Imagine Jesus Laughing. Ok, not a lot in water. His was mostly a dry humor. But if we can't imagine this, I think we misunderstand a lot of his words as recorded in the Bible. Everyone who seriously reads the Gospels comes across passages that seem to make no sense, given the background belief of the writers that Jesus was somehow literally God, a divinely perfect being, as well as being fully human. He can come across as rude to his mother or disparaging about his family, or sound like a hellfire Puritan preacher on rare occasions. But what if he had a great sense of humor? What if was often playing around with his conversation partners, using metaphor and simile and lots of other off-literal forms of language to evoke insight through irony or mirth or exaggeration or sounding like he was saying the opposite of what point he wanted his friends to get? We most often often read him as if he was a grim faced somber individual with a harsh disposition. What if that's the opposite of the truth?
Socrates as represented by Plato was very playful and funny. So then was Plato for so representing him. Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius can make you laugh out loud. So can Pascal or Kierkegaard, and on and on. When I was a professor, I used to tell my grad student TAs that philosophy is serious, but that doesn't mean it's somber. We can have fun doing it and we should. Great minds are often playful minds and we all move in their direction by a proper playfulness.
The mother of Jesus comes to him at the wedding at Cana and says, "They're running out of wine." I think this happened a lot wherever Jesus was. Draw your own conclusions as well as a little of the red from that wineskin. He says "Woman, what is that to me?" My mother would have smacked me on the spot. First, he doesn't address her as his mother, and secondly he acts like he has no idea why she's telling him this odd factoid. And it just sounds rude. But what if there is this rich history between the two of them, of playful joking around, and he knows she knows exactly who he is and what he can do. And, yeah, it's been a secret they've kept but he takes her cue after this head fake that it's time. And the wine flows. I imagine her smile or laugh. Let's call this the hermeneutics of humor. Interpretation that has to get as creative as the text. Did the Gospel writers intentionally make all this up and put such stuff into the mouth of their savior? I don't think they were that clever or sophisticated but I do think he was.
