Send in the Clowns

In an effort to catch up a bit and get back into the practice, I'm going to be posting the sermons I've written since Easter Sunday.

This service was a blast to do - we recorded the whole thing and I've put it up on my YouTube channel.  The manuscript for the sermon follows below the video:

4-1-18 (Easter Sunday, Year B)

John 20:1-18; 1 Corinthians 1:18-25

Send in the Clowns

Easter and April Fool’s - on the same day.  It’s a rare occasion - so rare, in fact, that the last time these two dates coincided was in 1956, and it won’t happen again until 2029, then one last time for this entire century in 2040.  With such a rare opportunity in front of us this year, I realized that we had to do something - this combination of days is simply too good, too fitting, even, to just let pass as another Easter Sunday.  And so, while Easter Sunday is always a day to focus on joy, on celebration and praise… this Sunday, in particular, I also wanted to take a day to have us center on laughter.

Interestingly enough, this idea of Holy Humor Sunday is not my own unique invention, nor is it even something that someone made up in 1956 to mark the last time that Easter fell on April Fool’s Day.  In the early church, Easter wasn’t so much a Sunday morning event as much as it was a week-long festival marking the joy and celebration that accompanies the news of Christ’s resurrection.  This day that many churches now observe as “Holy Humor Sunday” was originally observed on the Monday immediately after Easter: known as “Bright Monday,” “White Monday,” or “Emmaus Day,” for the disciples who encountered Jesus on the road to Emmaus.  These festivities are said to date back to some of the early theologians of the church, like John Chrysostom, who used the imagery in a famous Easter midnight sermon of Christ confronting the devil and laughing at him.  They called this tradition Risus paschalis, or “The Easter Laugh.”  Pastors would include a humorous story in their homilies for the day that would cause the congregation to laugh, and then he would draw a lesson from that story.  Eventually, this practice appears to have been banned by Pope Clement X - it’s uncertain just why, exactly, the practice was banned, but it appears that the Pope felt that the practice was being abused.

Sounds about right, doesn’t it?  I mean… what place is there in the church for people to be playing pranks on one another, to be drenching each other with water, to sing and dance and to even, dare I say it… be loud and silly in their worship?  After all, doesn’t the apostle Paul write about putting away childish things in 1 Corinthians 13:11?  Doesn’t the writer of Ecclesiastes tell us that “for everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven?  A time to weep, and a time to laugh?”  Or was that The Byrds… tomato, tomahto…

Now, before people start pulling out their tomatoes to throw… I’ll concede that, yes, there are times when it’s better to be quiet.  There are times when we need to be using our “inside voices,” and when it’s better for us to take time in contemplation and reflection.  There is a place for seriousness in worship.  But that was on Friday.  It was on Friday that we gazed upon that Cross, that we asked ourselves “Were you there?” and “What wondrous love is this?”  It was Friday when we joined in with the centurion and proclaimed “Surely, this man was the Son of God.”  It was Friday when we mourned as those who had no hope, when we wept with Mary and Martha and the other disciples and wondered where hope could possibly be found, when we joined with Joseph and Nicodemus to prepare the Savior’s body and lay him in the tomb.

But today… today is Sunday.  Beyond that, it is Easter Sunday.  And Easter Sunday is a day for laughter.  Easter Sunday is the day we join in astonishment and wonder with Mary, who I can only imagine had to laugh at herself when she realized that she had mistaken Jesus for a gardener, and where Jesus himself must have been laughing at every opportunity he had - I mean, listen to the stories of his resurrection appearances that we’re about to hear over the next few weeks!  He’s quite literally playing practical jokes on his disciples as he appears to them in the middle of locked rooms, waiting until just after Thomas has left to make his appearance just to mess with his closest friends one more time…

And here’s the thing… when you start thinking about Jesus laughing… when you think about what kind of joy he must have had in those moments following the resurrection and as he appears to those who think him to be dead… the amazing thing is that this joy, this sense of humor and laughter… it translates back through the rest of the Gospels, as well.  Jesus’ first miracle in John’s gospel is to turn water into wine in order that the wedding feast might continue.  He tells stories about fathers throwing extravagant parties for lost sons. He tells jokes, makes puns and incredible plays on words, and even makes jabs at his disciples and at the Jewish authorities that would have given him a guaranteed chair at the Friar’s Club roast.  And yet… how often do we truly take the time to think about the fact that Jesus truly has a sense of humor?  Even as early as 12 years old, as his worry-stricken parents go back to the temple and find him… don’t you hear the humor laced in his voice as he asks them “Where else did you think I would be but in my Father’s house?”

The funny thing is, it wasn’t really until I started making the preparations for this Easter Sunday sermon that I finally made the connection, myself: Jesus was a clown.

I know - I know - it’s an odd statement to make.  It’s not the way we tend to think about our Lord and Savior.  But Jesus was a clown.  Those of you who took the opportunity to see Godspell at some point in these last few weeks might not be quite so surprised to hear me say this, since many productions have a pointed moment toward the beginning where Jesus calls his disciples by putting them in clown makeup, but as we look at the story that the Gospels tell, as we consider the things that Jesus did all throughout his ministry… Jesus was a clown.

Does it still sound weird to hear that?  Is it still a statement you struggle to agree with?  Can’t see Jesus with a big red nose or throwing a pie in someone’s face?  That’s ok - but I know Jesus was a clown because, well… I’m a clown, too.  I’m an honest-to-goodness, professionally trained clown.  And, much like the tradition of Holy Humor Sunday, clowning has a theological, historical, and even liturgical place in the church.  You see, clowning as an art form has some connections to the “Holy Fool,” who was actually a much-respected figure in the early church.  This “Holy Fool” was a kind of prophet, a person who quite literally feigned madness in order to provide the public with spiritual guidance, to comically and sometimes even frighteningly, help illustrate the lessons of Scripture to an otherwise illiterate audience.  If you want to think of this idea of the “Holy Fool” in a more contemporary context, perhaps look to Red Skelton’s most famous character, Freddie the Freeloader, who Red once described as a man who “is nice to everybody, because he was taught that man was made in God’s image.  He’s never met God in person, and the next fella just might be him.”

The Holy Fool utilized these tools to achieve the principle that is at the very heart of comedy itself, the thing that makes any good joke, any gag, any punchline funny in the first place: they point out a surprising difference between what the world is and what it should be.  That’s the entire secret to all good humor - we laugh because the punchline to a joke often takes us by surprise.  Take this one for example: what did Jesus say when he went to the disco and had trouble dancing?  Help, I’ve risen and I can’t get down!  You see what I mean?

The clown is the embodiment of this basic principle of humor.  We interact with the world in exaggerated ways.  We’re the ones who have the kind of audacity to point out that the Emperor has no clothes, but we do so in such a way that even the Emperor laughs when he realizes that we’ve spoken the truth.  A clown lives out that tension between what the world is and what the world should be, and in doing so, a good clown helps us to see better what the world should be in the process.

And when you think about it in that way… isn’t that precisely what Jesus did throughout his entire ministry?  Isn’t that the perfect way to describe what Jesus did?  He pointed out, time and time again, the difference between what the world is and what it should be.  It’s just that nobody got his jokes…

But that’s why it’s so perfect that Easter is on April Fool’s day this year!  Because, you see, God got the last laugh.  Even when death thinks that it has won, even when Satan thinks that he’s finally gotten one over on the Creator… God gets the last laugh as Jesus steps out of that empty tomb.

Paul writes that God has made the wisdom of this world into foolishness - in the cross, our entire idea of what the world is is turned upside down.  And at Easter, we finally see the world most fully as what it should be.  But it’s more than that - we also see at Easter that promise of what the world will be.  How can we do anything but laugh as we contemplate that promise today?  He is risen!  To God be the Glory.  Amen.