April Fool’s Easter

April 1, 2018

It doesn’t happen often, so it gives me an opportunity to say something I don’t often say. Easter this year falls on April Fool’s Day. The agnostic and atheist would find this amusingly apropos, as do I, but for a different reason. On Friday, the devil and his earthly minions in the political, military, and religious arenas thought they had the last laugh as they hung Jesus on a cross and stood by and mocked. Captured by treachery, whipped, paraded through the streets as a common criminal and insurrectionist by the political and military powers, and executed in a most humiliating and savage manner, Jesus bled and died. As the stone was rolled across the tomb’s entrance, sealed, and guarded, this was surely the end of this would-be king.

Things were quiet all through the night and the next day. They could all breathe easier now. His followers were cowering in fear; this rabble movement was finished. So they thought. They forgot one small detail: it was this Jesus who pronounced what was finished, not they. As he was dying on that cross, he mustered one last breath and cried out with a loud voice, “It is FINISHED!” This wasn’t the gasp of a disillusioned and defeated man; it was a cry of victory: “It is ACCOMPLISHED!” All he came this earth to do, he did. It was only left to him to do what could only be done after the powers had done all they could.

The Bible says that had the rulers known what was going to happen, they never would have crucified the Lord of glory. Indeed, not. In the greatest April Fool’s joke of all time, he arose from death, giving the devil a scare from which he has not yet, nor will he ever recover. Matthew says that the resurrection was accompanied by a great earthquake. I bet it was! It was Jesus sneaking up behind the devil and shouting, “BOO!” then laughing as old Slewfoot jumped. It is a laugh that echoes through 2,000 years of history, and which will culminate in a real divine knee-slapper when the devil is finally thrown into the lake of fire, and every knee bows and every tongue confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. 

Until that day, we have the pleasure of joining in the divine laughter as with all God’s people on this April Fool’s Easter, we joyfully shout, “Christ is risen; he is risen, indeed!”