Reflection on the readings for the 5th April, Easter Day

26.04.05 - Collect, readings and reflection.pdf

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Readings: Acts 10:34-43; Matthew 28:1-10

Today’s reflection is by the Vicar, the Revd Canon Jonathan Cain:

The laughter begins

There’s a television show called Last One Laughing. Ten comedians are locked in a room for six hours. Their task is simple: make everyone else laugh while keeping a straight face themselves. The first smile or titter earns a yellow card. A second earns a red card and you’re out. The winner is the last one laughing.

During the show, each contestant is invited to perform a short sketch – it is called their joker. In the latest season, one of the contestants, Diane Morgan, chose for her joker to perform a dramatic reading of Dylan Thomas’ poem: Do not go gentle into that good night.

[Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.]

She began in a solemn, steady voice, the kind you might hear at a memorial service. And then, with a shift in her seat, she punctuated the poem with an enormous, echoing fart sound.

The effect was instant. Tears began to flow down the face of another of the contestants, the award-winning actress and comedian Gbemisola Ikumelo. As Morgan reached her windy climax her whole body began to shake. She tried to hold it in, but the laughter burst out of her like a dam breaking. Ikumelo was given a yellow card within seconds.

It’s an absurd moment. A poem written at a deathbed, interrupted by flatulence. High seriousness colliding with low comedy. And perhaps you’re wondering why on Easter morning we’re talking about fart jokes and Dylan Thomas.

It’s because Easter is either everything, or it’s nothing. Either today is a fragile attempt to paper over the reality of death with flowers and familiar hymns … or it is a glimpse—just a glimpse—into a world remade by God. A world in which the deepest forces are not violence or fear or despair, but something far more surprising. Something subversive, contagious, and quietly unstoppable.

Something like laughter.

Not the laughter we use to defend ourselves when we’re embarrassed or overwhelmed. Not the laughter we use to attack, to belittle, to have the last word. But a different laughter altogether. A laughter that rises from joy deeper than grief, hope stronger than death, and love that refuses to let go.

When they arrive at the tomb on that first Easter morning, Mary and Mary encounter this laughter first. Matthew tells us they run “with fear and great joy.” It is the strange, trembling joy of people who have glimpsed a world they did not know was possible.

Because the world they knew was a world of fight or flight. A world where laughter was either a shield or a weapon. A world where death always had the final say.

But the world they glimpse on Easter morning is different. It is a world in which God’s purpose to be with us, made manifest in creation, covenant and most clearly in Incarnation has proved unbreakable.

That purpose runs like a thread through the whole story of Scripture. God with the people in the wilderness. God with the prophets in their loneliness. God with Mary in her astonishment. God with Jesus in the waters of the Jordan. God with the broken, the lost, the grieving, the searching.

And on Good Friday, that purpose is tested to its limit. Jesus holds fast to the Incarnation even when it leads him into the depths of abandonment. He refuses to step back from humanity, even when humanity steps back from him. He risks the integrity, the very life of the Trinity – Father, Son, Spirit – to remain with us in our suffering.

But God’s purpose cannot be frustrated. Not by betrayal, nor violence, nor even by death.

On Easter morning, the Father raises the Son in the power of the Spirit. Not as a reversal of Good Friday, but as its fulfilment. The cross is not undone; it is completed. The love that went all the way into death is vindicated by the life that rises out of it.

And so the world is changed—not by force, not by conquest, not by overwhelming power—but by the quiet, unstoppable joy of God’s presence, like laughter.

Think of the laughter that runs through the Gospels. The gurgle of a baby in a manger. The delight of a woman who finds her lost coin. The astonished joy of a blind man who sees the world for the first time. The almost comic image of Lazarus stumbling out of the tomb, trying to peel off his grave clothes like someone wrestling with a bed sheet.

This is not laughter that denies reality. It is laughter that transforms it.

Not laughter that mocks.

Laughter that heals.

Not laughter that excludes.

Laughter that gathers in.

Not laughter that hides from the darkness.

Laughter that shines in it.

Dylan Thomas’ poem belongs to Good Friday. “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” There is a time for that rage. A time to name the darkness. A time to stand at the foot of the cross and feel the full weight of grief.

But Easter is not Good Friday. Easter is the day when the light refuses to die. Easter is the day when the stone is rolled away not just from a tomb, but from the imagination of the world. Easter is the day when God’s laughter begins to echo through creation.

It is the laughter of Sarah, who laughed in disbelief when she was told she would bear a child in her old age. Her laughter was half defensive, half mocking, but the child was born. And they named him Isaac, which means ‘laughter’. His life became the seed of God’s people. His survival became the sign that God’s promise would not fail.

And now, on Easter morning, another Son lives. Another promise holds. Another laughter begins.

It is not loud at first. It is not triumphant. It does not strut or boast. It is the quiet, steady laughter for a world in which death is no longer absolute. A world in which love has gone to the very bottom and come back with the keys. A world in which God’s purpose to be with us has proved stronger than every force that tried to tear it apart.

This laughter does not erase grief. It does not pretend the wounds of the world are healed, nor does it claim victory in a way that silences those who still suffer.

But it does something deeper.

It tells us that suffering and death do not have the final word.

It tells us that God is not finished with the world.

It tells us that the story is still unfolding, and its ending is joy.

Whether we are the last one laughing or the first one laughing, we will all be laughing in God’s eternity. Not because life is easy. Not because pain is trivial. But because God’s love is stronger than death, and God’s presence is stronger than absence, and God’s purpose—to be with us—is indestructible.

Two days ago we wept.

One day, Jesus promises, we will laugh.

And today—today—the laughter begins.

Amen.