Happy Face 1

A few days ago, just after my computer went into its most recent coma, I was reading in the Gospel of John about the woman who was caught in adultery. For you unchurched, here's the gist: the religious bigshots of Jesus' day, also known as the Pharisees, were really despicable hypocrites, rather like the religious cops in Saudi Arabia who beat women up for not wearing veils. They apparently caught this woman in the act of likely making out with a married man, and no one knows anything at all about her, otherwise, or her history, her circumstances, or whatever. But here she was, ready to get rocks thrown at her by those miserable old (and not so old) men, probably who couldn't deal with how turned on they were by her, and they wanted to put Jesus to the test by asking him why she should not be stoned to death as commanded in the law of Moses. Jesus' reply was to silently draw in the dirt with his forefinger, or write something. Now I heard from one source that Jesus was actually writing in the dirt the sins of each individual Pharisee. We'll say that he really had the dirt on those guys. He also said to them at the outset that he who is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone, implying that only if you were completely without sin yourself could you execute judgement and punishment. As Jesus continued writing on the ground, each Pharisee, from the oldest to the youngest, got up and left, leaving Jesus alone with the young woman. So he said to the woman, where are your accusers? She replied that they were gone. Then Jesus said, I don't condemn you either, go and sin no more. Now, while reading this auspicious passage of scripture, I suddenly couldn't contain my laughter, not because I found it at all funny, but because of a joke I couldn't shake from my mind. The joke was about the woman caught in adultery, and Jesus had just said that the person without sin should cast the first stone. So, they all waited and waited and then a big rock came hurtling towards the poor woman and knocked her unconscious. Then Jesus looked and so this small older woman with a very sour and indignant look on her face, and it was obvious that she was the one without sin to cast the first stone. And Jesus said to the woman, "Ma. sometimes you really piss me off!" Then, I had an insight. Jesus, himself, probably would have laughed at the joke, not because of the poor woman who got knocked out by the rock but because of his mother, who herself was probably, just as the joke portrayed her, self-righteous, judgmental and really hard on others, and it had to take going through her son's horrible execution and death, witnessing his resurrection and becoming filled with the Holy Spirit to soften those edges and make her a humbler, more loving and gentler soul. And who would have known her better than her son who had to live with her all those years? I am writing about this today, incidentally, because we really do not use humour enough in our lives, nor in our efforts to understand things. It is often helpful to take ourselves less seriously and find something to laugh about. Even if it's ourselves that should be laughed at. I know, it is hard to find occasion for laughter, or to even smile, these days, unless it's from the most bitter and cynical irony, but if we are going to get through these challenging times ahead then we had better learn again how to smile and laugh. Joy is a gift, and without joy I think that a lot of our labour is going to be in vain.