As I write this, we are four days from April…and equally as
far from Easter. You see, for the first time since 1956, Easter falls on April
1—and it won’t happen again for another 11 years. So, with this strange
coincidence, it seems ‘foolish’ to not reflect on the inherent connections
between Easter and April Fool’s Day. And I don’t think I’m stretching to find
these connections.
Now, I enjoy joking around and the occasional prank as much
as anyone, and pride myself being humorous, but my humor pales in comparison to
the massive joke Jesus enacts on Resurrection Day.
The religious and governmental elites thought they had their
obnoxious and pervasive issue put to rest. They had rid themselves of this
prophetic insurrectionist and they could once again enjoy the perks of
unchallenged power and authority. By
Friday night, all was made right…by might. Jesus is dead, his followers had
scattered, and the normal social hierarchy had been restored. While those
closest to Jesus spent that Saturday in grief,
the religious and political leaders spent that Saturday in relief.
But, of course, that wasn’t the end of the story. Sunday
comes, the tomb is empty, and the Son of God gets the final laugh. Jesus pulls
the most elaborate prank in human and cosmic history through defeating death
and raising to new life.
“Ta-da! You thought I
was gone. You thought you had won. You thought your problems had been
(literally) buried away. Well, I’m back. Death couldn’t hold me down.”
The resurrection of
Jesus is the most well-crafted and astonishing April Fool’s Joke ever.
But to take this line of thinking one layer deeper, Jesus’
resurrection also reveals the foolishness of thinking that violence is ever the
solution to the world’s problems or that death could ever triumph over life.
Jesus adamantly declares the incredible wisdom found in what the world would
call utter foolishness: that peace doesn’t come through the sword, but through
non-violence; that murderers and terrorists are not overcome through violence
and war, but through love and generosity; that evil is not conquered through
military might, but through the sacrifice of one’s self.
This upside-down paradigm most-certainly seems foolish
through a worldly lens, but the Resurrection proclaims the wisdom in this
backward way of thinking. Jesus has come bringing a new kingdom of love, grace,
generosity, sacrifice, and powerlessness—and the joke’s on anyone who fails to
recognize the inherent goodness and truth of this new, radically-different sort
of kingdom.
All hail our Mischievous Messiah; our Playful Prince; our
Spirited Savior. May we truly embrace the upside-down, mess-with-your-head
nature of the resurrection—the foolishness of the cross.