So are any of you “April Fools Day” pranksters? Did any of you get fooled this morning by brussel sprouts masquerading as cake pops or a chocolate bunny filled with mayo? Those were some of the suggested pranks circulating this week, thanks to Jimmy Kimmel and others.
This year has been interesting… with Lent beginning with Ash Wednesday on Valentine’s Day, and ending with Easter on April Fool’s Day. Valentines Day worked out pretty well…since on Ash Wednesday, we are supposed to be reminded of God’s vast love that meets us in the depths of our sin and pain…. but today? Well, today I’m wondering exactly who is being fooled.
April Fools has been a prankster’s holiday for at least a few hundred years. Pulling the wool over someone’s eyes…playing them for a sap…all in good fun, of course…is the order of the day. Like the year Burger King advertised the Left Handed Whopper on April Fool’s day…and a stunning amount of people tried to order one.
So who’s the sap on this Easter April Fool’s day? There are plenty of folks out there who think it’s us. They think we’ve been played for the fool, believing that an executed man in ancient Palestine was the son of God. Believing that a man, dead and buried, can be resurrected. Believing that he is still alive…and that somehow his life makes a difference in ours.
Yes…there is no shortage of folks who think we are the foolish ones. Naive. Rubes. How could we be so gullible? So easily taken in? But it’s not like that skepticism is something new.
Skepticism runs through the original Easter accounts in all four gospels. This morning, we read Mark’s version…and he ends his story with the women running from the tomb…so terrified that they don’t tell a soul. They aren’t rejoicing in Mark’s version…they are terrified. They can only imagine that someone is trying to pull a fast one on them…that it was a ghastly trick…to mock them or to trap them. And they are having none of it. In Luke’s version of that Easter morning, the women do go tell the disciples, but then the disciples just scoff at them, assuming it’s an “idle tale”. The women may be made fools of, but the men will not. And in John’s Gospel, when the rest of the disciples insist Jesus is alive, it is Thomas who won’t be played for the fool… who refuses to be taken in by them. And finally, in Matthew’s Gospel, it’s the chief priests who don’t want to be made a fool of when Jesus’ body turns up missing…so they gave the soldiers guarding the tombs a pile of money on Easter morning, ordering them to go and to tell everyone that the disciples came and stole Jesus’ body in the night.
The truth is that no one wanted to be made a fool of — not the religious leaders, not Jesus’ friends, not the women. They all know Jesus died. They saw the blood, the suffering, the horror of it. They watched the soldier drive a spear into his side, just to make sure he was dead. And on that Easter morning… they are all rightly skeptical of anyone who would tell them that Jesus was alive.
Resurrection, to them, is a foolish pipe dream. Death is what is real. Death is what they know. Crucifixions, murders, and all manner of brutal deaths were common under Roman rule….not to mention the countless deaths from illnesses that had no cures and infections that had no antibiotics. Death was familiar… ubiquitous. And they knew very well what it required of them. Keep vigil. Bury the body. Manage details. Grieve.
We are no different. Death is familiar to us all as well. We all have loved ones who have died… of cancer or heart disease or trauma or murder or suicide. And when it happens, we know what we have to do — we keep vigil. We bury or cremate the body. We manage details. We grieve.
And the dead stay dead. In every single case. In Palestine and Parkland, in Sacramento and Syria, in Nigeria and in Newport.
There is a reason for the world’s skepticism. And for ours. Death seems pretty darn final.
But here’s the thing. Something finally did break through the skepticism of the women…and the disciples. Something transformed their grief into joy and their terror into bravery. And the only thing that could do that …was Jesus. Not dead. But alive. Resurrected. The only thing that could make them believe…that could make them stop fearing the brutality of Rome’s Empire…the only thing that could make them leave their locked rooms and risk their own deaths… was Jesus. Jesus….who God brought back to them from the dead…who God resurrected from a gruesome horrible death. And there was no way to understand it. There was no way to make sense of it. But the simple fact of it changed everything for them. It changed how they saw the world and how they saw themselves. If Jesus was raised from the dead…then Rome, with all its might and majesty and tyranny wasn’t so all-powerful after all. If Jesus was raised from the dead…then the way Jesus taught — the way of love and healing and mercy — was more powerful than the rulers of this world. If Jesus was raised from the dead…then they could do that….they could follow Jesus…live like he taught them …and have nothing to fear from those who might not like it. They met the risen Jesus…and those women and men…believed. And instead of giving up… instead of hiding…they lived with nothing to lose. With no fear. Because, crazy as it sounds, they had seen the other side of death. And now they realized that God held them just as securely in death as in life. Everything changed. About how they saw the world…about how they saw themselves.
We so often believe death is the end of our story. We are born and we die and the dash between the dates is the extent of who we are. But the God who made us…who made the universe shakes her head at our naivete. Our foolishness. Death doesn’t mean anything to God. God is the author of life and death..and it is all in God’s hand. And God raised Jesus from the dead that we might know that. So that we might have nothing to fear. So that we might live with bravery….the powerful way of love and healing and mercy….trusting that God holds us securely…in life and in death. God raised Jesus from the dead…to change the way we see the world…and the way we see ourselves.
So on this Easter morning, indeed, the joke is on us. But not for the reasons the skeptics might believe. It is not because we are foolish enough to believe that Jesus was raised from the dead. Rather…it is because we were ever foolish enough to imagine that anything…anything on earth….any law, any authority, any person, any evil…could have been more powerful than God’s love in the first place. Of course the tomb is empty. Of course Jesus is alive. And of course, it makes all the difference. God’s love has NO limits. You thought it did? April fools! Amen.
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