“Jokes don’t really have a place in sermons. To tell a joke that is obviously set down in a sermon without any relationship to the thrust of the sermon, is to risk trivialization of the sermon.
Yet when the gospel, laid next to the human condition, produces humor, then I think it’s fine to let that humor shine through in the sermon. Many of Jesus’ parables tend to be close cousins of our jokes. Whenever anyone who is high and mighty is brought down low (the pompous banker who slips on the banana peel), we laugh. And there is a great deal of that sort of movement in the gospel; therefore there will be a number of opportunities for humor in our sermons on the gospel. The most appropriate humor in preaching is that which arises out of our confrontation by the gospel.”
–William Willimon, Preaching Master Class (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2010), 62.
