Speaker’s corner

LAGE Vitus, a reader, who clearly knows his Bible, said he was surprised by my recent statement that I’d found so little humour in the Bible. I wrote that the only humour I knew of was the finding of Moses motherless in the bulrushes.

And another which used to make me giggle as a schoolboy was “And the lot fell upon Job”.

The reader recommended I read the books of Proverbs and Ecclesiastics. Then I’d find:

“It is stupid to wear oneself out working” (Eccl. 10:15)

“No matter how long you live, you will be dead much longer” (Eccl. 11:7)

“To live with a cross woman is worse than to live in the wilderness” (Prov. 21:19)

“Even a fool may be thought wise if he keeps his mouth shut” (Prov. 17:28).

Lage said some custodians of religion believe it is a sin to laugh and have done their best throughout the ages to remove humour from the Bible. It is therefore often necessary to read between the lines.

“One of my favourite stories is at the end of Chapter 17 in the Gospel of St Matthew.

“The custodians of a local synagogue ask Peter why his chief does not pay the customary fee for using the facilities of the synagogue. It was expected of learned people, not accredited by the rabbis, to pay a nominal fee if they used the library or gave lessons. If Jesus paid the fee, however, He would have lost credibility with His followers since He would have acknowledged that He was not worthy of accreditation.

“On the other hand, if He did not pay, He would be criticised for not abiding by the rules. So He asked Peter to catch a fish and to cut it open in front of the custodians.

“I would have given anything to see the look on their faces when Peter disembowelled the fish and a coin of the exact denomination required by the custodians rolled out.”

Another reader, Gillian Evans of Wellington, New Zealand (she gets this column by e-mail from some former colleagues in Johannesburg), recalls hearing about the Bishop of Guildford presiding over a retreat house at Farnham Castle in the 1950s. A clergyman sneaked out to do some shopping in the town but bumped into the bishop.

The clergyman blustered: “The Lord has moved me to go down to the shops.”

The bishop said: “Then I feel bound to tell you that at least one of you is wrong. It’s early closing day.”

On the subject of humour in religion, Gillian reminded me that in Revelations there is a passage “And the sea shall give up its dead.”

She says the bishop – whose see (ie: diocese) was Lichfield in the English Midlands – gazed down at a hall filled with bored-looking local clergymen and remarked: “The see gives up its dead.”

And I have here a letter from Busisiwe Dlhamini of Piet Retief who recently turned 111. This makes her the oldest person ever to have written to this column. Oh, wait. Her letter in fact reads, “I was ill recently.”

Anyway, she says the order of service at a Swaziland church was: Choir – Death where is thy sting? Hymn – Search me, O God. I once wrote, satirically, about praying for rain. I said it was a bit like telling God He didn’t know what He was doing.

It irritated a reader who warned me that God would punish me, so I sent her a message:

“Take it from me, God has a sense of humour. JC.”

On the subject of religion and humour, another reader forwarded two church notices which were classics of the genre:

“Bertha Belch, a missionary from Africa, will be speaking tonight at Calvary Methodist. Come and hear Bertha Belch.”

Miss Charlene Mason sang, “I will not pass this way again”, giving obvious pleasure to the congregation.