Those who watch Stephen Colbert’s “The Late Show”—either before bed or on the stream the next day—know he is currently in his farewell tour, of sorts. His show has been cancelled and will end in May.

Various stars are making final visits and saying all sorts of salutatory things, and last Tuesday was Nathan Lane’s turn. He sang a song from a 1990s off-Broadway show called “When Pigs Fly.” The song, “Laughing Matters,” by Dick Gallagher and Mark Waldrop, fits the mood of our ties and could have made Lane the lounge singer in the upper room or many other venues during a long-ago Passover week in Jerusalem.

MSNOW and CNN
keep us all abreast
of breaking stories that can tend
to make us anxious and depressed.
Problems with no answers
hang on like some chronic cough
and everyday some some brand-new issue
rears it head to piss you off.

Bad guys win.
Optimism’s wearing thin.
Things are spinning out of control.
Cynicism’s all the fad.
World events could make us mad as hatters.
Almost everyday, some underpinning slips away.
These aren’t laughing matters.

Time bombs tick.
People keep on getting sick
and a nickel’s not worth a cent.
Wickedness and greed abound.
Just as peace is gaining grounds it shatters.
Hate is here to stay
and justice goes to those who pay.
Friends, these aren’t laughing matters.

The truth is scarier by far
than anything that Stephen King could write.
The stories in the paper are
the daily small decline and fall
spelled out in black and white.
Oh what to do, what to do,
how to take a brighter view
when your noodle’s totally fried.
Human spirits need to be
leavened by a little levity,
so take those blues and bounce them off the wall.
Keep your humor, please.
‘cause don’t you know it’s times like these that
laughing matters most of all.

Jesus and his disciples also gathered in a world of constant bad news, corruption, and hopelessness for far too many people. Their rabbi stood up for what was right, and he got killed for it.

But that was Friday. Then Sunday came.

Each of the Easter gospels has an element that gives it a special place in this preacher’s heart. In Matthew, it’s what isn’t said. Matthew 28:2-6 (NRSVue) tell us: 

And suddenly there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning and his clothing white as snow. For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay.

Jesus was not there. He was not there when the stone was rolled back. There is no mention of him strolling out when the angel opened the door. It was opened and the tomb was already empty. While this dances us uncomfortably close to Docetism—the heresy that says Jesus wasn’t truly human and therefore never truly died—there is a wonderfully “Neener, neener, neeeeener!” taunting quality to the whole thing.

Since the guards “shook and became like dead men,” our risen Lord could have walked right past them without a problem, and it would be a nice touch for the narrative. But he wasn’t mentioned at all. The tomb was empty before the stone was rolled away. Guards and crosses and stones and death itself were no match for the Savior. Wickedness and Greed may have abounded, and Hate may have been there to stay, but none of it ever had a chance against God’s love and life.

Here we are in a mess of a world where a Secretary of State can criticize an enemy, imagining if they, “instead of spending billions of dollars supporting terrorists or weapons, had spent that money helping its people,” they would have a very different country, and on the next day that same country’s President insists that the government cannot fund day care and health care because “We’re a big country . . . We’re fighting wars,” with no sense of irony.

As Nathan Lane sang, “Almost everyday, some underpinning slips away . . . The truth is scarier by far than anything that Stephen King could write.” Here we are, called to stand up for God’s justice and God’s truth in this kind of a world. That’s what got Jesus killed.

But God’s justice, God’s truth, God’s love got Jesus raised. God’s New Creation, coming alive in that garden with the tomb, coming alive in the midst of our broken, scary Old Creation that keeps fighting to hang on, gives us chances at new life when we stand up with our Lord. In a way, laughing matters most of all, and Love and Life get the last laugh.