And God Laughed
John 20:1-18
March 27, 2005
I don’t watch a whole lot of television, but I do like cop shows: Law and Order, CSI - Crime Scene Investigations, I realize that those are pretty much guy shows, but that’s who I am.
These crime shows are all about evidence: finger prints, hair fibers, and DNA. They look at murder weapons and do all sorts of interesting things with chemicals and technology and computers in order to make the case against a suspect. They are always very good at what they do, and always manage to find a room for the bad guy at the Gray Bar Hotel before the hour is up. I don’t know how much of it is real, but it is fascinating stuff.
Sometimes you will notice that the main characters of these shows, the police and forensic specialists, know who the perpetrator of a crime is, but they just can’t prove it. And a supervisor will say, “We need evidence.” Reminds me of Sgt. Joe Friday of “Dragnet” when I was a kid. “Just the facts ma’am. Just the facts.”
All of which brings us to Easter Sunday, a day when the facts just don’t make sense. Jesus had been crucified, a form of execution used by the Romans for acts of treason and the sort. His friends had taken his lifeless body off the cross and placed it in a tomb before sundown, intending to come back on the day following the Sabbath and prepare it for proper burial.
Mary Magdalene came first that Sunday morning, so early in fact, that it was still dark. The gospels actually differ on exactly what happened and who got there first. Matthew says that there were two Mary’s there, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary. Mark names the first visitors to the tomb as Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome. Luke names them as Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, Joanna, and the other women who were with them. It is John who places only Mary Magdalene there first. The one constant is Mary Magdalene.
Don’t you wonder what was on her mind? She was no doubt replaying over and over again the events of the past week, still unable to make sense of it all. I’m sure that she had more questions than she had answers, and each question just brought up more questions until her head must have been spinning.
Who knows why she went by herself, why she didn‘t wait for the other disciples to come with her. It was really pretty unusual for a woman to be out alone at that time of the morning. She must have been wondering what in the world she was doing out there and what in the heck was she going to do with that stone that covered the mouth of the grave. But then, in the midst of grief and sorrow, one doesn’t always think too well.
She got to the place and to her surprise, found that the stone which had covered the mouth of the tomb had been rolled away. Running immediately back to Peter and the beloved disciple, she told them the news; reporting that someone had taken the body of their Lord from his grave. They came, saw the empty tomb, got a look at the grave cloths that had been left inside, and then went back home, leaving Mary alone again. I find that to be really curious. They were amazingly unconcerned and self-absorbed. It was as if Mary didn’t exist. They just left her.
As Mary stood weeping, she bent over to look inside the tomb and there, saw two angels sitting where his body had been laid. When they asked her why she was crying, she told them it was because someone had taken the body of her Lord.
Just then a voice from behind her asked the same question, “Why are you weeping?” Not recognizing him as Jesus, and assuming that he was a gardener, she asked him what he had done with the body. Then as he called her name, she identified him as he truly was. She was told that he was ascending to heaven and to the throne of God. She was then told to go and tell the disciples, so she quickly ran to them and gave them the news, proclaiming, “I have seen the Lord.”
It’s a fantastic story, one that has baffled scholars as well as the rest of us for two millennia. It’s really amazing and wouldn’t pass muster with any of our modern day television detectives. Bodies just don’t disappear. Huge stones don’t get moved by themselves. Dead people don’t walk upright again. You can’t explain it. The evidence doesn’t add up.
A few months ago, I read a book titled, When Jesus Came to Harvard.” (Harvey Cox. 2004. Boston: Houghton Miflin.) Harvey Cox has been professor of theology at Harvard Divinity School for as long as I can remember. Some time ago, the curriculum committee of Harvard College decided that every under-graduate should have to complete a core course in moral reasoning. As part of that curricula, Cox was asked to teach a class on the moral implications of the teachings of Jesus. He was surprised when, after just a few semesters, the class grew to several hundred students.
He says in his book that after a few semesters of teaching this course, he realized that he always ended with the crucifixion. He never went on to the resurrection. He writes about it this way.
There was…a reason why I had been trying to steer around the Easter story…I did not know how to explain it to the class…
The resurrection…is something by nature that is not observable or even remotely credible…(pages 273-274, 279).
How do you explain the resurrection? We live in a time when we want the facts; when we want the DNA; when we demand concrete evidence; when physics is more important than theology. How could the resurrection happen? How did God do that? Tell me how God did it, and then maybe we will get around to asking why God did it.
I have told you before that my wife is on the Conference Board of Ordained Ministry. One of the things that body does is interview candidates for ordination. For the candidate, it is an exhausting process that lasts three years following seminary graduation and includes writing theological papers, submitting sermons and Bible studies, psychological tests, interviews in the context of one’s ministry, and these yearly interviews with the Board. I was ordained in 1982. My class was the last one to make it through this process in one year. It has now become a very grueling and very labor-intensive procedure.
They really probe deep to get to understand how and what a candidate thinks, how he or she does theology, and what he or she believes about the nature of God, the church, the ministry, the body of Christ, and the meaning of the Sacraments. I am really glad that I don’t have to go through that again, because I am a whole lot less sure of things than I was over twenty years ago.
Now, there is a whole lot of which I am unsure. I would hate to have to explain my view of the resurrection to a bunch of preachers who hold my fate in their hands. I honestly don’t have an answer to the “how” questions or the “what happened” questions.
When I was 39, I tried to join the National Guard I got all the way to the interview with four chaplains up in Chicago: a couple of captains, a major, and a civilian hospital chaplain. They told me that first, since I had three small children, a full time appointment, and a wife in seminary, the army didn’t need me that bad. Secondly they told me that I didn’t have a well-enough developed theology of the church and ministry. As I processed that, I knew that it was because I said, “I don’t know” too often.
I’m not a theologian. I’m not much of a scholar. But I am comfortable with mystery. I don’t know how God does a whole bunch of stuff that he does. I’m not sure I can adequately explain such doctrines as the atonement and the resurrection in order to satisfy people who need an adequate explanation. My Christology probably leaves a lot to be desired. I am sure that my seminary professors would be terribly disappointed with me because I didn’t soak up all the stuff they had to offer me.
But I am comfortable with mystery... and there are some things that I DO know. I know that God loves me more than I can ever imagine. I know that God loves the world more than any of us could ever believe. I know that in everything, God is working for my salvation and for the salvation of the whole world. I know that God has my best interests in mind, all the time. I believe that I will pass into God’s hands at that time when my earthly life is over. For me, the rest is details, and I’m able to leave the details up to God. For me, I don’t have to understand the resurrection to know that it is true. That’s just who I am. Other people are different and need other things. But this works for me.
Harvey Cox put it very well when he said that the resurrection is “the laughter of the universe” (page 294). Mary may have wept at first, but only until she discovered that God was laughing.
In the resurrection, God laughs at the world because all of our human understanding has been turned on its ear. Resurrection makes no physical sense. It can’t be explained, or quantified, or subjected to scientific tests. It is there simply to believe. God laughs because we still think that we are smart enough to understand everything, if we just try hard enough. God laughs when we tie ourselves in knots trying to figure out something that, in the final analysis, is unexplainable outside the realm of faith.
I talk often about the other team on the field. I believe that there are indeed forces out there that do their best to separate us from God and from one another. There are evil, demonic forces at work in the world. There are those out there who want to see us fail. They are the other team. But in the resurrection, God laughs at the other team. He laughs at their inability to understand that they have lost the game. He laughs at their incapacity to comprehend that they can do nothing. God has written the end of the book and he laughs at the inability of the other team to read.
God laughs at those who doubt his ability to carry out his will in the world. People wonder how God could possibly possess the capability to keep everything under control. But the God who created whales and honeybees, antelopes and aardvarks, penguins and porpoises, looney birds and turkey buzzards, chimpanzees and kangaroos, not to mention human beings with our infinite varieties of hair and eye color, skin texture, height and weight, interests and abilities… this God laughs at those who doubt that he is able to carry out a process like a simple resurrection. After creating the universe, a resurrection is a piece of cake.
And finally, I believe that God laughs at the pure fun of the whole endeavor. We are much too serious around the church sometimes. Can’t you imagine God with a great big grin on his face when he confounds the expectations of so many of us? Can’t you imagine the joy he feels when he is able to do things we never expect? All of you know how much fun it is to give gifts on birthdays and at Christmas. Can’t you imagine how much fun it must be for God to offer the gift of salvation to all of us? Can’t you imagine him laughing when he gets to greet his Son and welcome him back home, back to the Kingdom, back to the throne of heaven?
Mary may not have understood the facts of the resurrection, but she had the faith to believe. She couldn’t have explained the evidence, yet she knew that it was true.
This is Easter Sunday and once again, we are confronted by the empty tomb. Just as generations before us, we come expecting to find a body, but discover only the grave cloths that have been left behind. Jesus is risen. He is risen indeed. Because he lives, we shall live also. Can you hear the universe laughing? Are you
