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A faithful presence of love in the absences of our city.

Foolishness

foolishness

This Sunday was two of my favorite holidays. My family was one of those where April Fool’s Day was a Really Big Deal. From simple but effective tricks (setting every clock in the house ahead by an hour) to diabolically elaborate hoaxes (a letter sent through the mail from a fake city councilman, citing zoning ordinance violations), every year April 1 arrived with a sense of anticipation (or chagrin, if you failed to remember in advance and got fooled).

When I realized a few months ago that Easter fell on April 1 this year, I initially saw it as incongruous - the high point of the Church calendar juxtaposed with the a day of playful trickery. But as Justin pointed out in the sermon, this coincidence of dates may be utterly appropriate after all.

There may be nothing else in the Bible so foolish as the idea of the resurrection. (Okay, there’s also the story about a man being swallowed by a big fish, but that ends up being a foreshadowing of the resurrection as well.) If there’s one constant in post-Genesis-3 life, it’s the finality of death. The resurrection was so foolish that Jesus’ own disciples didn’t understand what was going on at the empty tomb at first. When the guards at Jesus’ tomb spread the story that the disciples had stolen Jesus’ body while the guards were sleeping (Matt. 28:11-15), they were believed - not because their story was particularly believable, but because the alternative was so obviously ridiculous. When Paul preached the resurrection in Athens, he was mocked by many as a “babbler” (Acts 17:18). Paul himself admitted to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 15:19) that if there is no resurrection, “we are of all people most to be pitied.”

And yet in His divine purpose, “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.” (1 Cor. 1:27) We see this clearly in the sermon text, Revelation 5, where the conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah somehow takes the form of a slaughtered little lamb, and in that form is the only one worthy to open the scroll of God’s will, right the wrongs, fix what is broken, and bring about God’s plan for the world.

About 5 years ago I was in a particularly theological mood one Easter when I asked myself the question: What does it look like to live my daily life in light of the resurrection? It was fairly simple to see how Jesus’ sacrificial death impacts the way I live, but I had a lot more trouble coming up with a concrete answer for the resurrection. This year I think I’m starting to have an answer. As my family faces the reality of losing my aunt to cancer in the very near future, I find that I NEED Easter desperately this year, in a way I never have before. I need to cling to the promise that Jesus conquered death once and for all, and that as his child my aunt is part of that victory. I need to constantly remind myself that this is more of a beginning than an end. Like the church through the ages, I need to stand firm, look death in the face, and gasp out through tears, “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” This is what the resurrection is for us as Christians: the embodiment of the foolish, beautiful, audacity of hope that will never disappoint.

~ Joanna Hinks

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