Faith Can Be a Funny Thing

God with a sense of humor? Jesus a stand-up comic? Laughter in the Bible?

Sometimes it’s hard to see anything funny in religion, especially when the emphasis is on the thou-shalt-nots, hellfire and an omnipotent God.

Yet sometimes, clerics say, in between all that righteous living, divine justice and awe before the Almighty, you just gotta laugh.

The best preachers have long appreciated the value of humor in teaching immutable truths--and poking fun at themselves and anyone with holier-than-thou pretensions.

Recently, for example, a Lenten sermon underscoring the point that humans are not God was introduced by the Very Rev. Mary June Nestler with a story about her 5-year-old daughter.

“I had raised my voice with her,” said Nestler, dean of the Episcopal Theological School at Claremont. “She looks me in the eye and said, ‘God wouldn’t yell at me, Mommy.’

“I said, ‘I’m sorry, but I’m not God.’ She put her hands on her hips and put her foot forward and looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘You’re sure not!’ ”

Humor is so important that the Talmud, a collection of ancient Jewish law and tradition, instructs anyone leading a religious study to begin with “something light”--in other words, a joke.

“I would shrivel up and die without it,” Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein said of religious humor. Adlerstein, an Orthodox rabbi who heads Project Next Step at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, keeps a file of jokes he’s used, and the groups he’s addressed, so that he doesn’t repeat them.

One of his favorites is about a little Jewish girl standing in the vestibule of a large synagogue looking at a World War II memorial plaque emblazoned with two American flags.

“What’s that?” she asks the rabbi. The rabbi pulls himself up with significant pride. “That’s in memory of congregants who died in the service,” he tells her. “‘Which service is that?” she asks. “Rosh Hashana or Yom Kippur?”

Religious humor isn’t restricted to synagogues and churches. Motion pictures such as “Sister Act,” starring Whoopi Goldberg as a wacky nun on the run, poked fun at a calcified order of sisters. The late George Burns in “Oh, God!” was a quirky, cigar-chomping deity who used a schoolgirl to put out the word that God was still in business and wanted everyone to do the right thing.

Now, the television special “The Joke’s on Thee,” which premieres at 9:15 p.m. Sunday on Showtime, picks up the pace. The show, a collection of stand-up routines and interviews, features comedians and clergy, including Jonathan Winters, Oral Roberts, Jesse Duplantis, the late Steve Allen, Mark Russell, Paul Rodriguez, Jim Brogan, Robert G. Lee, Pat Boone and Maripat Donovan, whose theatrical “Late Night Catechism” is now in its ninth year in Chicago.

Between them, they manage to take on religious institutions but steer largely clear of making fun of the Almighty.

Donovan, a Catholic comedian who performs as a nun, said she has the highest regard for women in religious orders. “I portray them as real persons,” she said. “They are not psychotic killers or women who are incapable of taking care of themselves in the real world. That’s not what real nuns are like. . . . They are not only able to take care of themselves, but they take care of us too.”

R.J. Johnson, who produced the show with executive producer Matthew Crouch, said he’s not an active, churchgoing Christian. But he grew up as a Lutheran and said he wanted a show that appealed to both a secular and religious audience. He said he spent five years collecting filmed performances and conducting interviews.

“I see a lot of stern faces on TV arguing about abortion, evolution and all this stuff and I’m saying, ‘Where’s the joy, kids?’ I’m 51 years old. I’ve had my first heart attack,” Johnson said in an interview. “I want a little joy.”

For the most part, comedians who poke fun at religion don’t make overarching theological points. Instead, their jokes are largely aimed at either human foibles or institutional rules. Some examples:

Comedian Jack Mayberry: “I had an atheist tell me to go to hell one night. I told him, ‘I don’t think you can go around saying that. You better reread your manual.’ ”

Comedian Tom Dreesen speaking of celibate Catholic priests: “Can you imagine giving up your sex life and then people come in once a week for confession to give you the highlights of theirs?”

Comedian Kathleen Madigan on the evolution debate: “If we come from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?”

Christian comedian Robert G. Lee loosens up his audiences by taking a little license in retelling the story of Jonah, who was swallowed by a whale after he refused God’s command to warn the biblical city of Nineveh to turn from its wickedness:

“People of Nineveh. I’ve just been vomited upon your shores after spending three days in the belly of the great fish. Repent! Or I shall not bathe!”

There are limits of taste, usually boiling down to the credo: Laugh about religion, not at it.

“It’s like making a joke about your friend or someone you really love,” said the Rev. John Goldengay, an Episcopal priest and theology professor at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena. “You have to ask yourself the question: Is that a joke told in love about a friend I really love?”

Jesus himself was not above the use of humorous irony to get a point across, stand-up Christian comedian Lee said. An example is Jesus saying how hard it is for a rich person to get into heaven.

“He’s playing to poor people so he knows his crowd,” says Lee. “He’s insulting the rich people with all their pretension and accouterments. It’s easier for a camel to get through this teeny-weeny little hole than for a rich man to get into heaven. And the poor people are digging this. They don’t particularly like rich people.”

The Bible is full of humor that is often unnoticed. In Genesis 18:12, Sarah, long past childbearing age, laughs when she’s told she’s going to have a baby:

After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?

It may be funny, but the story is about the power of God to do “wonderful” things. Lee has a little fun with the story. “God,” Abraham says, “You’re all-wise. But would you want to live with a 90-year-old pregnant woman? I think not!”

Acts 12:12 records that after escaping from prison, the Apostle Peter wound up at the home of Mary, the mother of John. When the maid came out to see who was knocking at the gate, she was so overjoyed to see Peter that she left him standing there and ran back into the house to tell his disbelieving friends.

“Peter is still at the door wondering if the police are tracing him,” Goldengay said.

Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount has 12 laugh lines, according to the Rev. Jess Moody, a Southern Baptist preacher who for years led Shepherd of the Hills Church in Northridge and is the author of “Holy Humor.”

Moody, a second cousin to the late humorist Will Rogers, said Jesus employed exaggerated humor to make a point. An example was Jesus’ suggestion that if your left hand offends you, cut it off.

“I suspect Christianity has been more pale-faced than Judaism and doesn’t really believe that God has a sense of humor when the indications are that God does,” Goldengay added. “God knows that humor is very important to us. . . . It is because you believe in God that you can laugh.”

It may be a good thing as far as 16th century Protestant reformer Martin Luther was concerned.

“If you are not allowed to laugh in heaven,” Luther said, “I don’t want to go there.”

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Larry Stammer’s e-mail address is larry.stammer@latimes.com