Easter 2004:

Someone said to Joseph of Arimathaea on Monday, "That was such a beautiful, costly, hand-hewn tomb. Why did you give it to someone else in which to be interred?"

"Oh," said Joseph, "He only needed it for the weekend!"

That’s the key to understanding Easter. Tombs, graves, columbariums, never contain the persons we have known and loved. Oh, yes, I suppose the shells, the remains can be found there, but not the personality; certainly not the spirit.

Easter is the morning when the Lord laughs out loud, laughs at all the things that snuff out joy, all the things that pretend to be all-powerful, like cruelty and madness and despair and evil, and most especially, that great pretender, death. Jesus sweeps them all away with His wonderful resurrection laughter.

If ever a congregation needed to hear holy laughter it is St. John’s Episcopal Church in Bedford. We have had our share of illnesses and death. So, this is holy laughter day. It is the great reversal that only God could pull off. The one who had been sealed in a borrowed tomb only needed it for a weekend. Friday was victory day for all the forces that rebel against God in the world. Easter Sunday is victory day for God and the great pretender, death, no longer has dominion over God’s resurrection people. This is Easter Sunday, Holy Laughter Day.

That Risen Lord is loose in the world. For some, that is disturbing news. They would just as soon keep him in Joseph’s borrowed tomb. Even sadder, it is disturbing to some Christian folk who believe they have him locked up in dogma, tradition, creed, or doctrine. It seems that just when folks like that get real comfortable, Jesus comes loose and challenges any such attempts to hold him. He is the one who always says, "I have yet many things to reveal to you." He is the Incarnation of the God who always wants to give us much more.

At the very least, part of the genius of Anglicanism, when we operate at our best, is that we recognize that Jesus is loose in our world. Working together, staying together moves us to new insights; new revelations as we are open to the leading of the Holy Spirit. And when we are at our best we come to see the vast difference between saying, "This seems valid and true for us in the here and now, based on what we know at the present time," and saying, "This is true in all times, in all places, for all people and will never change."

Being open to God in Christ is what Easter is all about on this Holy Laughter Day. Jesus only needed the tomb for a weekend. This is Sunday. What, then, does that mean for us? What is expected of resurrection people who gather in great worshipping throngs around the world this day? Just as he was destined to be resurrected, so are we. Surely we believe that in the ultimate sense of the word, but what about in the practical, everyday areas of our lives? If we will follow the way of the cross, if we take his footsteps as our guide along the way, if we will love as he asks us to love, if we cherish others as he commanded, if we will cling to him, serve him, and give up self-serving day by day, our lives will have new purpose and meaning and in very practical ways we will experience resurrected living.

Feeling the power of the resurrection will happen only as we come to understand that we stand convicted and yet forgiven and of infinite worth to this one who leads us in Holy Laughter. Then we may give up behaviors that hurt others and ourselves and know that Easter makes possible a new creation.

We may also feel the power of resurrected living in our mental outlook. St. Paul said in the Epistle, "If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God." As we experience the resurrection, we find our minds rising to a spiritual plane. We give up the gossip we love so well. We stop taking the inventory of others. We learn that racist jokes feed our prejudices and keep us from seeing the truth of our oneness in Christ. We begin to understand the difference between laughing at ourselves and laughing at others. It remains as true today as ever. The only way to have a better world is to be better people. The only way to be a better person is to rely on a power greater than us. Resurrection power will do the trick.

Finally, as we experience resurrected living we realize in a new way that death is not something to be feared but a stage to a larger and more glorious life. I have never heard anyone say, just before they pass from time to eternity, " I wish I had spent more time at the office," or, "I wish I hadn’t gone to church so much and wasted all that time." So, amidst the pains of life and the many mountains to climb and valleys to cross, we can rest in an absolute fact. We will know a glorious resurrection, precisely because Jesus’ resurrection makes it possible.

We are inheritors of Mary Magdalene’s task. We are to go tell his brothers and sisters that we have seen the Lord. His is alive, in our hearts, our lives, and in this place this morning. Like any good salesperson we have to believe in what we are saying before anyone else will believe it.

"It is not ourselves we proclaim, we proclaim Christ Jesus as Lord and ourselves as your servants for Christ’s sake." The Lord is risen!

"A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another as I have loved you." The Lord is risen!

"Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends." He did just that, for a weekend. The Lord is risen!

"Go into all the world and make disciples of all nations, teaching them all that I have commanded you, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. And, lo, I am with you always even to the end of the ages." The Lord is risen!

So, laugh out loud this day. Be joyful in the Lord. Rejoice, again I say, rejoice. May you be swept away by resurrection laughter. The Lord is risen! Amen.