We are in the second year of a global pandemic. Infection rates, hospitalization, and deaths are rising. As I write this, our region is the COVID hot spot of the nation. Amid these trials, the words “Christ is risen!” might ring hollow for many. How can we celebrate in the middle of a deadly crisis?
But it is precisely because we live in a world of death that we must proclaim the resurrection. The resurrection is God’s last laugh in the face of death. There is a growing movement to reclaim the Sunday after Easter as “Bright Sunday.” The tradition of Bright Sunday began in the early centuries of the church and continues even today in Eastern Orthodoxy. Bright Sunday is a day of holy humor, a day to laugh and be merry because of the resurrection of Jesus.
It was originally observed on Easter Monday. The faithful would gather for a day of joy and laughter with picnics and parties, to celebrate the resurrection. They played tricks on each other, told jokes, laughed, sang, and danced. (Some think it is the origin of April Fool's Day.) Indeed, early church theologians like Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa and John Chrysostom proclaimed that God played a practical joke on the devil by raising Jesus from the dead. The resurrection was God's supreme joke played on sin and death.
Laughter is central to our theology, and the chief festival of laughter is Easter when God turned the tables and death became victory. But holy humor did not begin with Easter. It has its origins deep in the experience of the Hebrew people. From the very beginning, God has been in the business of turning tables. Our scripture lesson from Genesis relates the absurd tale of how God decided to begin the work of redeeming humankind by taking a hundred-year-old man and his ninety-year-old wife and giving them their first child. Sarah laughed when she overheard the story. I don’t think she laughed because she didn’t believe it could happen. I think she laughed because she did believe and saw the sheer absurdity of God’s plan. She got the joke, and the child she bore a year later was named Isaac, which is Hebrew for “laughter,” or more accurately, “He (meaning God) is laughing.”
God is a God of laughter, a God who demonstrates sovereignty by turning tables on our expectations. God starts a family with folks who have one foot in the grave. God takes a band of slaves and defeats the most powerful army of its time. God takes an instrument of horrible, torturous death, and turns it into the means of our salvation.
Joseph of Arimathea is one of the bit players in the Passion story. He was the man who offered a tomb for Jesus' burial. A neighbor asked Joseph why he gave his beautiful hand-hewn tomb to someone else. Joseph replied, "Well, he only needed it for the weekend."
The story is told of a pastor who was speaking to a group of second graders about the resurrection of Jesus when one student asked, "What did Jesus say right after He came out of the grave?" The pastor explained that the Gospels do not tell us what He said. The hand of one little girl shot up. "I know what he said! He said, 'TA-DAH!'"
Praise be to our God, risen and triumphant. The empty tomb echoes with the laughter of God, the last laugh on sin and death. HOWL-lelujah!
Faithfully,
Dan Saperstein, Executive Presbyter
