Â鶹ԼÅÄ

Good morning.  At the end of Tom Stoppard’s play Jumpers there’s a remarkable, hopeful speech by the conspicuously immoral moral philosopher Archie Jumper.  In a moment of revelation he seems convicted that life, not death, will have the last word.  After all, he says, no laughter is sad, and many tears are joyful.

There’s not a great deal of laughter in the New Testament, though you can make a case that Jesus told jokes.  The image of a camel going through the eye of a needle for instance: it may not be that funny now, but back in the day it would have had the disciples rolling in the aisles. 

There is just one, extraordinary story in the gospels where people are expressly said to have laughed. Jesus visits the home of a synagogue elder to deal with his daughter who is gravely ill.  In fact by the time Jesus gets there the little girl has died, and the house is surrounded by grieving friends and relatives. When he sees them, Jesus tells them to stop wailing, because the little girl isn’t dead – just sleeping.  At which point all the mourners stop grieving and start laughing, not because they’re happy, but because what Jesus has said is so preposterous.  And then of course, he raises the little girl to life.

At this distance it’s impossible to know what really happened, or what Jesus meant by saying that the girl was sleeping.  But the story has a clear message that life can emerge out of death.  Life, not death, has the last laugh. 

Lord Jesus Christ, risen from death and at large in the world,
Help us to find you and follow you today,
In the places where we work, meet people, spend money and make plans.
Turn our mourning into laughter,
And make us more alive today than we have ever been.  Amen