At one such party, a small dinner party thrown by the Schulzes at their home in California, my wife and I were guests along with several other couples. One of the ways Sparky kept everybody amused that night was to constantly throw into the conversation the same far out question, this question always seeming to be completely unrelated to anything else that was being said. The first time he did this it stopped our conversation cold when, in our surprise, we all of course looked to him to supply us with the answer.

But apparently he wasn*t sure of the answer himself and so this same question kept popping up all night. His question was this: What did Jesus mean when he said, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven"? (Luke 10:18)

Months later, I asked him what he*d been getting at that night in "the question of the evening". And I wasn*t completely surprised to learn that both of us had been thinking along the same lines. But for Sparky there was a much more personal concern behind his question.

After all, this man was a cartoonist. And he also called himself a Christian. And so he was interested in what relationship he might find in the Bible between Christ and comedy, faith and the funny, humor and the holy. And, contrary to a more superficial view of the matter, this is not such an easy thing to do. For instance, where does the New Testament ever tell us that Jesus laughed, or even smiled? Or told a joke that was really a joke and not some colorful way of getting to a serious point?

What Sparky was finding in the biblical passage he quoted was evidence that Jesus did indeed laugh at least once in the New Testament; that at precisely this crucial point, and maybe at no other time, Jesus may have actually thrown his head back and with eyes closed and his mouth wide open, did most certainly laugh loud and long—with great gusto and with very good reason for laughing. And in examining the reason for Jesus’ laughter at this point, we also come to the very center, the crux of the good news, the "gospel." So let’s look at this passage of scripture and see if its meaning can also be seen in Peanuts.

The passage in question is Luke 10:17-24, the place in the New Testament that talks about "the fall of Satan." But Satan’s fall is never going to make much sense to us unless we first understand the problem this fall is seen to be the remedy for—namely, "the fall of man."

Shultz’s Peanuts first showed up in newspapers on October 2, 1950. And this is the way it began:

In other words, Schulz began at the beginning. He started out by graphically showing us how we all start out. And how*s that? We all start out with the problem introduced to us in the first chapter of the Old Testament, the so-called "fall of man."

But now in conscious contrast to our original fall, our "original sin", our all starting out on the wrong foot, the New Testament brings us smack into another fall. Now we are told of the fall of Satan, the one who*s caused all this trouble in the first place. The New Testament proclaims that Christ has now shot Satan out of the sky. As the New English Bible puts it in Luke 10: 17 and 18:

"The seventy (disciples) came back jubilant. ‘In your name, Lord,’ they said, ‘even the devils submit to us.’ Jesus replied, ‘I watched how Satan fell, like lightning, out of the sky.’ "

Christ has now overcome the fall of man by bringing about Satan*s fall. Satan is now done for. He continues to cause trouble in the world in the meantime, but in reality his days are already numbered. Satan, evil, sin, death have already been defeated. "The victory is mine," Christ could say, "I have conquered the world" (John 16:33, NEB).

And where in Peanuts do we see this "over-our-heads" combat and its inevitable outcome taking place? We see it most clearly in Snoopy*s struggles with a character very much like the Bible*s personification of evil, Satan, an aristocrat in red. We see it in Snoopy*s fights with the Red Baron. Obviously for Snoopy the Red Baron represents "the wickedness in this world...the evil that causes all this unhappiness." This is why Snoopy*s "missions* often turn out to be real flesh and blood struggles.

But if it really is true that Satan, or the Red Baron, has really already fallen like lightning out of the sky," wouldn’t this give Jesus, and Christians along with him, very good reason for laughter from the bottom of their hearts? What could be better news than that all evil has already been defeated? Snoopy knows that "Someday I*ll get you, Red Baron." He knows this because the first—and last—war for the world has already been fought and won by the "allies." World War I is over. And the Red Baron and his kind have already been "got."

And Schulz*s amazing imagination was capable of extending this analogy in many different directions. For instance, as we attempted to show in The Gospel According to Peanuts, Schulz from very early on often used Snoopy—the dog being a biblical symbol for faith—as a kind of Christ-figure or as a "little Christ", a Christian. This would mean then that Snoopy*s doghouse, his "Sopwith Camel," can sometimes be seen as a stand-in for the church, which is, after all, the battle charger of Christ. And this would explain why Snoopy feels about his Sopwith Camel the same way Christ feels about the church: Christ "loved the church and gave himself up for it." (Ephesians 5:25, NEB)

All of this raises the interesting question of whether the Post Office is aware that one of its newer first-class 

stamps is actually a depiction of Christ and his church in hot heavenly pursuit of the Devil. They probably don*t know this. But that*s OK. The Post Office doesn*t always have to know what’s going on.

But then our passage from Luke continues. Jesus says: "And now you see that I have given you the power to tread underfoot snakes and scorpions and all the forces of the enemy, and nothing will ever harm you. Nevertheless, what you should rejoice over is not that the spirits submit to you, but that your names are enrolled in heaven ... Jesus exulted in the Spirit and said, ‘I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for hiding these things from the learned and wise, and revealing them to the simple. Yes, Father, such was thy choice.’ " (Luke 10:19-21, NEB)

What a delightful sense of humor God must have, to reveal himself to mere children and the simple, while the wise and the learned are still scratching their heads wondering what’s going on! And it was just "at that moment" that Sparky saw Jesus laughing, as Jesus "exulted in the Spirit" and marveled over the wild choices that God can make. For in the world of the Spirit, and frequently in the world of Peanuts, the learned and the wise are going to have to wake up and accept firm guidance from the lowly and the simple:

And then Jesus says: "Everything is entrusted to me by my Father, and no one knows who the Son is but the Father, or who the Father is but the Son, and those to whom the Son may choose to reveal him." (Luke 10:22, NEB)

So, then, finally everything is entrusted to Christ, the sheep dog. He selects the sheep, rounds them up, lets them know who their master is, and protects them from all harm.

And then finally in our passage from Luke: "Turning to his disciples in private Jesus said, ‘Happy the eyes that see what you are seeing! I tell you, many prophets and kings wished to see what you now see, yet never saw it; to hear what you hear, yet never hear it.’ " (Luke 10:23-24, NEB)

This verse says again what the previous verse has told us: that God himself chooses whom he calls and calls whom he has chosen. The others see and hear and understand nothing. In an interview. Charles Schulz once said, " If you are a Christian ... you are one of the ‘called-out ones,’ who have been called out to serve God." ¹

And who are these whom God chooses or calls? St Paul puts it this way: "My brothers, think about what sort of people you are, whom God has called ... to shame the wise. God has chosen what the world counts folly, and to shame what is strong, God has chosen what the world counts weakness. He has chosen things low and contemptible, mere nothings, to overthrow the existing order." (I Cor. 1:27-28, NEB)

Again. this is why the gospel is so funny. It*s good and happy-making news, this gospel is; and it comes to us in such a marvelously unexpected way:

Perhaps "never" is too strong a word for Charlie Brown to use here. This is because Sparky Schulz was a "Christian universalist." He believed, as I do also, that finally all people are going to be rounded up by Christ the sheep dog. He believed that because the Red Baron has already fallen from heaven, that ultimately all people would replace the Red Baron, or Satan, in heaven. The direction of Sparky Schulz*s theology is from "security blanket" to "blanket security." That is, he was very realistic about the false and weak little securities that sinful human nature would always find to fearfully cling to—mere security blankets in their flimsy ability to protect us and save us. At the same time he believed even more strongly in the gospel—the gospel that says that Christ has already saved all of us from all false gods or false securities; that now in Christ*s defeat of the Red Baron, blanket security has been won for us all and will finally come to us all. Sin—all sin—has been once and for all defeated by love. Christ, as represented by Snoopy, has already shot down Satan, represented by the Red Baron. That*s what Sparky Schulz believed. And that*s also what has always given Peanuts its depth, its insight, its good and decent humor, and its appeal to just about everybody. Peanuts is so good because there*s so much good news in it.