are literally backstage.  To that I say “Not quite.”

With all those caveats granted (and any others I ought to grant) I will say that one aspect of the series I have liked—and again, it’s conjecture even so—is the obvious joy Jesus took in performing miracles.  One of the first such miracles was the miraculous catch of fish that led Simon and Andrew (and soon James and John) to put their faith in Jesus.  As usual, the disciples had had a bad night of fishing.  I often think that it was a great gift Jesus called those fishermen to be disciples since they do not appear to have been very successful anglers.  They are forever mending their nets and fishing all night without a single fish caught.  So when Jesus tells them to let down their nets on the other side of the boat and when so many fish leap into the net that the boat lists and is on the verge of sinking even as Simon and Andrew are wild with glee and awe, Jesus lets out a good belly laugh and smiles ear to ear.  It was humorous.  It was wonderful.  It was . . . joyful.

I fear that too often preachers and many of us when we ponder Jesus’s demeanor and personality somehow miss seeing him as joyful.  But since joy is one of the Fruit of the Spirit—and since our faith tells us Jesus surely possessed all nine of those fruit perfectly and fully—joy had to be a major part of Jesus’s persona.  Years ago Philip Yancey wrote that people really seemed to like inviting Jesus to banquets and parties and weddings.  Had he been some dour person with a flat personality or a stern demeanor, probably he would not be among the first people to be put down on anyone’s guest list.  But if Jesus was a joy to be around in that he embodied joy, then his social popularity makes sense.

In John’s Gospel Jesus’s miracles are called “signs.”  Signs of what?  Of the inbreaking of the Kingdom of God, which in John’s realized eschatology is always just above us such that, every once in a while, it breaks through into this time and space.  The signs were like arrows pointing to the reality of the kingdom.  It really was “at hand” as Jesus himself said.  But when we experience an in-breaking of that kingdom in our midst, joy is surely going to come and that joy starts with the Messiah who delighted in watching the wide-eyed wonder of the wedding steward when he tasted that amazing wine at Cana.   How could Jesus not smile and laugh with joy when the paralyzed man sprang to his feet and then did a jig of astonished joy?

These days in the church and most everywhere we could all use more joy.  Maybe The Chosen is more than a little onto something to suggest that the one who leads the way into ever greater joy is the Savior who reveled through smiles and even laughter to see just what happens when the Kingdom of God breaks through.