There’s a TV show that’s a guilty pleasure in my (Orin’s) house, it’s called “Impractical Jokers.” There are these four guys who have been friends since high school, and, in a cross between classic hidden camera TV shows and improv comedy, basically try to put each other in embarrassing situations, telling them often what to say and do through a hidden ear-piece. It’s a genius approach to the genre really – in most hidden camera shows, the entertainment or humor comes from seeing how the “victim” reacts to a surprising situation. This show is less about that and more about how these 4 guys are reacting to what they’re being told to say and do.
But why I bring these guys up has little to do with the show, actually. They have been friends, I mentioned, since high school, Monsignor Farrell Catholic High School on Staten Island in NYC to be precise. As products of Catholic education, occasionally that comes through on the show, for better or worse. Typically worse, I would say. I won’t go into everything, but what’s on my mind today is a bit where two of the four enlist a strange to help settle a argument they are told to have: who is more powerful. Batman or Jesus?
It’s an entertaining bit, as the bits almost always are. There’s a section of the argument where one of the guys asks if Jesus’s power is really his or did it come from God? There’s so much to unpack in just that brief question— First, to start somewhere, we of faith don’t talk about Jesus and his power in past-tense, we use present tense! Jesus is alive, risen from the dead, and still exists today. Exists, of course, in a different mode of being than when he was the Word at creation, and during his 33 years of walking the earth and God-made-flesh, but still the same Jesus.
Then, of course, we need to acknowledge that Jesus is God – both God and human to be precise. Not one or the other, not half-and-half, but both. Sometimes we faithful like to use the name “God” when really what we mean to say is “God the Father.” Sometimes that’s to avoid patriarchal language, or sometimes it’s just an error, intentional or not. God is trinity, God is community. Jesus is God, and the only way to distinguish him from Father and Spirit is— well, is that he’s not those two persons, he is his own person of the Trinity. Ever hear a preacher struggle with a homily on Trinity Sunday? This kind of theological plate-spinning is just the tip of the iceberg as to why.
Anyway. Jesus lives now! Jesus has power – now! And yes, is more powerful than batman. Watch the clip here if you want. Even the stranger they list to settle the argument agrees.