Jes Jokin’

By Stephanie Prichard –

“Knock, knock.” My five-year-old granddaughter grinned in anticipation.

Oh boy. I didn’t know she’d entered the torture-through-humor years. “Who’s there?”

“Interrupting chicken.”

“Interrupting chicken who?

She frowned. “Wait. Let’s start over. Knock, knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Interrupting chicken.”

“Interrupting chicken who?”

“Buh-katt,” she shrieked, in a pretty convincing imitation of a shrieking chicken. “Wait, Grandma!” Tears sprang to her eyes. “You went too fast.”

“Sorry, Ella. Let’s start over.”

She gulped back her disappointment. “Knock, knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Interrupting chicken.”

”In—ter—rup—ting—Chi—”

“Buh-katt!” The piercing shriek segued into cackles of laughter.

“Ella, that’s funny!” I hardy-har-harred it up with her.

“Let’s do it again, Grandma! Knock, knock.”

Oh boy.

The delight of humor begins in infancy. Think of the giggles that respond to Peek-A-Boo. The surprise of boo! is the same surprise of the punch-line of a joke. The unexpected evokes laughter. Or, put another way, the abnormal juxtaposed on the normal tickles our funny bone.

That’s why Sarah laughed in Genesis 18:12 when the Lord announced that she, at age ninety, would have a son. “Therefore, Sarah laughed within herself, saying, ‘After I have grown old, shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?’” Getting pregnant, juxtaposed on the fact that she was way past her childbearing years, had to be a joke! When Isaac, whose name means “laughter,” was born, Sarah said, “God has made me laugh, and all who hear will laugh with me. Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children?” We are invited to giggle with her at this marvelous contradiction of normal childbearing.

Scripture shows God in several instances laughing in derision. In Psalm 2, “Rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying ‘Let us break Their bonds in pieces and cast away Their cords from us.’ He who sits in the heavens shall laugh; the Lord shall hold them in derision.” Laughable, indeed, to see man’s might juxtaposed on God’s!

Sixty-nine lines in Job 41 describe God’s awesome creature, the Leviathan. “Shall one not be overwhelmed at the sight of him? No one is so fierce that he would dare stir him up.” Nevertheless, sword, spear, javelin, dart, arrow and slingstone are flung at him. Place these paltry weapons next to the Leviathan’s airtight scales of armor, and in verse 29 you find “he laughs at the threat.”

It’s not mockery or derision that creates humor—it’s the juxtaposition of the abnormal on the normal. Unlike the Leviathan, though, we aren’t covered with a hide of armor. We can hurt and be hurt when humor is used as a weapon. But, properly used, humor pleases God. A merry heart, Proverbs tells us, “makes a cheerful countenance,” “has a continual feast” and “does good, like medicine.”

So, here you go, more clucking chickens to make your heart merry:

A pair of chickens walks up to the circulation desk at a public library and say, “Buk Buk BUK.” The librarian decides the chickens want three books, so gives them three.

Around midday, the two chickens come back, quite vexed, and say, “Buk Buk BukKOOK!” The librarian gives them another three books.

Later in the afternoon, the two chickens return, looking very annoyed, and say, “Buk Buk Buk BukKOOOOK!” Suspicious now, the librarian gives them several more books and decides to follow them.

She follows them out of the library, into a park and down to a pond. Hiding behind a tree, she gasps as the two chickens throw the books at a frog. They cackle in fury when he says, “Rrredit. Rrredit. Rrredit.”