The seventy-two returned with joy and said, “Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name.” He replied, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you. However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure. “All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” Then he turned to his disciples and said privately, “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. For I tell you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.”
Here, Jesus laughs. More than that, he laughs at the disciples – not derisively or demeaningly, of course, but genuinely delighting in their naivete. He laughs like a father laughing at his children, who, caught up in a moment of pretended seriousness, remain wholly unaware of how delightfully and endearing absurd they are! In fact, Jesus, in his prayer, names them as children! He finds their boasting of exorcistic antics “cute”!
Luke crafts this scene expertly, setting Jesus’ joy (v. 21) in relief against the disciples’ (v. 17). They come rejoicing in their victories and successes – “The demons are subject to us!” – and he promptly (mildly, smilingly) rebukes them for their boasting, reminding them of what matters more: “Rejoice that your names are written…” Then, “full of joy,” that is, laughing, he turns to his Father, with a knowing light in his eye.
“I praise you, Father…” This prayer of Jesus’ is a moment of (divine) intimacy. (I was going to write “It is as if,” but that is wrong; forget the “as if.”) Jesus does know how his Father is responding to these disciples’ jubilation; he anticipates the Father’s delight because he knows the Father’s sense of humor.
(I don’t think Luke invented this exchange, though obviously he’s stylized it. No, I think these moments of intimacy were characteristic of Jesus’ life; in fact, I think they were definingly characteristic. Jesus shared – or at least claimed to share – a scandalous intimacy with YHWY, as can be seen best, perhaps, in his Abba prayers. It was on the basis of this intimacy that Jesus made that claim for which, in the end, he would be killed: “no one knows who the Father is except the Son.”)
But back to the point. As I said before, our joy is God’s joy. Here Luke gives us an instance of that intra-trinitarian joy. He tells us of a Jesus who laughs at us in such a way that we know we are blessed. He laughs and we know that we, though we are but children, have been invited into a celebration, a party of infinite delights. He lets us in on the joke, so we can laugh, too.
