Sermon at the Beach, Easter Sunday
Easter – the Best Joke Ever
By The Rev. Eric Christopher Shafer -
This morning, I want to invite you to travel with me back in time, to the time of the Roman Empire to a land called Palestine to a gruesome incident of capital punishment, one which may have seemed inconsequential at the time.
The Roman Empire has just executed a peasant with an attitude, a peasant who refused to pledge allegiance to the Empire, refused to regard Caesar as a god.
From Rome's perspective, this peasant's death was inconsequential and matter of fact. It was routine. There are no historical records to speak of. Other than the hand-me down stories told by his little band of followers, there is no record that in killing Jesus of Nazareth Rome had wrestled down a mighty insurrection.
The Jesus movement, it was not mighty. It was not large - it was tiny. Nor by any stretch of the imagination, was it an insurrection, an uprising, insurgency or rebellion. It was nothing like that.
Jesus and his tiny band of followers, these were no armed terrorists plotting a takeover. They planned no kidnappings, no taking of hostages, no assassination of heads of state.
They carried no weapons. They laid out no strategy. They had no plot to overthrow the powers that were.
What is more, they had no manifesto. Well, except maybe this: to love one another.
No, from the perspective of the Roman Empire, the death of Jesus was inconsequential. A small cog in the vast and mighty machinery of the Roman Empire executed a peasant who had a weakness for love. But as far as Rome goes, the execution was not worth recording or reporting.
This is the set up, so to speak, for Easter, and for Easter as comedy, a joke, the supreme joke in all the world and the last and best laugh ever.
And, here is the joke:
The Easter joke is on death. Death, far mightier even than the mighty Roman Empire; death, which always gets the last word and the last laugh.
Because of Easter, death is made a laughing stock by Easter. In the Easter story it is Life that gets the last word and the last laugh. In the Easter story the joke is on Death and Death is silenced. Death is rendered impotent. In Jesus, Death meets its match and then some.
Death is made a laughing stock by Easter.
Eugene O'Neill, the great American playwright and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, once wrote a play called Lazarus Laughed. The play tells the story of Lazarus. You remember Lazarus – he was Jesus’ friend who died, who Jesus brought back to life from death. In O’Neill’s play, after Jesus brought Lazarus back from the dead, people want to hear from Lazarus what it was like to be dead and brought back, to hear his story.
And Lazarus has a lot to say. Among his many reflections Lazarus tells people that there is no death. But more than what he says, it is what Lazarus does that convinces people. Lazarus laughs. He laughs at everything, even death.
In the book of Ecclesiastes, the author writes:
There is a time for everything,
and a season for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build up,
a time to weep and a time to laugh.
My friends, Easter Sunday is a time to laugh. It is a time to laugh at Death, a time to laugh at earthly power.
Because in the end, here's the thing. In the end, the joke is on them. In the end, God wins. In the end, no matter what, no matter what happens, no matter what you are facing, in the end, my friends, death is dead, and God's got your back.
Christ is Risen!
Christ is Risen Indeed!
Happy Easter.
Amen.
(Thanks to the Rev. Dr. Nancy Taylor).
The Rev. Eric Christopher Shafer
Senior Pastor - Mt. Olive Lutheran Church
Santa Monica, California
Sunday, April 21, 2019
