THE DIVINE COMEDY

Scripture Reading: John 20:19-31

There’s nothing so sad as witnessing early promise that wastes away into disappointment. I was thinking about that recently when I came across one of my favorite annual top ten lists: bad metaphors used in High School essays:

10. She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.

9. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

8. She grew on him like E. coli and he was room temperature Canadian beef.

7. She had a deep throaty genuine laugh like that sound a dog makes just before he throws up.

6. Her vocabulary was as bad, as, like, whatever.

5. He was as tall as a six foot three inch tree.

4. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge free ATM.

3. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

2. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a landmine or something.

1. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids with power tools.

Like I said, there’s nothing so sad as witnessing early promise that wastes away into disappointment.

We live in the season of promise, don’t we? Even though we have been deluged by snow and cold this winter, Spring is not far off. Soon we will be seeing that early green of Spring that is almost luminescent. In one of my favorite poems, Robert Frost commented on the unusual color of spring, the color of the earliest leaves:

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

Robert Frost would agree: there’s nothing so sad as witnessing early promise that wastes away into disappointment.

There’s a kind of melancholy that can grip us, even now in this beautiful, promising time of year. Sometimes we can’t shake loose of the feeling that no matter how good things may seem now, disappointment is just around the corner; that in our lives, “nothing gold can stay,” or at least it can’t stay for long.

That certainly must have been how the disciples felt after the crucifixion of Jesus, gathering in a house behind locked doors - out of fear, John tells us in our Gospel Reading. “Nothing gold can stay.” Jesus was just too good, too holy, too kind, too loving, too idealistic, too perfect to exist for long in this fallen world of ours. We’re just too bad to long endure someone that good. That’s how we sometimes think of it. And so it wasn’t just the plotting of the religious and political authorities that killed Jesus. It was the world that killed him – a fallen world that cannot tolerate such goodness, such holiness, such beauty.

“Nothing gold can stay.” Isn’t that how we often feel? Especially now, especially when our nation and the world seems locked in war, in endless cycles of violence and revenge. Especially when we seem ignorant of the enormous damage inflicted by our lifestyles to the environment and to our own long-term health. Especially now when the hopeful international movements of the prior century now seem to be given no authority and therefore no chance to succeed.

Well, that’s my list of despair. I’m sure you could come up with your own. The point is that many of us feel the same kind of despair the disciples must have felt as they fearfully huddled in the shadow of Good Friday.

Sometime in the last century a prominent European physician was examining an elderly man. After checking him over thoroughly and listening to his many vague complaints, the physician could find nothing physically wrong with the old man. Well, it occurred to the doctor (just as it might to one of us) that his patient’s physical complaints were, in all probability, serving as a mask for deeper-seated emotional stress and depression.

And so an idea came to the doctor. It just so happened that Joseph Grimaldi, perhaps the greatest clown of all time, was in town for a performance that very evening. So the physician informed the patient that he couldn’t arrive at a diagnosis but suggested, “Why don’t you go to see Grimaldi tonight?”

A disgusted expression came across the old man’s face and he told the doctor, “That won’t help!”

The doctor insisted, “But laughter is good for the soul. Wouldn’t seeing Grimaldi make you feel better?”

And the old man exclaimed, “Oh, but you don’t understand. I am Grimaldi!”

I like that story and think it’s pretty funny except, of course, from the perspective of Grimaldi. And, of course, that’s the kind of perspective the disciples had on that Good Friday. I’m sure their friends and family members, witnessing their sadness and despair, probably said something to them like, “Come on, guys – have a little faith!” To which they could have responded, “But you don’t understand – we are the disciples.” They were the ones who were supposed to give faith to others. And now their faith lay in ruins before them, buried under the rubble of Jesus’ tomb. And as they crouched in that room huddled with their melancholy, they gave themselves fully over to despair. They thought it was done, over, finished.

And yet…

And yet…

That is what Easter is, you know. It speaks the divine “and yet…” in the midst of our despair. We believe we are boxed in, signed, sealed and delivered into a life of meaninglessness and disappointment. Suddenly Easter Sunday dawns and it doesn’t dawn with the thundering sound of trumpets. It dawns with the divine whisper tickling our ears, with the voice of God speaking in a smile we can hear, and saying, “and yet…”

And the locked doors of our determined despair suddenly fly open and Jesus appears and a hope unseen and unforeseen re-enters our lives. And that hope, that life, that Savior is the final word, not our despair, not our disappointment, not death. And that’s what makes our lives not a tragedy fit for melancholy poets and frightened disciples but a comedy fit for confident, faithful, laughing followers of Jesus Christ.

And yet…

Listen to this true story and see if you can tell me who it’s about:

It was a rainy winter night in the city. A young boy, about eleven years old, had no place to sleep and was sheltering under an overhanging roof. A rather big, even imposing-looking man came by, took a look at the boy, and asked what he was doing there, why wasn’t he home? The young boy explained that his father had died several years earlier and that his mother was in an asylum. The man stroked his chin for a moment and said, “Well, I’ve a bit to eat at my place. I’ve only one room, but you’re welcome to stay the night if you don’t mind sleeping on the floor.”

They went to the man’s furnished room where the little boy slept on a pallet at the foot of his host’s bed. The next morning, when the boy awoke, the man was gone. But the boy found a note saying, “If you’ve no place to sleep tonight, come here.”

The little boy had to avail himself of his large friend’s help for many nights, but always in the morning the man had gone. The little boy was curious about this man who had to leave so early. What was he doing? What was his job that would cause him to leave so early?

Well, one morning the little boy managed to wake early. He opened his eyes a slit to spy on the man. He saw the man take something out of his closet - something long and limp. As he continued to watch, he recognized that the man was taking out a rope. And as the man handled the rope, he came to a noose at the end of it. The mystery was solved - this little homeless boy was staying at the home of the town hangman.

Does anyone know who this story is about? It’s about the man who was the greatest comedic genius of the 20^th Century. Now do you have a guess? Charlie Chaplin.

Think back on his movies for a moment:

· his depiction of poverty, of city life;

· the strange characters he encountered in his stories;

· the importance of even the smallest acts of friendship and compassion;

· and his strange mixture of comedy and pathos, of slapstick and heartbreak that has never been matched since.

Charlie Chaplin, with the kind of early life he led, was a man who developed a sense of humor out of necessity. Charlie Chaplin, whose comedy spoke two words of comfort to us and all his helpless, hapless, hopeless characters: “and yet…”

And that has become the cornerstone of our faith, those two words spoken in the face of tragedy, in the face of adversity, even in the face of death: and yet, and yet, and yet…

When the Apostle Paul talked about his life, he said, “We are treated as imposters and yet are true; as unknown and yet are well know; as dying, and see, we are alive; as punished and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything…”

And yet… and yet…

That is Easter. That is our faith. When we feel despair, when we feel like everything is going wrong, when we hide behind the locked doors of our fear, suddenly the doors open, the Risen Christ walks in, God whispers, “And yet…” and our faith is reborn. Whether it happens in a locked room of Jerusalem or on a cloudy morning in Appleton, wherever death tries to lock us in, to choke us with despair, Jesus comes bursting in. “And yet… and yet… and yet…”

Amen.

Sermon preached by Reverend Steve Savides at First Congregational United Church of Christ, Appleton, Wisconsin on March 30, 2008.