Irwin S. Cobb has said that "humor is tragedy standing on its head with its trousers split." Laughter is the response to seeing the proud and pompous lord of death step on the banana peel. What a cause for hilarity: the mighty have been brought low. It is the laughter of reversal.

Not only that, but the lowly are exalted. Take Abraham and Sarah for instance; they were promised a great line of descendants. They were to be blessed to be a blessing to all nations. Then Sarah -- almost ninety, barren, without hope of a son -- is told she is in a family way. When Abraham hears the news he falls down laughing (Genesis 17:17). A delivery in the geriatric ward!

It is all so unbelievable Sarah can't keep from laughing, and she names her son "Laughter." The barren give life, the old becomes new, the jeers turn to cheers. God is so faithful, so surprising you have to laugh.

God is in the business of reversing "the way things are." What good can come out of Nazareth? The king of kings is born in a manger, a feed trough. Yes, Isaiah knew it: the lowly will be exalted. It is the laughter of reversal, everything is upside down. What power is greater in our lives than death?

What do we run from, deny constantly? Death. Freud knew it; he spoke of nervous gallows humor. An anxious snicker or two is understandable. No matter how high you score on achievement tests -- how beautiful or powerful you are -- you will die. All you own and love will be dust. Yet is there One in the grand economy of God that has defeated death? Could this be the great reversal of life over death?

In a Peter Devries novel a character was buried alive in a landslide of tons of garbage at the city dump. When you least expect it he rises from the garbage with a cantaloupe rind on his head, singing the doxology. What an image! Can we rise from the garbage pit of failure singing, "Praise God from whom all blessings flow" and laugh the laugh of the great reversal?

If we can experience the reversal of Christ's resurrection then the final form of laughter becomes that of rejoicing. The Laughter of Rejoicing is to cry out in victory over the worst this old world can dish out: "O death where is your victory?" The venom does not destroy us.

Conrad Hyers tells of the early Greek Orthodox tradition of clergy and laity meeting in the sanctuary the day after Easter to tell stories, jokes and anecdotes. It seems so fitting. Satan thought he had won at Golgotha. Yet the last laugh is at the resurrection; not a laugh of ridicule or even of reversal, but a laugh of rejoicing. Sin, death and sorrow have been swallowed up by redemption, life and joy.

In Eugene O'Neill's play Lazarus Laughed we hear the modern echo:

Laugh Laugh

Death is Dead

There is only laughter

Here is the great reversal and we are caught up in it. How can we not rejoice? Can't you imagine Mary getting together with Jesus later and saying, "And I thought you were the gardener!" The couple on the road to Emmaus would also be having a good laugh with Jesus: "We were trying to tell you about the one who had died." But it wouldn't end there. Mary and the two on the Emmaus road could now laugh at the power of death.

Thomas More did joke with the hangman because his conscience was clear; he was serving his God. A bishop in Hungary in the 1950s was imprisoned by the Communists because he stood up to them. In a six-by-eight solitary confinement cell he could not be broken: "For in that room the Risen Christ was present and in communion with me I was able to prevail." Luther said it in his great hymn: "The body they may kill, his truth abideth still."

At a program she was giving, columnist Celestine Sibley was approached by a nice looking young man she did not recognize. He said, "I'm that garbage can baby you wrote about twenty years ago." Stuffed in a garbage can after birth, he was hospitalized for a long time; now he was glowing, smiling, laughing with new life. Death where is your sting?

This week I came back from a hospital visit laughing and singing some silly ditty without realizing it. My wife said, "What are you doing?" Sometimes when you see the miracle of Easter it's all you can do. It is the laughter of rejoicing.

May that be your soul's response to the resurrection. For when Easter invades your life, when you see the spirit of the risen Christ prevailing in hospital waiting rooms and prison chapels, you realize that Resurrection is a laughing matter.