Reflection for 22nd Sunday after Pentecost – The laughter of resurrection
‘I am the resurrection and the life,’ says the Lord. ‘Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.’ John 11: 25 - 26.
This Sunday we hear from Luke’s gospel the somewhat snide questioning of ‘some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection’. The Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh once alluded to the resurrection as a laugh freed for ever and for ever.
The questioning of the Sadducees leads to Jesus assertion that God is the God of the living not the dead. Resurrection is God’s big YES to the world’s NO and the loss of hope – so yes to laughter!
And from Joy Mead and the Iona Community (Wild Goose big book of worship resources 2, 2019) comes a meditation on laughter. The laughter of resurrection, the laugh freed for ever and for ever does not gloss over pain or suffering. It is to stand with those who have nothing to laugh at, says Mead. And she continues…
To laugh
is to celebrate the gift of life,
enjoy it and thumb our noses
at those who would destroy
beauty and goodness.
To laugh
is to break the bonds
of evil and oppression.
We laugh, and the words
of the tyrant, the bigot, the bully
no longer threatened us.
Laughter is the sound of joy
heard through a breaking heart
To laugh
is to light the candle at both ends.
In the darkest night
laughter is prayer.
It's music in the air
and water over stones.
It lifts our human tragedy
into the joy of heaven.
We laugh and we are free
Blessings
Ceri
