Unbearable Joy

When I was growing up, I lived down the street from Kelly Mayhan. Kelly was a bit overweight and it seemed like her pants were always about to fall down. She was a little slow-moving too and sometimes she said silly things.

One day I heard an argument in the front yard. I came outside to see Kelly arguing with my little brother. “You do not live in the white house!” he was saying. Kelly was on the verge of tears. “Yes I do!” she cried. “I do live in the White House!”

“No! You Don't!”
“Yes! I DO!”
And on and on it went. Finally, I interrupted them.

“Jon,” I explained. “Kelly doesn't live in the President's White House, but she means that she lives in the White House down the street…
“Yes, but that's not The White House, that's just A White House!”
“No! I live in THE WHITE HOUSE!” Kelly screamed. Now, tears were falling down her face.
My brother, in his five-year-old frustration, did something that got him in a LOT of trouble. He was so fed up with the argument that he ran up to Kelly and pulled down her pants. And there she stood, silly girl, crying her eyes out in her underwear, with her pants down at her feet. I came up to her and helped her pull her pants up but not before my parents had seen the incident and, boy, my brother was in big trouble.

And I told Kelly that she really did live in The White House. I believed her.

I could see my brother's reasoning. How could silly little Kelly claim to live in The White House? It was preposterous. No one could believe it. He certainly wouldn't swallow it, so he just got mad. And then he did something really stupid.

The Easter Season has begun. It is the most radical, incredible seasons of the Church Year. But we don't get Easter at all. We think that Easter is a Sunday, one celebration, one day. We party it up, find eggs, pull out all the stops at worship, and then get back to life as usual. But celebrating Easter for just one day just doesn't cut it. It is like living in the little white house down the street when you had a chance to move into the President's White House. But the problem is that most of us can only contemplate the Resurrection for a short period of time. You could say that we just can't tolerate the joy.

When Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene by the tomb, she couldn't even recognize him. She couldn't even recognize the love of her life. Why? Was it that she could not see clearly through all those tears? Was she so despairing that she could not function? No, I think Mary did not recognize Jesus because she had NO IDEA that it could be this good. Because she could not wrap her mind around the event of his return. It literally blew her mind, like too much electricity shorts a breaker. She couldn't take it all in.

Jesus had to say her name to get her to wake up to his presence. Mary, he says. And with his words, her eyes open and she takes it in, the event of the resurrection. She is so overcome with joy that she tries to run to him, but he tells her that she cannot hold him. Then he tells her to preach, to go and tell the disciples The Good News, that He is alive.

When Mary tells the other disciples, they cannot believe either. They rush to the tomb to see for themselves. And so many of the resurrection appearances are the same. People are literally blown away.

Why do you think that Jesus had to appear so many times? He appears at the tomb, in the Upper Room twice, on the Road to Emmaus, in the Galilee, by the Sea and many more times? Why so many? Because God knew that we would need the resurrection BANGED into our heads! Because it was, quite literally, too good to be true.

When Jesus appeared in the Upper Room to his disciples and friends, they are so overjoyed that they cannot contain themselves. They touch him and eat with him, stare at him and talk to him. They feast their eyes on him. And after he leaves, they can talk of nothing else. They cannot seem to contain their joy, for true joy is like that, it is infectious.

They tell the one friend who was not there, Thomas. And even though Thomas has a room full of his trusted confidants telling him in no uncertain terms that Jesus is alive, that He has risen, Thomas cannot take it in. Even though he witnesses how his friends are literally transformed from grief into joy, even though their stories all match and they talk of him eating and drinking, laughing and talking, Thomas cannot bring himself to believe. He cannot trust his friends. More than that, Thomas refuses.

“I will not believe until I can put my fingers in the wounds in his hands and my hand in his side.” Thomas would rather grieve and be sad than risk trusting that Jesus might have come back. He was unwilling to face the fact that something could be that good. He would rather choose the sadness of bereavement than risk joy.

For belief is just that. It is nothing more than trust. When I say, I believe in you, I am really just saying, I trust you. And we find it hard to trust in God. Thomas found it hard to trust God, to trust that God might be THAT GOOD.

Joy is tough for us human beings. Believe it or not, we have a much easier time accepting sadness or loss than accepting true, radical joy. Oh, we say that we want to be happy. But what we really long for is comfort, not the kind of blazing love that Jesus displays to us in the resurrection. The Resurrection scares the living daylights out of us. It blows all our breakers. It is so bright that we cannot contemplate it for very long. It is like looking directly at the sun. It is simply too bright.

Lent is much more manageable for us. We are meticulous about those forty days. We count them, adhere to them. We discipline our bodies and minds and draw near to God, contemplating our own short-comings and our sin. We can get our minds around Lent. But when it comes to the 50 days of Easter, we jump ship. Who can handle 50 days of celebration? It is just too much, too much good news, too much joy. It is unbearable.

Why is it unbearable? Because God not only brought Jesus back from the dead, but God wants YOU. God wants to bring YOU TOO! You have an invitation to a banquet and it is like nothing you have ever seen before. But this news is so good that we tend to ignore it, and think about our dirty houses and our errands instead. We put out sunglasses on in the brightness of this light and resume our diets before the feasting has even begun.

I want you to work on something for me this Easter Season. I want you to try to bear JOY. I want you to step into the light of contemplating God's immense salvation for just a short moment each day. When you are trying to adjust your eyes to the light, you try to expose them in short periods, then gradually increasing those moments until you can see more clearly.

Open your eyes to the fact that God has given you a gift of such magnitude and magnificence that you cannot even begin to understand it. For one brief moment, try to believe that everything will be OK, and that your life is just beginning. There is something ahead of you that is so good.

Sometimes, when I am visiting the dying, I can't stop smiling. I have to be very careful, because people are in pain and they might think I have lost my mind. But I cannot stop smiling.

- The Very Rev. Kate Moorehead