Today is called Bright Sunday or Holy Humor Sunday

For centuries, in Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant countries, Easter

 Monday and "Bright Sunday" (the Sunday after Easter) were observed by the faithful as "days of joy and laughter" with parties and picnics to celebrate Jesus' resurrection.

 Parishioners and pastors played practical jokes on each other, drenched each other with water, sang, and danced. It was a time for clergy and people to tell jokes and to have fun.

 The custom of Easter Monday and Bright Sunday celebrations were rooted in the musings of early church theologians (like Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa, and John Chrysostom) that “God played a practical joke on the devil by raising Jesus from the dead.” Easter was "God's supreme joke played on death."

 "Risus paschalis - the Easter laugh," the early theologians called it.

And why not?

 Jesus loved a good party. He changed water into wine at a wedding reception in Cana. In the parable of the Prodigal Son, Jesus tells us that the overjoyed father threw a big party for his returning son. "We are going to have a feast, a celebration," the father declared, "because this son of mine was dead and has come to life; he was lost and is found." (Luke 15:23-24)

 For the last thirty years, a group called the Fellowship of Merry Christians began encouraging member churches and prayer groups to resurrect the old Christian custom of Easter Monday or "Bright Sunday" celebrations, as the early Greek Christians called it.

 Many churches from different traditions have responded enthusiastically. In a revival of a very old Christian custom, many churches all over the country are extending the celebration of Jesus' resurrection to "Bright Sunday" and calling it "Holy Humor Sunday."

I think anything that gets the church to laugh and helps us take things a little more lightly can’t possibly hurt.

For me, practicing resurrection means not taking life so deadly seriously.

Granted, the gospel of John is not a rollicking read.

But there is humor here, and plenty of reason to see the joy in the post resurrection stories.

I love all of them, filled as they are with confused minds and burning hearts. Jesus walks through walls, takes long walks with his close friends who don’t even recognize him as he teaches them once again the scripture and teases them with the things they should have remembered on the road to Emmaus.

He eats breakfast with them on a beach at dawn.

They recognize him when he breaks bread with them and then he’s gone.

So many of his actions after the resurrection are so, well, human,  common and everyday. Nothing the papparazzi would pick up on, or the tabloids. Nothing sensational about grilled fish for breakfast.

If the disciples had some questions, some doubts, those are understandable.

I think the very commonplace stuff was just as confusing as they miraculous comings and goings. Maybe they needed something really out of the ordinary.

(I don’t know . ..  perhaps like glowing in the dark or something.)

All these stories would be great skits for Saturday Night Live.

What’s really astounding is what is missing in these encounters.

Jesus doesn’t talk about how he was victimized by the powers that be. Jesus doesn’t blame anyone, or explain what happened. He doesn’t talk about how much it hurt and how abandoned he felt or try to explain his actions.

In other words, he is not stuck in Good Friday.

This resurrected Jesus, it seems, doesn’t have a Messiah complex.

Now, I find that amusing.

Because, let’s fact it, if anyone deserves to have a Messiah complex, it would be Jesus.

But it isn’t there. Nothing to elicit sympathy from the disciples or anyone else. No pointing fingers, no gloating about being right and everyone else being wrong. No rehashing at all of what had happened, who did what, and why.

He is not living in the past. He has moved on. He has transcended the pain . . he has transcended death and he has transcended life as normally lived.

This, dear friends, is practicing resurrection.

Not being a victim.

Not seeking blame.

Not trying to scapegoat someone else.

Not defending one’s actions.

Taking full responsibility for one’s self and one’s life.

This is what resurrection life can be.

Free. Light. New. Joyful.

And then there’s Thomas.

I like Thomas. Aren’t we all like Thomas at some point?

Thomas the skeptic. The doubter.

Thomas who thinks this is all just way too strange to accept at face value. Thomas, who is not quite ready to let go of the past.

He needs not only to see the wound to believe it is really Jesus – he has to place his finger in that wound in order to know - really know - this is, after all, Jesus.

This is the same Thomas, who, upon hearing of the death of Lazarus, when the crowds were threatening to stone Jesus who said, “Let us also go, that we may die with him” (John 11:16)

And the same Thomas, who, like all the other disciples, had fled and failed to even be with Jesus at the time of his death.

He wasn’t there when that wound was inflicted . . . but he wanted to see it now as proof.

Come on. That’s funny.

Big talk . . . unable to make the walk . ..  and he wants Jesus to prove himself!

The resurrected Jesus isn’t all that different from the one they knew before the cross.

Can’t you just see the corners of his mouth turn up and his eyes twinkle as he invited Thomas to see and feel the wound.

Not for Jesus’ sake. The wounding had been real, the pain had been real, but Jesus had no need for Thomas to see and feel it. He didn’t allow that touch for his own sake.

Jesus had moved beyond the wounding.

But he seemed to know that in order for Thomas to move beyond that day, move beyond his own guilt and sadness for not being there, move beyond the blaming himself and shaming himself, that he would have to see and touch that wound.

Jesus honored his doubt and invited him to touch the wound. I can imagine Thomas thinking he caused that wound.

I can imagine Thomas guilt and shame for running and hiding.

I can also imagine how healing it was that Jesus allowed such intimacy from one who tasted the bitterness of his own betrayal.

This was an act of grace and forgiveness. We are told that on touch Thomas said, “My Lord and my God.”

In other words, he believed.

John wants the reader to believe that Jesus was Lord. That Jesus was the son of God.

But it is just as powerful to see that Thomas believed he was forgiven. Truly forgiven. Accepted once again into the fold. That Thomas was able to forgive himself for being less than he knew himself created to be in those days. That Thomas was finally able to move out of Good Friday into Easter.

Move on to the new life that awaits us all when we let go of victim-hood, let go of the past, let go of blaming and shaming.

The power of this resurrected Christ was beyond simple statements of belief, however. There was power in this forgiveness.

Brennan Manning said,

“The most characteristic feature of the humility of Jesus is his forgiveness and acceptance of others. By contrast, our non-acceptance and lack of forgiveness keep us in a state of agitation and unrest. Our resentments reveal that the signature of Jesus still is not written on our lives. The truest sign of union with the crucified Christ is our forgiveness of those who have perpetrated injustices against us. Without acceptance and forgiveness the dark night will be only that. The bottom line will be a troubled heart.”

In order to forgive others, we must first forgive ourselves. We must first accept responsibility for our actions.

John’s agenda is clearly stated. John tells us that “Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you might have life in his name.”

What John doesn’t tell us is that this kind of believing is not a matter of right thinking, or right doctrine. It is not believing certain things about Jesus. It is trusting in the Way that Jesus exhibited.

This kind of believing is a matter of the heart.

It is a matter of wanting to embrace that new life is found in not staying stuck in the Good Fridays of our lives, but in transcending pain to share bread and wine and grilled fish with our friends in joy and listening to good jokes.

It is a matter of being encouraged: having our hearts made larger by knowing that we can, with God’s help, get through anything the world might toss at us.

And, we can find much of that strength in laughter.

Kurt Vonnegut died this week.

Kurt Vonnegut was someone who knew all too well the pain of the world and the power of laughter and a struggling faith.

It was Kurt Vonnegut himself who said,

“If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

‘The only proof he needed for the existence of God was music.’”

He called himself a “Christ worshipping agnostic.”

He was a member of a church and on occasion, he was asked to preach.

One of his sermons, preached at St. Clement’s Episcopal Church on Palm Sunday in 1980, and which can be found on the web is full of humor like this:

“Jesus says something (here…) which many people I have known have taken as proof that Jesus himself occasionally got sick and tired of people who needed mercy all the time. I read from the Revised Standard Bible rather than the King James, because it is easier for me to understand. Also, I will argue afterward that Jesus was only joking, and it is impossible to joke in King James English. The funniest joke in the world, if told in King James English, is doomed to sound like Charlton Heston.”

Vonnegut said  “. . . jokes can be noble. Laughs are exactly as honorable as tears. Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion, to the futility of thinking and striving anymore. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning-up to do afterward-and since I can start thinking and striving again that much sooner.”

There have been other things that have happened this week that relate to the need for humor in our resurrection lives. Don Imus was fired for his remarks that he says were meant to be jokes that fell flat. This behavior was not new for Imus. He was doing what he and others have done for a long time, and even gotten rich from doing: demeaning others. What finally happened is that he lost his audience. Which is what ought to happen. People have a right to express their opinions and we have right to turn them off. The maturity and grace exhibited by the Rutger’s women’s basketball team and their coach was inspiring, however. A white supremist group plans a parade in Over-the-Rhein and they have that right. It’s a risk we take in a democracy: free speech.

Is it funny? No.

But rather than give them all the free publicity for their blatantly provocative behavior – I could find a great deal of humor in their pathetic little parade if no one paid any attention to them. If not one taunt was yelled, no reaction happened, not one head turned, not one story written or broadcast made.

These folks want attention and they want violence. And I hate it when bullies and tyrants get what they want – even when what they want is a beating. They keep on only because there is a pay-off for them in provoking anger to prove their twisted little means. Instead of a reaction, I’d rather see the energy expended on a picnic outside the Freedom Center, or working on something that helps the whole neighborhood.

Not everything is funny. But just because it isn’t funny doesn’t mean it is a real threat – or that we have to allow it to provoke us or have power over us.

Let the shock jocks and the racists rant and rave while we focus on living resurrected lives that build up rather than tear down.

New life is found in not taking ourselves too seriously, and finding humor in our situations, as well as being able to laugh at ourselves. It is being responsible rather than reactionary. Using our energy with integrity.

Jesus issued an invitation to all of us: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

He could have also said, “Blessed are those who see humor in life.”

I am going to close with yet another quote from Vonnegut’s sermon.

“This has no doubt been a silly sermon. I am sure you do not mind. People don't come to church for preachments, of course, but to daydream about God. I thank you for your sweetly faked attention."

I leave you to your daydreams about God and about a world filled with resurrection joy and laughter.

Kurt Vonnegut quotes are from a Palm Sunday sermon preached at St. Clement's Episcopal Church in 1980, which is reprinted in his self-described "autobiographical collage" of essays, ‘Palm Sunday.’ The whole sermon is posted at http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2007/3/25/202148/136/127#c127