Jesus Tells a Joke

Mike's Confession of the Day: Kurt Vonnegut is next on my list of Great Authors I Have Never Read, and I plan on rectifying that oversight shortly. (Feel free to suggest starting places... although I have already added Palm Sunday to my Amazon Wish List.)

I've taken the following Vonnegut quote from a longer post by Ryan Rodrick Beiler on the God's Politics Blog. It comes from Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage, and in my mind it has it all. It touches on the Sermon on The Mount, as well as the "incident" at Mary & Martha's place. I'm referring of course to Jesus' uttering of those famous words, "The poor you always have with you..."

Let's listen in:

I am enchanted by the Sermon on the Mount. Being merciful, it seems to me, is the only good idea we have received so far. Perhaps we will get another idea that good by and by - and then we will have two good ideas. What might that second good idea be? I don't know. How could I know? I will make a wild guess that it will come from music somehow. ...

I choose as my text the first eight verses of John 12, which deal not with Palm Sunday but with the night before - with Palm Sunday Eve, with what we might call "Spikenard Saturday." I hope that will be close enough to Palm Sunday to leave you more or less satisfied. ...

Now, as to the verses about Palm Sunday Eve: I choose them because Jesus says something in the eighth verse which many people I have known have taken as proof that Jesus himself occasionally got sick and tired of people who needed mercy all the time. I read from the Revised Standard Bible rather than the King James, because it is easier for me to understand. Also, I will argue afterward that Jesus was only joking, and it is impossible to joke in King James English. The funniest joke in the world, if told in King James English, is doomed to sound like Charlton Heston.

I read: "Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. There they made him supper; Martha served, but Lazarus was one of those at table with him."

"Mary took a pound of costly ointment of pure nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair; and the house was filled with the fragrance of the ointment."

"But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (he who was to betray him) said, 'Why was this ointment not sold for 300 denarii and given to the poor?' This, he said, not that he cared for the poor but because he was a thief, and, as he had the money box, he used to take what was put into it. "

"Jesus said, 'Let her alone, let her keep it for the day of my burial. The poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me.'" ...

Whatever it was that Jesus really said to Judas was said in Aramaic, of course - and has come to us through Hebrew and Greek and Latin and archaic English. Maybe he only said something a lot like, "The poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me." Perhaps a little something has been lost in translation. And let us remember, too, that in translations jokes are commonly the first things to go.

I would like to recapture what has been lost. Why? Because I, as a Christ-worshipping agnostic, have seen so much un-Christian impatience with the poor encouraged by the quotation "For the poor always ye have with you."
...

This is too much for that envious hypocrite Judas, who says, trying to be more Catholic than the Pope: "Hey-this is very un-Christian. Instead of wasting that stuff on Your feet, we should have sold it and given the money to the poor people." To which Jesus replies in Aramaic: "Judas, don't worry about it. There will still be plenty of poor people left long after I'm gone."

This is about what Mark Twain or Abraham Lincoln would have said under similar circumstances.

If Jesus did in fact say that, it is a divine black joke, well-suited to the occasion. It says everything about hypocrisy and nothing about the poor. It is a Christian joke, which allows Jesus to remain civil to Judas, but to chide him for his hypocrisy all the same.

"Judas, don't worry about it. There will still be plenty of poor people left long after I'm gone." Shall I re-garble it for you? "The poor you always have with you, but you do not always have Me."

My own translation does no violence to the words in the Bible. I have changed their order some, not merely to make them into the joke the situation calls for but to harmonize them, too, with the Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon on the Mount suggests a mercifulness that can never waver or fade.

This has no doubt been a silly sermon. I am sure you do not mind. People don't come to church for preachments, of course, but to daydream about God.

Vonnegut's main point, I believe, is found at the end of this section. His translation--I will not call it a paraphrase--indeed manages to harmonize this verse with the Sermon on The Mount. I never cease to be amazed, apparently just like dear, departed Kurt himself, by those who would offer this verse as proof that we really don't need to get too excited about the poor. Lets agree to adopt the Vonnegut translation and be done with it.

Comments

[robert]

no Vonnegut? Dude...
Breakfast of Champions & Slaughterhouse 5. Get them. Read them.

[david]

Also, God Bless You, Mr Rosewater. An awesome read (also published as Pearls Before Swine, i think)

[david]

Best line of the day:

"People don't come to church for preachments, of course, but to daydream about God."

Frederick Buechner could not have said it better.

[Bald Man]

Very good stuff...