If more serious Jesus has failed to fix world, is laughing the way? - Starting Point - Column

God, it is said, made us in his own likeness, and we have returned the compliment. Over and over we make God the Son a sign of the times. In the early years, he was Jesus the Good Shepherd. For a while he was Jesus Pantokrator, the almighty ruler. On and off he has been the Suffering Servant, the Lamb of God and other manifestations of how we felt.

And now, late in the second millennium, can you believe - Jesus the Laughing Lad?

Readers will search many an art museum for a more upbeat messiah than "The Risen Christ by the Sea" on page one. Painted by Jack Jewell of Scituate, Mass., it graces the letterhead of, yes folks, the Fellowship of Merry Christians. The Fellowship and its official publication, "The Joyful Noiseletter," are the offspring of Cal and Rose Samra. Their venture may be a significant straw in the theological (not to mention artistic) wind.

Some say art reflects reality, that it holds up the mirror not only to nature but to politics and the whole hurly-burly of life, including religion.

However, the religion traditionally reflected by images of Jesus has been, at best, somber, occasionally depressing. Russian icons are great but do little for drooping spirits. Or take the German artist Matthias Grunewald, whose suffering Christs have the same relation to good cheer as a toothache.

Heinrich Hofmann has been blamed for popularizing the sentimental, tormented Jesuses of the recent past. Even Georges Rouault, one of the great Christian artists of the century - what caught his eye was not life's little hilarities. Wrote theologian Raissa Maritain of Rouault's work: "He uttered his horror of moral ugliness, his hatred of bourgeois mediocrity, his vehement need of justice, his pity for the poor, finally his lively and profound faith."

Others say art creates a new reality - blazes a trail, shakes up the folks, instigates.

And even amuses?

This takes us back to Laughing Jesus. But let's face it, the Jesus under advisement is one silly-looking dude. Not one to be taken seriously. Least of all as a savior.

In the end it comes down to that: What people think will save them. Save them from sorrow, boredom, bad odors, debt, hell. The real problems are always weighty, so we have tried weighty solutions, from Wacc to the World Trade Center, bringing a god of gloom and doom to bear on a world of gloom and doom.

Maybe we're trying too hard. A problem of the oversober righteous is not just that they want everything fixed their way but that they want it fixed. How can they be sure what needs to be fixed, or how or when or in what order? Except their own broken-down stuff, of course. Maybe if they stood back from the rest of us, things would fix themselves.

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote: "One person I have to make good: myself. But my duty to my neighbor is much more nearly expressed by saying that I have to make him happy if I may." Now, there's a tune for the soul to dance to in the third millennium. If everyone made everyone happy, we would all be good.

Maybe (finally) art neither reflects nor creates all that much, only what we pretend to ourselves it reflects or creates. Art may be just art, something staring back at us, an enigma, mocking us, daring us - it's so hard to say how much of reality is "out there" and how much is in our own minds all the time. Likewise, how much of Jesus is "out there" or how much was put in our heads by others.

Back now to the Samras (they made NCR promise to give their address, which is, P.O. Box 895, Portage, MI 49081-0895; and mention that Laughing Jesus is available for $5 plus $3.50 postage). The April issue of the "Noiseletter" is out. The main article wants to know why "Lent, the sorrowful season, is observed for 40 days, while Easter, the season of joy, is celebrated for only one day?" This is a fair question, and the answer no doubt says a lot about the Christian spoilsports who made such a lopsided arrangement.

There's a limerick inside:

Jonah was strident, not bland, too tough for the poor whale to stand.

It goes without question he got indigestion and spit Jonah out on the land.

OK, so the humor is low-octane. For example, "Some people are kind, polite and sweet-spirited - until you try to get into their pew."

And as soon as you can control yourself, bear this one, which packs its own little punch: "No man ever repented of being a Christian on his deathbed," not to mention, "No candle loses any of its light when it lights another one."

But over all the words looms the presence of Jesus the Silly Twit, Is the goofy image outrageous? Is it unworthy? Would it embarrass Jesus, make him mad? It might. If it would, we have further problems, because this would mean we have a dour dude waiting in heaven to frown at the first hoot or holler.

Theology and theodicy have dealt with everything from God's ubiquity to his omnipresence, but never a chapter on the divine sense of humor. There has always been a hole in the story. (The clergy - perhaps to make up for this lack - are mildly famous for their mildly ribald rectory humor.)