Remembering the Pope
It was beautifully (divinely?) appropriate that Pope Francis’ last human action was to celebrate the resurrection of the Lord whose words and way he so clearly embodied. One of the great gifts he brought to us was his laughter. Not giddy or silly, but rich, deep laughter that comes from the same place of tears and that knows the depths of injustice, suffering and pain.
Last December, Pope Francis wrote an essay for The New York Times on the importance of laughter and a sense of humor.
“The Gospel, which urges us to become like little children for our own salvation (Matthew 18:3), reminds us to regain their ability to smile.”
The pontiff said children “remind us that those who give up their own humanity give up everything, and that when it becomes hard to cry seriously or to laugh passionately, then we really are on the downhill slope. We become anesthetized, and anesthetized adults do nothing good for themselves, nor for society, nor for the Church,” (Catholic News Agency.)
In the same spirit, Florida’s United Methodist Bishop Tom Berlin, simply says he does not trust Christians who cannot laugh.
The Pope’s laughter reminded me of this passage from Easter Earthquake.
Laughter at the Tomb
In his play, Lazarus Laughed, Eugene O’Neill imagined a dinner party in Lazarus’ home after Jesus raised him from the dead. A dinner guest who witnessed it reported, “Jesus smiled sadly but with tenderness, as one who from a distance of years of sorrow remembers happiness … Both of them smiled and Jesus blessed him … and went away; and Lazarus looking after Him, began to laugh softly like a man in love with God! Such a laugh I never heard! It made my ears drunk! And though I was half-dead with fright I found myself laughing, too!”
When Lazarus describes his experience, O’Neill hears him say, “I heard the heart of Jesus laughing in my heart … And my heart reborn to love of life cried ‘Yes!’ and I laughed in the laughter of God!”
No Laughing Matter
Death is, of course, no laughing matter. It’s the truth we often attempt to deny. The death rate among human beings continues to be 100%. The question is not whether we will die, but how we will face it.
I hate death. I agree with Paul that death is “the last enemy,” even when it comes peacefully at the end of a long and faithful life. But we face that inevitable enemy with audacious assurance that “death has been swallowed up in victory.” (1 Corinthians 15:26, 54) The Christian life is not a life-long denial of death, but a life-long journey with the Risen Christ in which we learn to unflinchingly face the reality of death, but to face it unafraid. Through life, in death, and into life beyond death, we know that we are not alone. We make the journey with a Risen Lord who has made the journey before us.
Father Robert “Griff” Griffin served for three decades as the chaplain at Notre Dame University. Anticipating his own death during a long, terminal illness, he boldly declared, “Death is a bully whose nose should be tweaked and I hope to be one of the tweakers.” With faith like Abraham he never wavered in his assurance of the hope of resurrection. He wrote, “I want to be present at resurrections that defeat death’s victories. I want to greet death, when he comes irresistibly, with insolence and swagger, as though I were a baggy-pants clown to whom the final snickers belong.”
Followers of the Risen Christ dare to believe that in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, God has tweaked the nose of the bully named Death, and we face death in the sure and certain hope that we will be among its tweakers on that resurrection day when the whole creation will laugh with the laughter of God.
Keep laughing!
Jim
(Adapted from Easter Earthquake: How Resurrection Shakes Our World, with permission from Upper Room Books, 2017).
Jim Harnish 