GLEANINGS from the Daily Office – Last Laugh

GLEANINGS (from the Daily Office) – Last Laugh! – Year One, Proper 21, Friday, October 9, 2015, Matthew 9:18-26

“And they laughed at him.”

In spite of the miraculous set before them, people scoffed at Jesus. New kid on the block? Local yokel? Who knows? Something made them doubt and that led to laughter. Maybe they were just cynical, tired of the parade of charlatans hawking their wares.

But Jesus gets the last laugh. A woman who has been hemorrhaging for twelve years touches them hem of his garment and was healed. A little girl written off for dead rises to live another day. Not doubt, not skepticism, not cynicism, not even the absence of faith can keep the miracles from stacking up.

We scoff and laugh no less. Perhaps more as we moderns are in the know. Possession is just epilepsy. No more leprosy is just remission. But the miracles keep stacking up. People are still healed. The hardest of hearts melt and come to faith.

A few years ago on an otherwise quiet Christmas Eve a man who had been, in his own words, a Christian in name only for 50 or 60 years got it. A light went off. Tears followed. He died a couple of years later a redeemed man.

Laugh all we want but God in Christ is still acting. And he gets the last laugh.

–Frodo: “I wish none of this had happened.” Gandalf: “So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”–