The most overlooked part of the emotions of Jesus is his sense of wit and humor, often evident in his teaching. Western readers miss it because of cultural difference with the Near East culture of biblical times. Especially, in Jesus' parables, his metaphors probably brought ripples of laughter down the hillside. While, we take with seriousness "removing the log from our own eyes" and "a camel passing through the eye of a needle," the crowds of Jesus' day would have loved those sayings for their exaggeration. The use of such humor in the ancient Near East would serve to drive home Jesus' point, just as comedians do so well today.
His favorite target, though, was the religious elite, and the common people might have howled at his sarcastic descriptions of them. The twinkle in the eye is not recorded, but, oh so evident, when Jesus talks about the Pharisees "straining gnats and swallowing camels." (Matthew 23:24) Matthew 23:5 is a Saturday Night Live satire waiting to happen in Old Palestine: "They make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long" would have brought laughter from the crowd as the obvious word-picture of the encumbrances of showy religion would be easy to ridicule.
Jesus also used sarcasm, which is hard to capture with the written word. An example is in Luke 5:30. With Jesus teaching about the transformation of people so they can receive new revelation and new teaching, he used the analogy of the problem of placing new wine in old wineskins. Only Luke records the follow-up statement, "And no one after drinking old wine desires new; for he says 'The old is better.'" If we don't appreciate Jesus' use of irony and the subtle humor of sarcasm, Elton Trueblood (writer of The Humor of Christ) would surmise this sounds like he just nullified the entire parable, except that we miss the exaggerated tone of voice Jesus must have used.
The moral of Jesus' parable is acutely in the opposite meaning of his words in this statement, but we miss it if we don't understand the potential of Jesus' sarcastic wit. It is hard to justly record Jesus' meaning, which may be the reason that only Luke has it present. The Synoptics don't want to confuse the lesson. Luke may have included the statement because he wanted to show Jesus' humorous way of teaching.
I relate it to the modern-day equivalent when I have said in church board meetings, "We've always done it that way" in complete (but deadpan) sarcasm and with raised eyebrow. This is a ripple of chuckles and smiles, for the members understand my true meaning. No one writes it down in the minutes exactly that way because words alone cannot capture my true intent.
So, Jesus was funny. Crowds followed him not because he was dour and condemning in his lessons and outreach. He used humor to point out truth that all his listeners needed to hear. He understood that "Laughter is holy when it penetrates our pretensions and feelings of self-righteousness."
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