(Originally written April 19, 2007)
“I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric YAWP over the roofs of the world.”
-Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself,” from Leaves of Grass.
“Long ago in southern Germany, in Bavaria, during the late middle ages there was a custom in many of the Catholic churches of that region that was quite unusual. At the end of the Easter church service, the Easter Mass, the priest would leave the altar and come down among the people and lead the congregation in what was called the “Risus Paschalis” which means “the Easter laughter.” The priest would tell funny stories and sing comical songs, and the church would ring with laughter. Of course the point was obvious, the laughter echoing through the church was a tangible testimony to the merriment born out of the tidings of this great day, Jesus Christ alive and loose among us. All the forces that conspired to lay him in his tomb, the fury, the lovelessness, the violence, the vaunted powers of kings and empires, they are made a laughing stock.”
Preached by Dr. John M. McCoy at Highland Park Presbyterian Church, Dallas, Texas, USA, on 04/23/2000. Scripture Reference(s): Psalm 126:1-6; Mark 16:1-8
This, to me, is the Divine Mystery of Christianity: The Power Greater than Death that moves through all living beings.
Christ is born, a mortal man, who shows that living by his example is a true path to God, and proves that death is only an illusion and the soul lives on. Even after he suffers through the worst of what humanity can dish out, including human, cowardice, anger, power-corruption, viciousness, and petty politics, he still forgives his tormentors. He dies, true, but that is only an illusion. It is a tiny piece of the much greater Mystery of Divine Grace.
Good Friday is about the suffering of Christ at the hands of men. Calling it “the Passion” stems from the late Latin passionem (nom. passio) “suffering, enduring.” (This means to “feel passion” for somebody literally means that you are “suffering” for them, but that’s another essay.) This is the universal, “Mean People Suck,” that anybody who has ever been falsely accused, tormented and put on trial for the twisted way human minds will filter genuine acts of love and compassion. It’s a timeless story because everyone who has ever felt wrongly persecuted can relate to these feelings.
However, Easter itself is a message of hope. It’s spring returning after the winter’s cold, and the rains coming after the drought. It’s the Resurrection, the triumph over human weakness and iniquity. It’s loudly proclaiming to the world, “You can not defeat me. You can try, but I will persevere, and in the end, I will win.”
According to legend, it was a humble monk who first invented “Bright Monday,” or “Laughing Monday,” finding it the best way to celebrate Easter Monday. After all, it is the other side of Good Friday. It is the defeat of death, the victory at the end of the trial. It is Walt Whitman’s “Barbaric Yawp” sounded over the rooftops of the world. It is the final thumbing the nose at Satan: “I am still here, and you have not defeated me.”
The challenge, of course, comes in the forgiveness. To truly follow Christ’s example, we need to truly forgive those tormentors. Is this possible? After all, we are, “only human,” and, over time, our hate begins to calcify, to harden into armor. It becomes comfortable, and we cling to it with the superstitious belief that if we hold tight enough to this thing, this armor of hate, that we will never be blindsided again. If we hate those who have done evil to us, and we hate them long enough and hard enough, we will, somehow, either visit that same evil upon them or miraculously shield ourselves from ever being hurt again. However, the inability to forgive does not render us invulnerable. In the end, all it does is sap our strength and drain our energies until eventually we are weakened, shriveled, hateful, ugly creatures who are no better than those who caused all the trouble in the first place.
The disappointing truth is that whether we can forgive or not often doesn’t amount to a hill of beans to those who hurt us. If they cared that much and knew how much pain they were inflicting they wouldn’t have done such things in the first place. Chances are, they will continue to move through the world, being their ugly, warped, hateful selves, until some greater force causes them to re-evaluate why they are choosing to be this way. Holding onto our hate only causes us further pain: by making us re-live that moment over and over again.
However, letting it go is not only a gift we can give ourselves, it is the greatest gift we can give ourselves. It removes those boundaries and allows us to touch our own truth, our joy, our vital life force. Through this, we touch the eternal. We defeat the forces that are killing us slowly and re-unite with the Divine. This, then, is the message of Easter, and of Laughing Monday: “There is a Truth that is Greater Than Us All, and it is Very, Very Good.”
