There are many theories about how humor works, but we won’t get into that today because analyzing what makes us laugh has been compared to analyzing a frog: it can be done, but the subject tends to die in the process. Still, we can say that laughter fertilizes the brain and it feeds the human spirit. Ah spirit!  It just may be that laughter is God’s holy breath.  Shared laughter is a powerful tool. Laughter feeds on laughter….joy upon joy.  Makes you wonder what it is we usually feed on…if not joy, then what? 

Our Ruach, the breath and spirit of God.  Holy Breath.
Isn’t that what laughter truly is?
Are we not blessed by the ability to laugh? ….  putting things in a “right” perspective,   disarming ourselves, opening ourselves to each other and maybe a better world view, opening to the “more”?

Our faith story is one of ridiculous persons and proportions …you either muse and perhaps even laugh with them and so laugh at your own life’s folly with new awareness….you either get with the program and lighten up…or…..
Well gee, Easter….there’s a preposterous story….what is it really about?
I’m thinking…typically rushing to your mind, would be doctrines and explanations and justifications for faith…but to me, the answer is easy!  It’s simple:  Easter is….Expect the Unexpected!  
       Prepare  yourself to laugh…mostly at yourself and how seriously you’ve taken…the wrong stuff of life!  Easter is a breathtaking understanding of what’s possible when you let yourself breathe in new possibilities and maybe even chuckle out loud about the old ones, your past choices and understanding…What was I thinking?  I could have had a…..Yes, the gospel writers all tell it differently but one thing all of them hold in common is that the resurrection came by surprise.  Laughable even.  No one expected it!  Do you?    Everything about Jesus was unexpected.  Jesus sets aside human prejudice against Samaritans, against lepers, against women, those oppressed because human wholeness can never be found in the denigration of another. Jesus transcends even the boundaries of religion….all religious rules are ultimately in the service of expanded humanity.   Even the Sabbath day laws must always be set aside if they ever diminish human life.

These were the things that seemed to flow from the life of this Jesus, bearing witness to the fact that his humanity was full, complete and free. He did not need the sweet narcotic of human praise in order to be whole. He did not have to build himself up by tearing down another or even lording it over another. He embraced everyone just as they were, from the rich young ruler to the woman caught in the act of adultery.
       He loved them into being all that they could be.   And he ate dinner with them and laughed out loud with them! In Luke’s Easter story, the focus is on the women who had followed Jesus all the way from Galilee, all the way to the tomb.  Make no mistake about it.  These women knew what to expect.  They expected to deal with death. And that’s when the unexpected thing happens. There in the place of death they heard the most unexpected question ever asked… “Why do you seek the living among the dead?”
(Why do we act half dead when we are still living?)
        What a question….they were taken totally by surprise.    And there at the entrance to the tomb they heard the good news that he is not there, he has been raised!  Might they have gasped, even laughed out loud at the thought?! Easter is about the last thing any of us are expecting. It is about more courage…more peace than we can handle.  It’s about reality, the ugly in our everyday realties, taking an unexpected twist.  
      Breathe!  OK.  Put yourself in the Easter story that morning, this morning….take that gasp of breath as you look in to the tomb of what has been, a gasp that always accompanies surprise as you find yourself standing there at the tomb of your life in shocked amazement at this act of God….this amazing way in which God breaks into the dark, heart-broken, painful predictability of our ordinary lives and brings something we never expected.
        I suspect that on this Easter morning if we tell the truth about ourselves, the truth is that most of us some of the time and some of us most of the time… really don’t expect it either...a surprise ending to the way things seem to be going in our lives.  Maybe a different outcome or a different way to hold what’s coming out!
       Constrained and conditioned by the mind set of the Good Friday culture we live in, we expect the dead to stay dead, the past to stay in the past, broken hearts to stay broken, might to try to make right, and violence to somehow make peace.  We expect this world to go on pretty much the way it’s always been going.   It just isn’t funny and there’s nothing to laugh about!
       We don’t really expect 
            broken relationships can be healed, 
            shattered hopes restored, sword turned into plowshares, 
            the sick to be healed…different than cured, 
            what’s sick within us to be healed
            what’s lame within us to walk, 
            what we feel we’ve lost to be found, 
            what’s imprisoned is and what is imprisoned to be freed, 
            the hungry to be fed…our hunger to be fed,
            the poor/sad/lost to have a sense of humor.
We still don’t expect to find life in the places others may expect to find death.
    Like these women at the tomb, we’ve been conditioned with a mindset prepared to deal with death.  When God intersects the human experience, it always defies logic!
      So, this Easter morning challenges us to reorient our thinking which results in a radical reorientation of our living. We are to get the mindset of living… live the unexpected!  Live the “surprise ending” and truly live….breathe, laugh out loud, make some noise, let our voices be heard!
      Let us die!  Please Lord, to the way it was and live boldly into the way it can be!
      The challenge of Easter is not to celebrate something that happened in the past but to experience the living presence of the Christ amongst us today…a mind transforming presence.  It may look like a Good Friday world out there.  But contrary to all appearances, this is an Easter world after all!
       Christ is risen and that holy breath puts love in our hearts, exciting and creative thoughts in our heads, laughter in our voices, and some iron in our spines!  We are resurrected to something more than life…more than what is seen, more than what life seems!  Are you going to continue the illusion of a Good Friday world? Or will you start living the real life of an Easter world…and breathe,         and laugh out loud, and let your voice be heard? Go ahead, make some noise!!
MAY TODAY THERE BE SOME PEACE WITHIN.
MAY YOU TRUST GOD THAT YOU ARE EXACTLY WHERE YOU ARE MEANT TO BE.
MAY YOU ALWAYS REMEMBER THE INFINITE POSSIBLITIES THAT ARE OF BORN OF FAITH.
MAY YOU USE THOSE GIFTS THAT YOU HAVE RECEVIED AND PASS ON THE LOVE THAT HAS BEEN GIVEN TO YOU.
MAY YOU BE CONFIDENT KNOWING YOU ARE A CHILD/ADULT CHILD OF GOD.
LET THIS PRESENCE SETTLE INTO YOUR BONES, AND ALLOW YOUR SOUL THE FREEDOM TO SING, DANCE, PRAISE AND LOVE…AND FOR SURE…LAUGH!!
LIFE IF FOR LIVING! 
LAUGH OUT LOUD…MAKE SOME NOISE!