It’s Easter Fools Day. Not often, but sometimes Easter lands on April 1 or April Fools Day. And I think it’s wonderfully appropriate.
On that first Easter Sunday 2,000 years ago, no one showed up to church wearing Easter dresses. No sanctuaries were festooned with lilies. No bells were rung. No hymns were sung.
For us, Easter is the most predictable Sunday of the year. For those first followers of Jesus on that first Easter Sunday, it was the least predictable. In fact, it was deeply perplexing.
On the afternoon of that Easter, the resurrected Jesus appeared to two people as they walked on the road from Jerusalem to a nearby town called Emmaus. This is part of their conversation from Luke 24:17-24 —
He asked them, “What are you discussing together as you walk along?”
They stood still, their faces downcast. One of them, named Cleopas, asked him, “Are you the only one visiting Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?”
“What things?” he asked.
“About Jesus of Nazareth,” they replied. “He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him; but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. And what is more, it is the third day since all this took place. In addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning but didn’t find his body. They came and told us that they had seen a vision of angels, who said he was alive. Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but they did not see Jesus.”
They were perplexed. Their faces were downcast. They said, “we had hoped that he was the one,” but apparently he wasn’t.
They felt like fools. They’d followed another empty Messiah. And the people they’d been hanging out with were passing off some foolish story about angels and an empty tomb.
In 1 Cor. 15, Paul writes that we’re fools to follow the way of Jesus if Jesus wasn’t raised from the dead.
If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied (1 Cor. 15:14-19).
Useless. False. Futile. Lost. If the resurrection of Jesus didn’t take place, we’re pitiful fools. And we might be.
But we also might be the luckiest fools in the world, so lucky in fact that the crazy story we believe and build our lives on just might be true.
For if Jesus was raised from the dead, then our sins are indeed forgiven — the power of sin is broken.
If he’s alive, he’s blasted a hole through death itself and will pull us through that hole into everlasting life — the power of death is broken.
If he’s alive, then evil has met its match and despite what the newspapers keep reporting — the power of evil is broken.
If he’s alive, then the most foolish thing of all would be to ignore him, to avoid building a life based on him.
I’ve heard preachers give different proofs of he resurrection of Jesus, but what has impressed me most is that the resurrection caused his followers to do all kinds of foolish seeming things in the years after that first Easter.
It caused them to sell what they had in order to share with others. If death had no power over them anymore, then money and stuff didn’t have any power over them either.
It caused them to throw a party when they got beaten up for talking about Jesus. If there was resurrection life on the other side of his sufferings for Jesus, there would be the same for them — he’d promised it. In fact, I love reading the book of Acts and seeing how many times Paul gets beaten up and goes back for more. That is pure foolishness if you don’t follow a resurrected Jesus.
In 2 Cor. 11:24-27, he gives this list of the suffering following Jesus caused him.
Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was pelted with stones, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my fellow Jews, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false believers. I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked.
These are the things a man is willing to endure is the Lord he follows has been raised from the dead.
This is what that beaten up Paul wrote to the church in Rome
And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you (Rom. 8:11).
In other words, if the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is living in me, I don’t have to fear death, because he’ll raise me from the dead, too.
And that same beat-up Paul wrote these words toward the beginning of his first letter to the church in Corinth:
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God (1 Cor. 1:18).
The same exact power that raised Jesus from the dead is available to each one of us. And that’s no April fools joke. That’s something to build a life on.