A sermon for easter, 2018

This sermon, with commentary, will be appearing in the Anglican Theological Review in the winter of 2019.

So.There’s a thief who wants to rob a house. He’s a professional, see, and so he carefully stakes out a big nice house in a quiet little town. He watches all day, until the family he has seen coming in and going out all day come out together, dressed up for a nice dinner or night out. He watches them all leave, and assumes they will be out for some time.

So the thief walks up to the house, and knocks –“Hello?” No answer. He tries the door and, because this is a nice quiet town just like ours, he finds it unlocked. “Hello?” he calls again, from the foyer. And this time he hears a voice from far away say faintly, “Shame on you – I see you, and Jesus sees you.”
He’s more confused than scared, and so the thief walks down the hallway towards the back of the house. Again, a voice says, a little louder now, “I see you, and Jesus sees you.”

The light in the kitchen is on. Maybe, he thinks, there’s an invalid grandparent who’s bene left behind as the rest of the family goes out for a nice night. He walks to the back of the kitchen, turns a corner, and there he sees ….
… a parrot in a cage. The parrot looks at him and says, “I see you, and Jesus sees you.”

And the thief is not afraid, but amused. In fact, he smacks the side of the bird’s cage the tosses it from its perch. “You silly creature,” he says, “I’m not afraid of you.”

The bird, ruffled, gets up, and looks the man straight in the eye – “I see you, and Jesus sees you!” And then the
bird looks behind the intruder.

The thief turns, following the parrot’s gaze, just in time to see a giant, slobbering Doberman launch itself off the bottom of the back stairwell. “Sic ‘em, Jesus!” the parrot screams.

…Good one, no?

This was a joke told to me by a Roman Catholic priest in the middle of Lent.  And the two of us, along with our local Methodist pastor, have been joking about it in a group text since then, in part because there’s nothing tired clergy need more at this point of the year than humor.

But Bill, my Roman Catholic stand-up friend did tell me that there’s a tradition in the church of telling a joke on Easter Sunday – because today is the day that God plays a divine joke on all of us!

Today, God plays the ultimate joke on death and evil – you may think you’ve won, God chuckles to herself, but have I got a punchline for you. Today, against all the forces of darkness and evil, God has the last laugh.

At the risk of exposing myself as the pompous jackass you all suspect me to be, let me say that my favorite book for many years now has been Moby Dick. I’ve read it now quite a few times, and each time it seems like a different story. That’s what great literature is, it’s something we can come back to again and again, finding new depth of meaning each time.

So, first time I read Moby Dick, it’s a about humanity’s fight with nature. Second time … maybe it’s about goodness struggling mightily with evil, a work of process theology. Third time: very boring book about whaling.

Now the fourth time I read Moby Dick I knew the story well. And through the beginning chapters I was waiting for chapter 49. Here, Melville writes in the voice of his narrator, Ishmael:
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.

I read Moby Dick again this winter. And this time… this time I let this this quote become the lens through which I read the entire book. I read it as Melville’s great big joke on me, the reader: Moby Dick as a parody of all the Great American Novel is supposed to be.

At the very least, reading Moby Dick as comedy makes it much more entertaining. Reading those long digressions on whaling practices in an ironic faux-scholarly tone makes them much more tolerable. The text becomes fresher, looser, easier.

What I want to ask you to do today is to do the same with the Gospel.

Consider Easter – the very miracle of the resurrection – as a great joke. God’s joke on our expectations and fears. A parody of the story of salvation we might be expecting.

I bet that the moment where Jesus revealed himself to Mary, she felt exactly like Melville’s Ishmael – that the whole of the world, the whole of her life, was one big long joke – and herself the butt of it.

And with what joy must Mary have greeted her Lord – her friend – who was lost but now was found, who was dead but now was risen, who was gone forever but suddenly there in the flesh to show her – her - that God would get the last laugh.

I’d like to imagine the moment right before that moment too, the moment in the garden where the Holy Trinity are giggling together behind Mary’s back. They know just how shocked Mary will be when this silly gardener turns out to be none other than the beloved teacher she thought utterly gone. God rubs her hands together because she is so tickled this all worked out so perfectly. The Holy Spirit throws an elbow into Jesus’s side (maybe the Christ winces, the mirth of Easter doesn’t mean Good Friday didn’t leave a mark).

Sic ‘em, Jesus, I can hear the Spirit saying – Go show her that there are no tears to be cried, unless they are tears of joy and mirth. 

That’s not a good joke -  That is a GREAT joke!

A great joke that God is playing on us – and on all the powers, principalities, and pharaohs of this world.

A joke played on death – and everything else – that pretends that it is greater than God’s love for us. A joke played on doubt, and hurt, and sin – and all those thieving fears that make us wonder if God’s promises ever really will be fulfilled, or if anyone is ever coming back to save us.  A joke played on everything – even our very worst selves - that would set itself up as if it could come between us and God.

Joke’s on us! April Fools! (NB: Easter really was April Fool's Day this year.)

Now you know a good joke takes time to develop. Maybe even three days in a tomb. A good joke holds us in suspense… we know that something is coming, but we don’t know when to expect it, or what form it will take. A good joke makes us chuckle – but a great joke … ah, a great joke has a punchline that changes everything before and after. We have to rethink the whole story that we just heard. We might have to rethink the whole of our world, or at least how we’ve been reading it.

A great joke makes us see everything differently, reconsider what we know. And that’s exactly what Easter should do. That’s what Easter can do, if we are willing to get in on the joke with Jesus and laugh a little.

And I’m talking about a good, clean, liberating laugh – a laugh that is tinged with relief. Not a laugh from a dirty pun or at someone else’s hurt. A laugh that comes from the world being exposed for just as silly, just as paper thin, as we have always suspected it to be.

I think that’s how Mary might have laughed – with joy, delight, relief - when she realized who she was speaking to in the Garden that day.

It’s a laugh God wills for us today – yes, even in church! Today you get to giggle, chortle, chuckle, even snort a little in church. Because today we celebrate that God chose what seems weak and foolish to us to be our source of strength, and the salvation of us all!

Joke’s on us – we are the fools!

May we all be fools for Christ.

For being fools for Christ means we recognize that the same sad story this old world tells us is merely the set-up to God’s most famous punchline –
Oh death, where is thy sting?
Oh tomb, where is your victory?

Those powers of death and sin – those thieves of joy and hope – are vanity of vanities, nothing more than God’s cosmic set-up.

Being fools for Christ may make us act in ways the world deems foolish: Loving more radically, more freely than any rational person would. Raising kids to value themselves for who they are and not what they do. Giving away our wealth instead of hoarding it. Turning the other cheek and being peacemakers in our homes and in our streets.

Fools for Christ will share, care, preach and teach in ways this old world is not ready for. And when they tell us “you can’t do that!” or, “that’s not how that works!”  We fools will just laugh to ourselves, and pray they someday get in on the joke too.

There are so many times when this old world seems bleak and hopeless. Times when a knowing, dark humor is the very thing called for, the very thing that will save us from the pit of despair. This day we should all be foolish - not just for April, but for Christ! For the resurrection is a brilliant, wonderful joke! A masterpiece of timing and upheaval that forces us to read the rest of the story differently.

So many thieves DO sneak in during the night. They wait until it is dark - when our defenses are down, when our best selves have gone out to dinner and left the door open. So many thieves break in to steal what hope we have tried to shore up for ourselves. We have no power in ourselves to save ourselves, which means that we are entirely reliant on God’s grace and power - things that seem foolish entirely at first reading.

At times like that, it is as if we find ourselves alone in that dark tomb, not sure of how or whether we will make it out – and if so, what the point could even be. Beset by thieving doubt… by temptation… by evil… by fear - it would seems we are trapped in the same old story.

But suddenly there comes a voice  – I see you, and Jesus sees you.

And then the light bursts forth, with the luminosity of a thousand suns, and a voice seeming as if from heaven proclaims the words that will roll the stone away and set us free –

​ Sic ‘em, Jesus!