Eastertide. Old fashioned word about an ancient ordering of an outmoded schedule of a world that used to make sense. Eastertide. Not much place for it in our busy lives. Hey, we managed to squeeze in Lent, sort of, kind of, for a while anyway. It would be too much to expect to hold onto the mood, the emotion, the intensity now that the Alleluias have been sung. Heck, even in the ancient calendars the Sunday after Easter was called “Low Sunday.”
So, yeah. Eastertide. Big whoop. Let’s move on. Unless you take another look at the word. Eastertide. Easter. Can’t argue with that part. Everyone likes Easter. Better than that, everyone needs Easter. Sounds like spring, doesn’t it? Sunrise, green grass, flowering trees, warm breezes and invitations to embrace world waking up after a long winter’s nap. Easter: speaks of life and hope and joy. Resurrection, transformation, forgiveness, new start. Everyone needs a little Easter.
But it comes and goes. One day. A big day to be sure, but it is over before it has barely gotten started. You can’t help but feel a little let down. All that work, all those extra services, those extra songs, those extra words. Then it is gone. We climbed a mountain, but you can’t live on the mountaintop. Can you?
Can you? Tide. Eastertide. It comes rolling in, regular as clockwork, inevitable as sunrise. Slow, perhaps, almost unnoticeable, but persistent. The tide embraces the shore, the tide washes over all that had been left high and dry. What had been cracked and bare, bleached and sere, lifeless and strained, when the tide comes in is refreshed and renewed and sparkling with life.
Easter is not a brief moment in the light of the Risen Son. Or rather it is that, but it is not only that. There is Eastertide, it keeps rolling in and over, rushing into the dry places of our heads and hearts, enlivening our souls that have left high and dry by a too busy schedule and a mixed up set of priorities. It flows over us refreshing parched hopes, dampening burning resentments, immersing stinging wounds in the cleansing warmth of Eastertide.
Who says we don’t need Eastertide? Who says it is a worn out system made for a world that no longer exists? Not me. Not you, I hope. So, how are we going to splash around in this Eastertide?
OK, time to change the metaphor. What else washes over us like the tide rolling in? What else are we helpless to stop and yet grateful when it comes over us? Laughter. The best medicine. There is an ancient tradition that on Easter Sunday the priest would climb into the pulpit and tell jokes. No sermon that day, just jokes. It was a day for laughter. For losing control. For side-splitting, tears rolling down the cheeks, can’t hold it in a moment longer laughter.
So, I decided this Eastertide we would laugh together. I looked around and found some biblical references to laughter or fun and put them together so that for four weeks of Eastertide we can, perhaps, laugh together as we consider our faith.
We start with some verses from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, and what seems to be a ludicrous idea. Take a look:
1 Corinthians 3:18-20, 4:10-13 Do not deceive yourselves. If you think that you are wise in this age, you should become fools so that you may become wise. 19 For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, "He catches the wise in their craftiness," 20 and again, "The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile." ... Ch. 4 We are fools for the sake of Christ, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute. 11 To the present hour we are hungry and thirsty, we are poorly clothed and beaten and homeless, 12 and we grow weary from the work of our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; 13 when slandered, we speak kindly. We have become like the rubbish of the world, the dregs of all things, to this very day.
We are fools for the sake of Christ. I am in the midst of a conversation with a colleague who tells me I am missing the point of this passage. He argues that it isn’t about humor, about fun or even about foolishness. What it is really about, he tells me, is identification with the poor. Or better yet, recognition of the poor. He says the problem was that the church in Corinth was neglecting the poor, not even seeing them right in front of their faces. They were too full of themselves, too certain of their own worth and value and priority. Paul was trying to take them down a peg or two, trying to open their eyes to the real needs around them. Don’t make it all about you, Paul says to the church in Corinth, God’s glory just might be shining on the ones you least suspect. The “we” in Chapter four is not us, we’ve been left out, its them - the neglected, the broken, the hungry, the poor.
Though we’ve been arguing about this for about a month now, I think he is right. It is about seeing beyond our images of ourselves, our credentials, our “goodness” to acknowledge that some are being left out, not admitted to the table. And we are the gatekeepers keeping them out with our attitudes and our “holier than thou” tone of voice. It is about perspective, about opening eyes.
But I believe that Paul helps us into this mindset by issuing an invitation. Paul opens our eyes by clowning rather than by lecturing. He is applying a pin to the bubbles of our self-image. In the first Chapter of this letter, Paul says, consider your own call, you weren’t so hot. There’s nothing special about you. OK, I’m paraphrasing here. But he is trying to knock us down a peg or two. He is calling us fools. All of us are fools. How did Shakespeare put it? “All the men and women merely players, with their exits and entrances...” Merely players, fools acting a part. The question is can we embrace our foolness enough to build up the body, to welcome the outcast because she is just like you, to forgive the sinner because he is just like you?
It is an invitation, with whom do you want to align yourself? Those who hold themselves above, those who are more worried about power and position, about right and order, about strength and safety; or those who embrace the foolishness of life and live with the joy of Easter washing over them all the time. In other words, since you’re gonna be a fool either way, wouldn’t you rather be a fool for Christ’s sake than a fool for your own sake?
So, yeah. Eastertide. Big whoop. Let’s move on. Unless you take another look at the word. Eastertide. Easter. Can’t argue with that part. Everyone likes Easter. Better than that, everyone needs Easter. Sounds like spring, doesn’t it? Sunrise, green grass, flowering trees, warm breezes and invitations to embrace world waking up after a long winter’s nap. Easter: speaks of life and hope and joy. Resurrection, transformation, forgiveness, new start. Everyone needs a little Easter.
But it comes and goes. One day. A big day to be sure, but it is over before it has barely gotten started. You can’t help but feel a little let down. All that work, all those extra services, those extra songs, those extra words. Then it is gone. We climbed a mountain, but you can’t live on the mountaintop. Can you?
Can you? Tide. Eastertide. It comes rolling in, regular as clockwork, inevitable as sunrise. Slow, perhaps, almost unnoticeable, but persistent. The tide embraces the shore, the tide washes over all that had been left high and dry. What had been cracked and bare, bleached and sere, lifeless and strained, when the tide comes in is refreshed and renewed and sparkling with life.
Easter is not a brief moment in the light of the Risen Son. Or rather it is that, but it is not only that. There is Eastertide, it keeps rolling in and over, rushing into the dry places of our heads and hearts, enlivening our souls that have left high and dry by a too busy schedule and a mixed up set of priorities. It flows over us refreshing parched hopes, dampening burning resentments, immersing stinging wounds in the cleansing warmth of Eastertide.
Who says we don’t need Eastertide? Who says it is a worn out system made for a world that no longer exists? Not me. Not you, I hope. So, how are we going to splash around in this Eastertide?
OK, time to change the metaphor. What else washes over us like the tide rolling in? What else are we helpless to stop and yet grateful when it comes over us? Laughter. The best medicine. There is an ancient tradition that on Easter Sunday the priest would climb into the pulpit and tell jokes. No sermon that day, just jokes. It was a day for laughter. For losing control. For side-splitting, tears rolling down the cheeks, can’t hold it in a moment longer laughter.
So, I decided this Eastertide we would laugh together. I looked around and found some biblical references to laughter or fun and put them together so that for four weeks of Eastertide we can, perhaps, laugh together as we consider our faith.
We start with some verses from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, and what seems to be a ludicrous idea. Take a look:
1 Corinthians 3:18-20, 4:10-13 Do not deceive yourselves. If you think that you are wise in this age, you should become fools so that you may become wise. 19 For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, "He catches the wise in their craftiness," 20 and again, "The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile." ... Ch. 4 We are fools for the sake of Christ, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute. 11 To the present hour we are hungry and thirsty, we are poorly clothed and beaten and homeless, 12 and we grow weary from the work of our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; 13 when slandered, we speak kindly. We have become like the rubbish of the world, the dregs of all things, to this very day.
We are fools for the sake of Christ. I am in the midst of a conversation with a colleague who tells me I am missing the point of this passage. He argues that it isn’t about humor, about fun or even about foolishness. What it is really about, he tells me, is identification with the poor. Or better yet, recognition of the poor. He says the problem was that the church in Corinth was neglecting the poor, not even seeing them right in front of their faces. They were too full of themselves, too certain of their own worth and value and priority. Paul was trying to take them down a peg or two, trying to open their eyes to the real needs around them. Don’t make it all about you, Paul says to the church in Corinth, God’s glory just might be shining on the ones you least suspect. The “we” in Chapter four is not us, we’ve been left out, its them - the neglected, the broken, the hungry, the poor.
Though we’ve been arguing about this for about a month now, I think he is right. It is about seeing beyond our images of ourselves, our credentials, our “goodness” to acknowledge that some are being left out, not admitted to the table. And we are the gatekeepers keeping them out with our attitudes and our “holier than thou” tone of voice. It is about perspective, about opening eyes.
But I believe that Paul helps us into this mindset by issuing an invitation. Paul opens our eyes by clowning rather than by lecturing. He is applying a pin to the bubbles of our self-image. In the first Chapter of this letter, Paul says, consider your own call, you weren’t so hot. There’s nothing special about you. OK, I’m paraphrasing here. But he is trying to knock us down a peg or two. He is calling us fools. All of us are fools. How did Shakespeare put it? “All the men and women merely players, with their exits and entrances...” Merely players, fools acting a part. The question is can we embrace our foolness enough to build up the body, to welcome the outcast because she is just like you, to forgive the sinner because he is just like you?
It is an invitation, with whom do you want to align yourself? Those who hold themselves above, those who are more worried about power and position, about right and order, about strength and safety; or those who embrace the foolishness of life and live with the joy of Easter washing over them all the time. In other words, since you’re gonna be a fool either way, wouldn’t you rather be a fool for Christ’s sake than a fool for your own sake?
Shalom,
Derek
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