By John Bingham, Religious Affairs Editor of Daily Telegraph.
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Laughter in the aisles: an annualchurch service for clowns Photo: Reuters
Perhaps it is just one of those jokes which has got lost in translation - from the original Aramaic.
Many of Jesus’s best-known lines - such as the remark about it being easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God - could have been intended as jokes, it has been claimed.
The suggestion came as clergy were invited to take part in stand-up comedy training to liven up their Sunday sermons.
Priests and lay preachers are being offered coaching in everything from overcoming nerves to comic improvisation techniques as part of an effort to help the church cast off its po-faced image and entice people back to services.
Bentley Browning, a stand-up comic who regularly impersonates David Cameron, has been invited to run sessions for clergy at a clerical gathering in London next month.
Clergy are to be put through their paces and offered the chance to perform to their peers on stage at the ExCeL conference centre in east London at the Christian Resources Exhibition, a massive annual trade-fair for all things ecclesiastical.
Clergy are to be put through their paces and offered the chance to perform to their peers on stage at the ExCeL conference centre in east London at the Christian Resources Exhibition, a massive annual trade-fair for all things ecclesiastical.
Mr Browning, who runs stand-up sessions for a string of major companies as part of corporate team-building exercises and away-days, has also recently been invited by a handful of Church of England dioceses including Canterbury to train clergy to introduce comedy into their messages.
The Church of England’s conversion to comedy comes as the Roman Catholic Church also attempts to introduce more light-hearted elements to formal services. Earlier this week Pope Francis warned priests against delivering “boring” homilies.
Mr Browning, a vicar’s son, said that many of the clergy had displayed an unexpected comic talent, occasionally even straying into risqué territory, but too rarely display their humorous side in the pulpit.
I decided to start doing this because I did a survey and asked what people think about sermons,” he said.
“Half of them said they were boring, the other half said they were very boring.”
But he argued that the accounts of Jesus’s public ministry showed evidence of similar communication techniques as those deployed by stand-up comedians.
“Many suggest his allusion to a camel going through the eye of a needle would have been construed as a quip,” he said.
“It uses a technique, exaggeration … that’s just classic Monty Pythonesque exaggeration.
“I think there is a lot more humour in the Bible than people might think.”
The Rev Cindy Kent, vicar of from St John the Apostle, Whetstone, London – one of those who has signed up for the course, which has been dubbed “Stand Up for Jesus” – agreed.
“Jesus must have used humour and he is the best role model of how to tell a story,” she said.
Rev Kent, a former pop singer and a presenter on Premier Radio, had her first go at comedy with an appearance in a BBC show Vicars Telling Jokes last year. She made a quip about seeing the face of Jesus in a slice of toast but telling a neighbour who replied: “I can’t believe it’s not Buddha.”
“I was thrilled when the BBC asked me to take part but terrified at the same time - It's one thing to tell a joke to a friend - or friends - but it's quite another to do it on the telly, to a potential audience of thousands,” she said.
Clerical corkers:
Biblical subjects might not seem an obvious source of comic inspiration but here are 10 top favourite (loosely) scriptural jokes from the organisers of the Christian Resources Exhibition:
• So what if I can't spell Armageddon - it isn't the end of the world
• What kind of man was Boaz before he got married? Ruthless
• Don't let your worries get the best of you: Moses started out as a basket case.
• How do we know Moses wore a wig? Because sometimes he was seen with Aaron and sometimes he wasn't
• How do we know Samson was a comedian? Because he was the only biblical character to bring the house down
• Why didn't they play cards on the Ark? Because Noah was standing on the deck
• Why did they throw Joseph in the pit? There was no room in the gallery
• Who was the greatest financier in the Bible? Noah. He floated his stock while everyone else was in liquidation
• Who was the largest woman in the bible? The woman of Samaria
• Who was the greatest female financier in the Bible? Pharaoh's daughter. She went down to the Nile and drew out a little prophet
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