Matthew 28.1-10                                                                                 Easter Sunday, 2008

“WHO HAS THE LAST LAUGH NOW?”

Have you ever felt laughter well up from such a deep place within that it shook you like an earthquake? Six years ago it shook me as a father.  I was sitting in the den when I heard this raucous rumble from downstairs. From the first inkling, I knew things were either very wrong or very right, nothing in between. Lise’s feet pounded the steps and I braced myself for horror or delight. Her wild, mounting howl exploded through the door. Smiling, with arms open, she sprinted toward me, crouching. As a high school freshman, Lise had made the varsity lacrosse team. It seems like small potatoes, but sports got her into her first-choice college.

When laughter rises from places deep within our being, sometimes we can’t dis-tinguish whether it is the cry of tragic loss or the whoop of blessed vindication. We hear a laugh and wonder for a moment, is this curse or blessing? Maybe that is because as our emotional releases go, laughter and crying aren’t so different.

When Jesus’ friend Lazarus died, we know that Jesus wept.  We might also ex-pect that the Father wept as his only begotten, the one innocent person to walk the earth, was murdered. Like God, we have cried this cry before also as it dawns upon us what we have lost. As we sob from that deep place it feels like an earthquake heaving in our chest. We can hardly get our breath. In a world of suf-fering like this one, if we can’t remember the last time we cried like this, then part of us has likely died, perhaps the same part of us Christ brings back to life today.

Last Sunday, reading of Jesus’ Passion, we heard, “Jesus cried again with a loud voice and breathed his last.  At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, and the rocks were split.” (Mt. 27.50ff) Even the earth’s foundations shuddered as the worst possible thing happened.
 

But today we hear of a second earthquake with a different outcome. “After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. Suddenly, there was a great earthquake. And an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it.”  For Matthew, Easter is a deep divine guffaw of an earthquake breaking the seal on Jesus’ tomb.  For Matthew, Easter is an impudent angel rolling back the stone, herself poised atop it, and waiting for the first visitors--for anyone--so that she could set things straight. If the first earthquake was about despair and tears, this one is about joy and laughter. The second tremor is mirth.

Can you sense a bit of attitude from on high here?  First, this Easter resurrection earthquake offsets the crucifixion tremor, heralding Jesus coming all of the way back to life.  Second, an angel rolls away the stone, breaking the seal the chief priests had so meticulously nagged Pilate into setting upon Jesus’ grave, the im-perial last effort to keep the good man all of the way down after nailing him down.

But that is exactly the point.  God must look down from heaven, and feel nothing so much as a deep belly laugh at our audacity. We are like children, dressing up, playing grown up, issuing orders of how the world will be. How arrogant are our pretenses of control, our illusions of mastery, and our facade of running things? Jesus will stay down because all the human authorities have made their decree? So who are these experts?  Who are these would-be Masters of the Universe?
I don’t think so, says the Lord God, our Redeemer, Maker of heaven and earth.

We all fancy ourselves experts, especially on spiritual matters.  That is, we’re sure of what we can reasonably expect from God and what we cannot. We define the parameters for what God is capable of, based on our experience. Today the Lord is an earthquake chuckling deep beneath our fixed human expectations.  And God’s laughter turns the world topsy-turvy, hope displacing despair, good-ness overmatching evil, love routing hatred, life flaunting its powers over death.

I read a story about America’s oldest college, William and Mary.   During the dark days of the Civil War, the college was closed.   One year became two.  Two years became three and four years closed.  The people in the know, the experts, affirmed that the school was doomed.  It wouldn’t survive.  No way.  A cranky old custodian refused to accept this verdict, however.   So every day for all five years William and Mary was closed, he would ring the bells of the ghost college, as though it were still alive.  Then after that near death, there was a ceremony to mark the reopening of the college. As a centerpiece of the ceremony, who do you suppose they had ring the bells?  The custodian rang them for all he was worth. Can you see smiles on the faces as a simple janitor knew more than the experts?  Jesus’ resurrection is much like that. It defies all of the current prevailing wisdom.

Maybe the lesson is humans cannot nail down, control, and limit the life God sets free in love. At Easter our highly irregular God has exploded barriers we believed would stand forever. Nobody gets up from the ground after the big sleep, we all believe. This rule was immutable.  No exceptions.  No alternatives. No way out. This was why Rome could wield the threat of death so powerfully over rebels and prophets like Jesus.  But today, Easter Sunday, our God has revealed otherwise.

All the experts had a hard time coming to grips with this new life God revealed. They could barely say it aloud, barely hear it from each other, much less believe it. Peter was one such expert.  He tried to halt Jesus’ risky venture before it began. As Jesus disclosed his inescapable end, Peter said, “God forbid it, Lord. This shall never happen to you.”  (Matt. 16.22)  Peter saw no future in it, no gain.

Pilate was an expert. He had seen many street messiahs come and go, most meeting the same sad fate as Jesus.  Pilate had about him that refined, world-weary air of someone who has “seen it all before”. He interrogated Jesus with an air of expertise. “Are you king of the Jews?” Subtext, would you dare threaten Rome?  He asked him: “What have you done?” As though, if Jesus were clever, he wouldn’t be in trouble. He asked him: “What is truth?”  His cynical laugh said the only truth is covering your own derriere and looking out for number one. Then Pilate gave the clamoring horde Barabbas and washed himself of Jesus’ blood.

The women at the empty tomb were experts.  How many dead patriot brothers and zealot cousins, rebelling against Rome’s cruel tyranny, had they embalmed when their bones were broken and their skin took on death’s green-grey pallor? They were experts in how the good always get it in the end.  They were experts in the messes that powerful men make and that women must clean up.  They were experts in the ascendancy of death when everything else was said and done.  They were certain this is how the world would end.  Not with a victorious blast of vindication, but with scant whimpers of resignation at death’s dark victory

But God laughed at all experts as his resurrection earthquake shook loose Jesus’ grave. An angel appeared and rolled away the stone.  Roman soldiers trembled.  The angel sat on that rock, to the side of the tomb’s opening.  Why pause there?  Likely, the angel couldn’t resist reveling in God defying every earthly expert. The angel told the women, “Don’t be afraid. You’re looking for Jesus? He is not here.“  That same angel might also have said to the soldiers.  “Be afraid.  Be very afraid.  For all that your empire was built on now trembles.” The world was forever trans-formed in that moment. For the sweeping shock waves of this earthquake still emanate. When they finally arrive at the farthest reaches of our being, God will alter everything that we always assumed could never change.  It will be glorious.

Last year at Easter we didn’t smile much in this church.  It was our last Sunday in our beloved sanctuary before construction. The prayers felt hollow, the hymns without their zest.  My pretty good sermon fell pretty much flat.  We were feeling the tectonic shifts of the first order, the earthquake of losing a loved holy place without knowing if we’d make it safely to that other side of light, festivity, and life.

This Easter is different. We let God lead us out of our secure comfortableness for a year.  We sacrificed and put up with the countless inconveniences. We pulled together and saw it through despite many difficulties. Like an angel sitting on a rock, we are now poised at the cusp of a new era where God awaits us. Our Thursday night dinner two weeks ago marked the start of getting our laugh back. We laughed at ourselves, our personalities, our foibles, our doubting it could be done.  We laugh today at the light rising in our common life, the festivity bubbling up, at getting our life back and making room for the many generations to follow.

So this year as I walk to the grave with the women, and I discover what God has wrought, Christ the Lord Is Risen Today is not the only song playing in my head. I also hear Ella Fitzgerald singing Gershwin’s, “They all said we never could be happy. They laughed at us and how. But ho, ho, ho, who has the last laugh now.”

Easter is a lousy day for prevailing wisdom and common sense. Experts and facts take a massive hit on Easter as God explodes tidy categories of what life can and cannot be. Have you ever laughed so hard it felt like an earthquake? God has. We call it Easter. Maybe we should try his divine, resurrecting laughter. 

At the end of Dante’s allegory The Divine Comedy we find a telling scene.  Dante has made a tortuous ascent from hell to purgatory to the celestial sphere. As he approaches heaven, Dante hears a sound in the distance he never heard before.  He stops, listens, and writes, Me sembiana un riso del universo.  “It sounded like the laughter of the universe.”  The laughter of the universe is the holy laughter of God as sorrow gives way to joy, lamentation breaks into jubiliation, defeat gives way to hope, and horrible defeat becomes love’s triumph. Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. So let your soul laugh and your spirit smile as you say the words. Amen.

Everlasting God, the span of our life, though it may stretch for long years ahead of us, is brief, a mere candle flame burning to the edge of the taper, compared to the vast stretches of eternity where you dwell, and welcome all who love you.  Though the shortness of our lifetime troubles us, knowing of your dwelling place in eternity gives us peace. In quiet moments of repose, marking forward move-ment of our lives, in dramatic personal change or transformation as a community, or when we are still enough to gaze at the universe through the starry Cape sky, we find reassurance in the words of the prophet Jeremiah, that you have loved us with an everlasting love and your faithfulness extends unabated unto eternity.

For we don’t know what to make of the unknown when we die.  We see so few glimpses of heaven here on earth that its glory is mostly unimaginable to us now. 
And while our heart begs to know more about it, we cannot depend too much on our minds to decipher these mysteries.  Instead we put one foot in front of the other day by day, trusting your goodness and love to triumph of evil and hatred. 

We can walk forward only because today at Easter we discover a deep trust that death is but a doorway to fuller life, in tune with your intentions for us all along.  Indeed sorrow and pain will be banished.  Your love will sweep us irresistibly and fully into the light of your presence and an eternal weight of glory will be ours. We thank and praise you that our tears are caught up in the laughter of the universe. We ask that being an Easter people, you would equip us always to live joyously.