It happened before before Jesus' last Passover. The disciples were seated about a dinner table praying. Suddenly, Jesus laughed. 

   "Why are you laughing at us?" The disciples asked. Jesus said that he was not laughing at them but at the way they were praying to the sometimes fearsome Yahweh of the ancient Bible, not the God of Love from whence Jesus came.

   The source for all of this? It is not the Catholic or Protestant New Testament. Instead it comes from the Gospel of Judas, a second century Gnostic text. 

   The quoted passage is startling. Jesus laughed? There is not a single reference in our Bible to him even so much as chuckling. Of course, the New Testament was not established until the famous Council of Nicaea (325 C.E.) Many original books were cut. Should Judas have been included?

   Regardless, does it not make sense that the Jesus who wept would also laugh? Do you wonder if he danced & sang as well? (No lightning has struck me yet.)

   Part of the challenge of religion can be taking it & ourselves too seriously. If Jesus is seen as humorless it puts him further from us. We draw closer to one who shares the full range of human feeling.

   And the idea that Jesus imagined himself as the son of a deity more loving than the Old Testament God is highly appealing. It aims us to the God inside. We must first embrace the love within before we can enter the celestial.

   Beyond that, theologian Professor Elizabeth Pagels argues that Judas may not even have been the betrayer we thought. That Jesus picked Judas to turn him over to the Romans to fulfill Biblical prophesy. Holy Smokes! Our historic scapegoat may have gotten a bad rap.

   But, the Christian narrative requires betrayal, crucifixion & resurrection. If he had died in his sleep or by his own hand could we be convinced that Jesus sacrificed himself to save us?

   None of the "new" Judas story dilutes the divinity of Christ. The tattered fragments of this other "gospel" simply affirm something we can celebrate. In the days following Holy Week we can choose to believe that along his earthly journey Jesus, like the rest of us, laughed.

-Reverend Erie Chapman