Sermon preached at St John’s Bexley: 31st March 2024: Easter Sunday: Acts 10:34-43; 1 Corinthians 14:1-11; Mark 16:1-8
Why can’t you tell a joke to an Easter Egg?
It might crack up.
What does the Easter Bunny order in Costa?
Eggs-spresso.
Knock knock,
Who’s there?
Harvey
Harvey who?
Harvey great Easter!
You probably know some far funnier jokes than I do: Who’s got a good one?
They don’t have to be Easter related but keep them clean!
Back in the Middle Ages there was this tradition where on Easter Day, the sermon would be full of jokes and funny stories with the aim of getting everyone laughing.
This was called the Easter Laughter (or ‘Risus Paschalis’ for the Latin speakers amongst you) – It did get banned for a bit in the 17th Century because a Pope thought it was getting out of hand, and the Puritans really weren’t into that sort of thing, but I don’t see why we can’t bring it back now:
So what’s so funny about Easter? Any ideas?
What reasons do we have to laugh on Easter Day?
Do we think the women believed the man in the white robe at first? Do we think the disciples believed the women when they told them about the empty tomb?
Could they have thought it was a big, tasteless joke?
Or was Jesus having the joke? Was the joke that it wasn’t a joke and Jesus had risen from the dead?
We react in all sorts of ways to things: And when we can’t get our understanding around a situation, it’s our emotions that take over – Today’s Gospel talks about alarm, terror, amazement – we might respond by screaming, or running away.
But sometimes we respond to things we can’t understand by laughing, especially joyous, delightful things.
Has anyone got another joke that will make us laugh?
Guaranteed laugh?
The idea behind the Easter Laughter was to get across the idea that God has told the biggest joke in the Universe: A joke at the expense of the devil and death.
Because one of the best ways to show our enemies they’ve been defeated is for them to see us laughing!
It’s also a joke that flips our understanding of what it means to live in a World where we think that suffering and death are real and final things, and makes us laugh at just how wrong we were!
Holy week was the set-up, Good Friday let it hang for a moment, and then Easter Sunday comes in there with the punchline: Christ is Risen!
And when you’ve heard a good joke, and laughed at it, what do you do with it next?
You go and tell someone else: The women at the tomb went and told the Disciples and then they and others would go out and tell the World, spreading the joke until it even reached places like Bexley.
Because laughter’s contagious. We laugh, and other people see us laughing and it spreads; joy is contagious! So as we share the Easter joy and laugh in this place now, when our service is over we need to keep smiling, keep the joy going, so that we can spread the Easter Laughter out to the whole world!
Fr. Edward 