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Is Life a Tragedy or a Comedy?

Rev. Doug Pratt — November 1, 2009
 

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“I tell you the truth, you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy. A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy …
      “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
John 16:20-22, 33 (NIV)

Our fascination with drama
Mankind loves to watch stories acted out. Back in the Middle Ages, traveling troupes of actors would put on morality plays in town centers. Theater flourished in Elizabethan England, where William Shakespeare and his company of players were just one of dozens of groups putting on plays in the theaters of London. Community theaters and traveling professional groups followed the wagon trains and railroads westward across America. In the 20th century the motion picture was invented, and then sound was added, and then television was born—bringing drama right into our family rooms. On any given primetime evening our 200+ cable or satellite channels will provide us with movies-on-demand, as well as situation comedies, crime dramas, legal dramas and medical dramas, new shows and oldies and reruns. And all of these can trace their roots to the first known development of human theater in the Golden Age of Greece, hundreds of years before the birth of Christ.

The ancient Greeks divided all their dramas into two broad categories. A play was either labeled a Comedy or a Tragedy. The determining factor was the ending. Comedies were defined as those plays with happy endings, and Tragedies as those with sad or hopeless endings. Though the various Greek traditions differed somewhat on their rules and criteria for drama (Plato, for example, saw things a bit differently than Aristotle), this basic distinction was accepted by all. It was the ending that mattered. Most Comedies involved sad, scary or tense scenes within them; they often involved the characters in serious conflict or problems; and, in fact, it was the presence of danger or difficulty that actually made the ultimate good ending for the hero meaningful. Many Tragedies, on the other hand, would include humor—including some very funny scenes. But in the end the death of the hero (or his fall from power/financial ruin/ public disgrace) would leave the audience in tears and mourning and despair.

The ultimate Comedy
When we look at the Bible through the perspective of the two great categories of ancient drama, we must conclude that the story of Scripture taken as a whole is, ultimately, a Comedy. Its ending is the greatest of all possible triumphs. The “good guys” or heroes are blessed beyond their comprehension; the forces of evil are resoundingly and permanently defeated. The life of Jesus—told four times in the opening books of the New Testament, and the cornerstone of the Bible, to which all of the Old Testament points in preparation and all the rest of the New Testament looks back in wonder—this life is also a Comedy. It ends not with the Crucifixion but with the Resurrection. And this is precisely what Jesus is saying to His closest friends in our text for today.

The words of John 16 are spoken on a Thursday night. Within the next 18 hours, here is what will occur: Jesus will be arrested; His disciples will abandon Him and deny they know Him; He will be tried several times, before various officials, each one a greater travesty of justice and “kangaroo court” than the previous; he will be tortured within an inch of His life, publicly mocked and ridiculed, then nailed to a cross and left to die, stabbed in the heart by a sharp steel spear, and then smothered in linen and buried in a tomb. Before sunset of the very next day all this will happen, and Jesus knows every detail in advance. If the story of Jesus of Nazareth were to end on Friday night, it would be the all-time greatest tragedy. Nothing in fiction could match the evil and hopelessness of this sequence of events.

But, of course, it didn’t end there. Easter is coming. And Jesus makes it clear to His friends on Thursday night that He knows not only what will happen on Friday but also what Sunday morning will bring. That is why He keeps talking to them about their ultimate joy. Because He knows that His story will be the ultimate Comedy, the happiest of all happy endings at last. His resurrection will turn their grief to rejoicing, their gloom and despair to confidence and assurance, their defeat into victory.

What will your story be?
Now let’s bring this right home to you and me. What will your story be? What will my story be? Will it be a Tragedy or a Comedy? And what about the people whose names we remembered in our service this morning: those who, in the last 12 months, have ended their earthly journey? Every one of us has people in our lives we love, admire and rely upon, and who have died. If you haven’t lost someone you care about to death, you will—unless you die first. And that makes this question even more critical and essential to us.

What will be the end of your life story? Will the good times and the toys, the pleasures and the accomplishments ultimately crumble into dust and meaninglessness—a true Tragedy? Or will all the pain and struggles, the sacrifices and hard work, the grief and the loss we experience ultimately be rewarded and fulfilled—a true Comedy?

Two viewpoints
The contrast between these two possibilities could not be more stark. And the consequences for good or for ruin could not be greater. There are two competing viewpoints in our society, with millions holding firmly to each option. Though they’re given many labels, for simplicity we’ll call them the Material and the Spiritual alternatives. Each viewpoint and approach to life is a decision of faith, a conclusion drawn on the basis of incomplete evidence; neither can be proven scientifically. Since none of us have ever died, we don’t know for sure what lies beyond this life. We consider the evidence, we think it through, we listen to the opinions of others and weigh their credibility, and then we make our choice of how we will believe. Ultimately, is life going to prove to be a Tragedy or a Comedy?

The material view says that only the tangible or material things of this world, the things we can grasp and measure with our five senses, are real. And, the material view says, when our material bodies stop breathing and our brainwaves flat-line, there is nothing more to us. We cease to exist. All pleasures, love, possessions, successes and accomplishments end in Tragedy and despair.

The spiritual view, as expressed most clearly in the Scriptures, is just the opposite. It claims that our five senses are extremely limited. It tells us that there are dimensions of space and time we simply cannot understand. It tells us that this lifetime in our mortal bodies is just the start, the prelude, the waiting room, the pre-game warm-up, before a greater life we can’t possibly comprehend will begin. If we, in this life, will turn to God instead of away from Him, and if we will offer Him our freely-given love, He will guarantee our lives will end not as Tragedy but as Comedy in the classic sense—the happiest of all happy endings.

Which is true?
What you believe about this affects how you live your life. If this fleeting world is all there is, you have to grab for every happiness you can find before it’s snatched from you. Sacrifice and giving to others and following a moral code are ultimately worthless actions. But if this life is just the start, and what we do right now counts for all eternity, then it changes everything.

The most crucial question for us is not “Which option do you want to believe?” but rather “Which option is true?” That’s what we need to decide. Nobody wants to live a lie. That’s why we each need to look at the evidence for ourselves and weigh it in the balance. But please don’t forget one potentially important piece of evidence. What actually happened in that cemetery in Jerusalem on a Sunday morning in April almost twenty centuries ago? Did the man who spoke these words recorded in John 16 three days earlier actually do what He promised to do? Did Christ defeat death and become alive again—as hundreds of eyewitnesses and independent sources have testified, and His enemies could not disprove? If so, that’s an extremely powerful indication that the material option is dead wrong.

Celebrating All Saints
Those of us who believe the spiritual option is the true one celebrate this day as All Saints Day precisely because we believe that those individuals who have died in Christ have just begun to live. And those of us who believe that the promise of Jesus came true also share together this day in the Sacrament (or sacred symbol) we call Holy Communion. On the very night Jesus promised His friends that their grief would turn to joy because He would go through death and come back to life again for them, He also gave this symbol: through the use of a simple cup and a simple loaf, we remember and confirm our faith and trust in Him. In just a moment we will share in this symbolic meal. And as we do so, we celebrate that, for each of us, life is not a Tragedy but a Comedy!