While we were doing some calendar work at our last staff meeting, Tyler, our youth director, noticed that his calendar showed this coming Sunday first as April Fools Day then as Easter. A quiet commentary on our world, if nothing else.

The last time Easter Sunday fell on April 1 was 1956. Only we senior citizens have a memory of an April Fools Day Easter.

My twin brother was the master of April Fools Day.  I fell for his lines more than once in the 1950s. It was probably more like 1959, but I remember the April 1 when Joseph ran excitedly into the house to announce snow was falling. April 1. San Diego, California. I ran to the window to see the never in a lifetime phenomenon. “April Fools!” he shouted victoriously.

April Fools Day is “Gotcha!” Day. “Just Kidding” Day. It is “I Can’t Believe You’re So Gullible” Day.

We’ll celebrate Easter Sunday on April 1 again in 2029, once more in 2040, but not again for the rest of the century.  April Fools Day Easters don’t come often in a preacher’s career; sometimes never.  We should avoid at all costs the temptation to make something of it. Of course we might preach from 1 Corinthians 1 or 4 – the gospel as foolishness to the Greeks, or the disciple as a fool for Christ. It’s a cheap ploy.

The Resurrection is not kidding about being dead and buried. The disciple is not the gullible one. The foolishness of the gospel is foolish only to those who refuse its scandalous truth.

Writing in “Foolishness to the Greeks,” Leslie Newbigin reminds us. “The resurrection is the revelation to chosen witnesses of the fact that Jesus who died on the cross is indeed king – conqueror of death and sin, Lord and Savior of all. The resurrection is not the reversal of a defeat but the proclamation of a victory. The King reigns from the tree. The reign of God has indeed come upon us, and its sign is not a golden throne but a wooden cross.”

The foolishness of the gospel is a wooden cross towering over a world enamored of golden thrones.

In our world enamored of thrones and all other things golden, in an easily distracted world where the distractions take center stage; egg hunts and chocolate outpolling worship and “He is Risen Indeed” by far – in our world, resurrection, the victory of life over death, love over hate, grace over justice, is rejected because we dare not believe that faith, hope, and love abide.  We dare not believe the women who rushed back from the garden early that first morning of the week.

The tragic folly of our time is that we don’t see the foolishness of not bothering to consider the resurrection and how it changes everything for us and for our world. We don’t have the courage it takes to go and see for fear we might find the tomb to be empty.

Wise people will gather Sunday.  “He is Risen Indeed!” they will say.

Sunday’s worship bulletin will note the date: April 1, 2018.  We will make no other mention of it.