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Just Another Essay



Finding God in the Punchline

Essay Posted April 1, 2008 by James E. Nelson

Few things are so seriously important that they can’t be improved with a little levity. Even religion is better with humor. At least that’s how the Jews have always seen it, and Purim is their opportunity to laugh at themselves and their enemies. What is Purim? To quote Infoplease.com:

The joyous holiday of Purim celebrates the salvation of the Jews from the wicked Haman, through the leadership of Queen Esther and her cousin Mordecai. Purim takes place on the 14th day of Adar, the 12th month of the Jewish calendar. ... The carnival-like atmosphere of Purim, wearing of costumes, and bringing gifts of food door-to-door sometimes leads to it being referred to as the "Jewish Mardi Gras" or "Jewish Halloween" by non-Jews.

This carnival-like atmosphere is extended even to scripture . . . well, at least the Book of Esther . . . which they seem (to people who take their piety seriously) to treat with a decided lack of respect, especially during the feast:

The story of Purim is found in the Biblical book of Esther, often referred to as “the Megillah.” This is publically read in synagogues twice on Purim: when the holiday begins at nightfall, and the following morning. When the name of Haman is read, people stomp their feet, hiss, boo, or shake noisemakers to obliterate his name.

But the fun doesn’t stop there. Purim “is also unique among Jewish holidays in that adults are encouraged to drink until they can't tell the difference between the phrases ‘cursed be Haman’ and ‘blessed be Mordecai.’”

Although Purim was a couple weeks ago (March 20 & 21 this year), I was thinking about it because it has a loose connection with April Fools’ Day (which is today, if you hadn’t noticed). Historians that figure such things out suspect that there is a conceptual link between the two. The origins of our version of April Fools’ Day is not known. What is known is that there were many similar activities in a variety of cultures, all occurring in springtime. The Hindu holiday of Holi, which celebrates the day Krishna stole her friends’ clothes while they were skinny dipping down at the ol’ mill pond, is very much in the spirit of April Fools. The Roman holiday celebrating the resurrection of Attis on March 25 was similar to a modern Mardi Gras celebration. It seems that the improving weather brings out the prankster in everyone, and this is very much the character of Purim, the most light-hearted of all Jewish feasts.

But this essay is less about the feast itself and more about the Book of Esther, and more generally, our assumptions of what scripture ought to be. And this brings us to the original Greek translation of Hebrew scripture called the Septuagint. For most of Christian history (and for most Christians to this day) the Septuagint was and is the Christian Old Testament. But the Protestants threw the Septuagint out, opting instead for the original Hebrew version, which is quite a bit shorter than the Septuagint. Several Protestant translations include these other parts of the Old Testament as an appendix called “The Apocrypha.”

I explain all of this because Esther is one of the books involved. You see, Esther (that is, the original Hebrew text), while religious, is not a pious book in any sense of the word; the most religious it gets is when Mordecai calls the people to fast. In its original Hebrew version it is an almost bawdy parody of an historical event. All the characters are one dimensional. The King is impulsively controlled by his passions (anger, lust), Haman is controlled by his vanity. The only thing we know about Mordecai is that he is wise and thoughtful, while Esther is simply beautiful. (You can almost hear the harps begin to play every time she comes on stage!) Even the story line is simplistic and contrived. Put all those pieces together, and what we have is a melodrama.

In Hebrew, the book is called the Megillat Esther, or “the Scroll of Esther” But in popular usage Esther is just called the Megillah (rhymes with gorilla). For instance a Jew might explain to a curious Gentile, “At Purim we read the Megillah twice at synagogue; once in the evening and again the next morning.”

The word “megillah” has another meaning in Jewish culture. Along with being the everyday name for the Book of Esther, it is also a Yiddish term for a story that is ridiculously involved, told in a tedious manner, or made overly complicated just for the sake of silliness. This Yiddish term is, of course, the source of the name of Magilla Gorilla, a cartoon I watched every Saturday morning when I was a kid.

And that’s precisely how the Jews treat Esther when the book is read at synagogue during Purim: It’s a megillah, and staying in character with the book, the people act ridiculous while it is being read. They throw things, they whoop and holler to drown out Haman’s name when it is said. It is an interactive entertainment event.

How do you find God’s hand in the most evil events in history? Sometimes humor is the only thing that dulls the pain enough to recognize God’s hand. A Conservative Jewish Rabbi, at a convocation at Central Baptist Seminary, was asked why he didn’t become atheist after being in the camps when so many of his contemporaries abandoned their faith. He said, “You either laugh and try to make things right, or you quit believing in God altogether. I try to laugh; I try to put things right.” I suspect it’s an enduring theme of Jewish spirituality, because this is precisely the theme of the wonderful Oscar winning 1997 Italian movie, La Vita è Bella (Life Is Beautiful), that is set in the camps during World War II.

But within a few hundred years after the Megillah of Esther was written, earnest Greek speaking Jews in Alexandria forgot that few things are so seriously important that they can’t be improved with a little levity. In their seriousness, they took this biblical story to be a serious history of events in Persia. Being scandalized that it never mentioned God, these earnest Jews added a bunch of prayers to the Greek version of the book, thinking they were improving it. It was all sort of like an April Fool on the pious. Having the sort of piety that allowed for no sense of humor, they completely missed the point of the story, and as a result, completely missed the point that God’s gracious presence was in the punch line and not in the narrative.

It is less surprising that many modern non-Jewish readers don’t get the joke. Because of a whole host of extenuating circumstances, Jewish culture has been largely ghettoized in the West, so the majority culture has little or no cultural connection which might reveal the literary signals in Esther. Yet, it is humorous to watch serious and attentive fundamentalists and conservative Evangelicals try to make heads or tales of the story. A basic principle of Protestant Biblical interpretation is that a text must be interpreted within its proper literary context. Poetry is not the same as history, which is not the same as prophecy. Each must be interpreted by its own standards. But melodrama throws a monkey wrench into the hermeneutical method. Lacking the category of bawdy Biblical melodrama, Esther is generally treated as history, and conservative interpreters will go through amazing contortions to make the story sensical as an actual history of the Jews in Persia.

It wasn’t until I got to seminary and we “performed” the book in Old Testament interpretation class as it might be done at a Purim service that the book began to make any sense at all. Prior to that, Esther made less sense to me as Holy Scripture than the Epistle of James made to Martin Luther. (Luther called James “that right strawy epistle” and was in favor of removing it from the canon.) In Esther, God was absent, holy history was absent . . . The only thing present was the invisible hand of God making sure the Jews survived. But when read at face value, it even seemed doubtful that it was God’s hand; it seemed more likely that it was the king’s stupidity, Mordecai’s crafty brilliance, and a stroke of luck on Esther’s part. Hardly good biblical narrative!

But, on the one hand, when I began to understand the stark historical reality of the Jews in Persia, and on the other hand, re-framed the story and assumed it was originally intended as a comedic tale rather than an actual recounting of historical events, the presence of God became clear. The psalmist asks, “Why do the nations conspire, and the people plot in vain?” To present the conspiring of kings and commoners against God and God’s people in all its stark and evil reality (such as in the movie Schindler’s List) is to give far too much credence to the power of evil. The mysterious presence of God gets lost in the fright and pure horror of it all.

On the other hand, compared to the actual majesty of God, the raging nations are comical. There are two options: The psalmist’s question can be exegeted in all its serious horror, which results in making evil too powerful and God not nearly real enough, or the same question can be exegeted as a humorous tale, a Yiddish Megillah, which makes light of the strivings of man (and thus puts those strivings in their proper place). The real art of the story is to remain silent about the majestic and awesome God. The Hebrew God, the Biblical God, the living God who created heaven and earth, need not even lower himself to the antics of a conspiring king and a plotting Counselor. In light of what we know about God and history, they (Ahasuerus and Haman) are fools and their little plans a joke. God, in all his majesty, remains above the fray, refusing to be bated into a silly tussle.

This is not to say that God is aloof from his creation and his people. When God does lower himself, but it’s not to match wits against arrogant or to challenge the intellect of the Pharisees or Pilate, it’s rather to do the serious business of identifying deeply and completely with the human race trapped by such conspiracies and plots. Like a sheep, he went silently to the slaughter. In his silence he refused to lower himself to the antics of self-righteous humans, and yet, tragically, like a sheep, he went to the slaughter. (At least it’s a tragedy until you get to the “punch line.”)

The Gospel of Mark is the New Testament counterpart to the Megillah of Esther. As Mark wrote it, it ends with the angel proclaiming the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the first witnesses responding as humans so often respond to the utter majesty of God: “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid” (Mark 16:8).

It is, in an odd way, a funny story, a real Yiddish Megillah. Those disciples followed Jesus through thick and thin, when he was popular and when he was hated. And yet, when victory was finally announced, they ran away in terror, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. It is a classic human story.

[Of course the Christian counterparts to the pious Greek speaking Jews who didn’t get the joke and added prayers to Esther did the same sort of thing to Mark. We now have two alternate endings to Mark. The shorter ending softens the blow a bit while the longer ending turns Mark’s megillah on its head with everyone living happily ever after.]

Both accounts (Esther and the Gospel of Mark) are classic April Fools sort of stories. There is this huge disconnect between the human race and the living reality of God who mysteriously cares for his people. The people, who busily seek after “God” on their own terms are, in truth, cut off from God by sin, pride, fear (and a lack of humor). As a result the story of man is sometimes funny (Esther) and sometimes tragic (Mark), but whether the story, and our lives, are comedy or tragedy, God is always mysteriously present. He may seem absent in the narrative, but God is always present in the punch line. It’s a sort of April Fools joke that we brought on ourselves because we fail to see God among us—where he is and always has been.