Easter Perspective: The Last Laugh

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The Last Laugh

The light shines in the darkness,

and the darkness doesn't extinguish the light.

John 1:5 (CEB)

Christ is risen from the dead

Trampling over death by death

Come awake! Come awake!

Come and rise up from the grave

From "Christ Is Risen" by Matt Maher

Near the beginning of the Gospel of Luke, we read that, before Jesus began His public ministry, He spent forty days in the wilderness, fasting and battling the devil.  Three times, the devil tried to tempt Jesus, and, three times, Jesus resisted the devil's attempts to sway Him from the path He knew He needed to follow.  We read that the devil decided to leave Jesus alone "until an opportune time."¹

Toward the end of the same Gospel, we read that, after Jesus arrived in Jerusalem and started shaking things up, Satan entered Judas Iscariot, one of the Disciples.  Judas made a deal with some of the people who wanted Jesus out of the way and "began to look for an opportunity to betray him to them."²

On a Friday, five days after Jesus arrived in Jerusalem, He was executed by crucifixion like a violent criminal.  The cosmic battle between the divine and the demonic was over, and apparently Satan had won.

Two days later, on Sunday morning, Satan received a rude wake-up call when Jesus' tomb was found empty.  Jesus had the last laugh.

That day, two of Jesus' followers, having heard that the tomb was empty, left Jerusalem and headed toward the nearby village of Emmaus.  As they traveled together, they tried to sort through everything that had happened over the past week.  Along the way, they were joined by a stranger who apparently was not aware of recent events.  The travelers told him all about Jesus, His ministry of teaching and healing, their hopes that He would be the long awaited Messiah who would save their people from oppression, His wrongful execution, and the news that His tomb was found empty.³

The stranger, who was actually a resurrected Jesus, asked the two travelers, "Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?"⁴

It's obvious that the answer to Jesus' rhetorical question is meant to be "yes."  On Friday, it seemed that evil triumphed over goodness, but, on Sunday, goodness was revealed to be the true victor.  So why did Jesus have to achieve victory in the battle by first suffering defeat?

One early Christian theologian argued that the Son of God took on flesh and entered into the human experience, including suffering and death, "so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death."⁵  Jesus defeated Satan by dying and then rising from the dead.  In doing so, He saved us from evil's ultimate weapon, the threat of death.  If we're no longer afraid of death, then what can evil do to us?

In The Final Beast, a novel by Frederick Buechner, a pastor mulls over an upcoming sermon, and the following words come to mind: "Beloved, don't believe I preach the best without knowing the worst...  But the worst isn't the last thing about the world.  It's the next to the last thing.  The last thing is the best."⁶  To answer Jesus' question to the two travelers, our Savior did indeed have to suffer before entering into glory.  He won the victory for us by enduring defeat.  He had to endure the worst in order to prove to us that the worst isn't the last.

On this Easter Sunday, may you remember that, no matter how horrible things might seem at the moment, the outcome has already been determined.  Goodness has triumphed over evil.

Christ is Risen, and you, O death, are annihilated!

Christ is Risen, and the evil ones are cast down!

Christ is Risen, and the angels rejoice!

Christ is Risen, and life is liberated!

From an Easter sermon by St. John Chrysostom⁷

Notes:

1. Luke 4:1-13 (NRSV)
2. Luke 22:3-6 (NRSV)
3. Luke 24:13-24
4. Luke 24:26 (NRSV)
5. Hebrews 2:14-15 (NRSV)
6. Frederick Buechner.  The Final Beast.  1965, Harper and Row.  pp. 174-5
7. http://anglicansonline.org/special/Easter/chrysostom_easter.html

The Pilgrims of Emmaus on the Road was painted by James Tissot in the late 1800s.