Happy Easter everyone!

Today is the GLORIOUS day when Christians get to LAUGH at death!

We gotta hand it to him. Death pulled out all the stops! That great enemy of mankind did it’s absolute WORST…

But the jokes on him.

Because the tomb is EMPTY.

ALLELUIA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Christ is risen!!!

He is risen, indeed!

Death lost its grip on us.

Death no longer has ANY sting.

The grave has no claim.

And so now… we laugh.

Now we rejoice. 

Now we FEAST…

“Christ, our paschal lamb, has been sacrificed; let us then feast with joy in the Lord!” — “This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad!” 

Let us LAUGH!

In fact, just go ahead and let out a big ol’ laugh, right now…

…Even if you just want to laugh at ME for being so crazy up here… that’s ok, I’ll be a fool for the Lord — just let out a big JOYFUL EASTER LAUGH…

Wow, yes! 

AMEN!!!!

That is very healthy for us.

We need to be able to laugh.

We need to be able to laugh at ourselves.

We need to be able to laugh at the mess of ordinary life…

We need to even be able to laugh — at some level anyways — at the Devil!

If only Adam and Eve had just laughed that guy off in the Garden… They would have never sinned, and Death would never have taken hold of us!

But instead of chuckling when the serpent suggested they disobey God… they took him too seriously. They listened to him and his lies…

The same is true for us today. Sometimes I think that we take that guy WAYY too seriously, and in-so-doing, we actually end up giving the Devil WAYYY more power than he actually has over our lives!

The Saints show us a much better, much more healthy way:

St. Thomas More once said that because the Devil is so proud, he “cannot endure to be mocked” — In other words, he absolutely CAN’T stand to be laughed at!

St. Thérèse of Lisieux laughed at the little demons and sent them away whimpering in fear!

St. John Vianney playfully joked about Satan, saying: “Oh me and him? We’re almost chums!” 

St. Gemma Galgani once wrote about the Devil: “If you would have seen him…. you would have burst out laughing! He is so ugly!…. But Jesus told me not to be afraid of him.”

This is the best way to defeat the Evil One, I think — laughter!

So few people laugh good, holy, hearty laughs anymore. So many of us wander around sad and disillusioned. Bitter, jaded, cynical people can’t really laugh. If they do ever laugh, it’s usually at somebody else’s expense! We’re all too familiar with that proud, bitter, mean-spirited laughter… that laughter of bullies… We laugh at the politicians we hate. We laugh at people’s “epic fails.” We waste hours laughing at totally nonsensical memes just to distract and entertain ourselves!!!!

But when a Christian laughs at Death — when we engage in HOLY LAUGHTER — or when a Christian laughs at the devil and all his various works of death… it’s a totally different kind of laughter.

Christians have permission to laugh at Death… because we know Death will never win.

Persecute me! — Kill me! — Martyr me! 

I don’t care! — You’ll never win! 

Because Jesus already has!

There’s this awesome passage from the Lord of the Rings — it comes towards the end of the final book, after the Ring has been destroyed and the evil dark lord Sauron has been finally defeated.

Sam wakes up after the battle, and sees Gandalf standing there.

“Gandalf!” he says in bewilderment, “I thought you were dead! But then… I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue? What’s happened to the world?”

“A great Shadow has departed,” Gandalf replies. 

And then it happens… 

He begins to LAUGH.

“The sound” of this laughter “was like music,” Tolkien writes “or like water in a parched land; and as he listened the thought came to Sam that he had not heard laughter, the pure sound of merriment, for days upon days without count. It fell upon his ears like the echo of ALL the joys he had ever known. But he himself burst into tears. Then, as a sweet rain will pass down a wind of spring and the sun will shine out the clearer, his tears ceased, and HIS laughter welled up, and LAUGHING he sprang from his bed.”

I think the Peter Jackson film really captures this moment in the book really, really well… For like 5 solid minutes, Gandalf and Frodo and then the rest of their friends come into the room, one by one in slow motion… and they all just… laugh together. After so much heaviness, so much darkness, so much suffering — They are now REJOICING in the Victory!!!!

And I like to imagine that’s what Heaven will be like:

Everyone we’ve lost, coming into our room, one by one, with Jesus and all the angels and Saints… and we just start LAUGHING together. ….Long, hard, deep, satisfying, belly laughs…

But my question for you today is — Why wait for Heaven?

Why not LAUGH on this glorious Easter morning?

Because the Victory is already won.

“This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad!”