easter-day-april-4-2010-mp3  (Click here to hear an audio version of this sermon.) 

 

There is an ancient tradition of the Easter joke…a tradition of telling a joke on Easter day that will bring a smile to people’s faces. So at the risk of being politically incorrect, here goes:

 

 A man walking along the Dover beach was deep in prayer. All of a sudden, he said out loud, Lord, grant me one wish.” Suddenly the sky clouded above his head and in a booming voice the Lord said, “Because you have TRIED to be faithful to me in all ways, I will grant you one wish.” The man said, “Build a bridge to France so I can drive over anytime I want.” The Lord said, “Your request is very materialistic. Think of the enormous challenges for that kind of undertaking. The supports required to reach the bottom of The Channel, the concrete and steel it would take! I can do it, but it is hard for me to justify your desire for worldly things. Take a little more time and think of another wish, a wish you think would honor and glorify me.” The man thought about it for a long time. Finally he said, “Lord, I wish that I could understand women. I want to know how they feel inside, what they are thinking when they give me the silent treatment, why they cry, what they mean when they say ‘nothing’, and how I can make a woman truly happy.” The Lord replied, “You want two lanes or four lanes on that bridge?”

 

I tell this joke because it’s a good introduction to the gospel story we just heard.  The gospel from Luke features two things: women figure prominently in the story of the resurrection of Jesus, and, just as the humor of a good joke is based on the unexpected, our story from Luke centers on the fact that the women come to the tomb expecting to find a body and are surprised to find the tomb empty.

 

But in our readings this morning there is another person who comes to realize something that probably came to him in the same way that the humor of a joke comes to us. It’s often said that, if you have to explain a joke you might as well save your breath.

 

And this is the way that Peter must have felt in our first reading from Acts. When Peter says, “I truly understand that God shows no partiality,” he is, in essence, saying, “I have finally come to realize that the joke is on me!” By that, I mean that, like any good Jew, Peter had heard all the stories about the grace and power of God. He had heard all about how God is a God of grace and about the graciousness of God’s power…and about why everyone who got the point was laughing. But it just hadn’t sunk in yet.

 

He knew well the story about the Abraham and Sarah and Isaac, and how, after responding to God’s call they had taken that huge leap of faith and left their homeland. And he knew well the story about how Sarah and Abraham were sitting around in their tent one day, years later, when they had given up any hope of having children or grandchildren, when an angel appeared and announced that Sarah would have a baby even though she was 90 years old.

 

And Peter remembered well how Sarah laughed at the news because it was such ridiculous news, and how the angel told Sarah since she thought this was so funny, God would name her son Isaac, which means “laughter.”

 

But, you see, Peter never understood until now how all this applied to him. He didn’t understand, even after Jesus told the story about the son who had run away from home and wasted his inheritance….and how his father welcomed him back with open arms. He didn’t realize that the father’s joy at the son’s return was supposed to be like God’s joy and laughter – like the laughter after a good joke - over the fact that the son who was dead was now alive.

 

You would have thought that Peter would finally have gotten the joke, would finally have seen the truth, when Jesus told the story about the owner of the vineyard who hired some workers early in the morning and promised then a day’s pay’s for a day’s work and then hired some workers at noon and at the end of the day and gave all the workers the same pay. Peter would have realized how the early workers didn’t get the joke…how they didn’t appreciate the grace of the owner when he decided to pay everyone equally.

 

You’d have thought that, with all these explanations, Peter would have gotten the joke – the joke about God’s abundant, unearned grace so that, when the women came to tell him they couldn’t find Jesus’ body, he would have suspected that God was up to his old tricks and had something new and mysterious up his sleeve.

 

And you’d have thought that, by this point, Peter would have realized the truth – the truth that the grace of God is such that we’d better not count on our own limited expectations about life, because God is the one who goes beyond our expectations. You’d have thought Peter would know by now that when we limit our expectations about the grace of God, well, then, the joke is on us!

 

The joke is on us, isn’t it? The joke is on us human beings who are prepared for a God who strikes a hard bargain, but not for a God who gives as much for one hour’s work as he does for a full day’s work. The joke is on us who have lived so long in a world that fails to keep its promises that we cease to expect that God will keep his.

 

The joke is on us who, like the older brother, are so blinded and trapped by our own dead seriousness, by our determination to have what’s coming to us and to see that others don’t get something that isn’t coming to them that we can’t hear the laughter of a grace that loves nothing more than the embrace of one who was lost and who has returned.

 

The joke is on us who are so stuck in the “same old…same old” routines of our lives that we can’t believe that we could experience the power of God’s love working in and through us to bring about change.

 

And when the women went to the tomb to anoint the body of Jesus, they found that the body was gone….and they were terrified. But the two men who appeared to them at the tomb asked them two questions: “Why do you look in a tomb for someone who is alive?” and “Don’t you remember all the things he told you when he was still in Galilee…that the son of man would be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again?”

 

The women who went to Jesus’ tomb on Easter Day failed to see that the joke was on them. They went expecting to find a dead body, just like Peter, who knew all about Sarah and Abraham, and all about the prodigal son’s father…and all about the promises of God’s grace….but he failed to see that the joke was on him.  Even when the women ran to him with the news that Jesus was gone, Peter still didn’t get it.

 

And that’s the point about Easter. If you have to explain the joke… if you have to explain about grace…maybe it’s just as well to save your breath! Grace, like jokes, can’t be explained. Grace, like jokes, just has to be enjoyed.

 

You and I….we, who are, for the most part, still stuck in our old lives with our old expectations about God, have come here today with Mary Magdalene and the other women to find Jesus. But one doesn’t “find” Jesus the way you’d find a lost button or a bicycle. The Living Christ calls our name…and we remember all the things he said and did about the grace and power of God…and he intrudes into our lives and shatters our expectations. Jesus finds you as he found Peter on the seashore that morning and cooked breakfast for him and told him he loved him…and then, after breakfast, sent him out to do all the works of grace that he’d heard about all his life.

 

What are we expecting here this morning? Here at the empty tomb? The difference for Peter came when the risen Jesus finally appeared to him…when the living Christ found Peter and the light dawned, and Peter remembered all the things Jesus had said and done about the grace of God.

 

And Peter was then able to say, “I have finally come to realize the truth. And the truth is that the joke is on me….because I’ve expected to little of God. I’ve expected a dead body, but the grace and power of God has raised Jesus Christ to new life.”

 

We don’t go looking for Jesus. The risen Jesus comes to us. And he’s looking for you right now. Remember all the things he has told us about the grace and power of God. You can have that power in your life.  That’s the promise of this day. The one who was dead has been raised and he is out searching for us…to bring us the power and grace of God. Take my word. It’s no joke!  Amen.