In 1582, Charles IX changed the calendar. Previously, the new year was celebrated the last week of March, culminating in a celebration on the first of April. Charles IX adopted the Gregorian Calendar, which, among other changes, moved the start of the year from April first to January first. Because of the lack of continuity in communications at the time, the word of the change took years to reach some places, and even then, there were some who refused to change the date of the new year, and would continue to celebrate on the first of April. According to tradition, these confused folks were called April Fools, and would find themselves recipients of pranks, including invited to nonexistent “new year’s” parties. This April Fools Day tradition is believed to have evolved into the prank playing festival that delights children and adults even today.
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As we enter into the end of this Holy Week, the culmination of our Lenten journey, does any of this start to sound like an elaborate April Fools joke? This person who had no hope of ever meeting us, at least not physically, died for us. And, to make it even better, this person is GOD. This is Jesus, God’s own self made human, kneeling before us, washing our feet, feeding us the ultimate food. [looking around] April Fools?
I wonder how confused the disciples were that day. They may have been used to things like, "Go into town and follow the man with the water and ask the owner if we can stay there." But then, in the middle of the meal, after such an exciting entry into the city earlier in the week, while maybe expecting Jesus to start teaching as usual, things take a turn. “This is my body given for you.” “This is the new covenant in my blood.”
Say what, Jesus?
Perhaps we are foolish ones. We eat bread and drink wine and call it the body and blood of God. We go through our mortal lives, living in the world, suffering the sufferings of the world, believing in a God who has done the same.
In First Corinthians, just a few chapters before our reading today, Paul writes, “For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” [pause] Now, Paul was writing specifically to a church whose default secular position was that Jesus was a wimp for serving others and being killed, and that any god who would become human and suffer was surely also wimpy. But Paul’s message holds true still today. The message of salvation in the cross has power for us who “are being saved.”
Consider that phrase. “We who are being saved.” [In the Greek, that verb is a present passive participle and translating would be a lot easier without it. But our lives would be nothing without this grammatical construction.] We are not people who were once saved, or people who will be saved, or who might be saved IF we do “our part.” We are people who are being saved. Right now. Being saved. [pause] That makes this meal we celebrate and share something quite different than a foolish celebration of things past and a God who once was with us. This is the meal of the God who is being with us.
The foolishness is the world’s view, not ours. The world teaches us that we look out for ourselves. IF we do this, IF we do that, IF we just show up, push forward, reach the goal, get the work done, check off our list of things to do, THEN we will be successful, justified, righteous.
But, this is the world’s view. We are, at every moment, by God’s boundless grace, being saved. And we know this misalignment between these two views. We are aware of our situation from the world’s view and we see it, too. We question the foolishness, we continually ask “What does this mean?” as Martin Luther does in the Small Catechism. And we question for ourselves the rationale behind bread and wine, because that is our nature as worldly creatures.
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So what does this mean, this shared meal that the world finds incomprehensible? What does it mean living in the world and finding things a little odd from time to time ourselves? Do we see the foolishness, or do we ignore the world’s promptings? What does it mean to proclaim the “powerful message of the cross”?
[pause]
It means that we are sinners! We cannot simultaneously proclaim that Christ died for us, and take on the world’s view that we are not in need of salvation, or that we can get salvation done on our own. We fail. There is no such thing as “good enough” for God, except through God’s own marvelous gift of grace, through God’s incarnation, through God’s sharing of this meal with us.
We sin. We are April Fools. We fail to recognize the God in front of us. No, I take that back. We cannot stand the God in front of us. We plot to kill the God in front of us.
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So here we are, Holy Thursday again, only a few more days until the Easter rush: baskets, candy, family, feasting. And we know what's coming next. Tomorrow’s Good Friday, then there’s Saturday and then Sunday, Easter, when we celebrate. We know the routine by now. Death, then resurrection. Death, then resurrection.
Do we still not see our own foolishness? To believe, year after year, that though we DIE to sin, we come BACK TO LIFE because of Christ's sacrifice? Is this not the most foolish of foolishnesses?
And Yet. This IS the God that we worship. This is what we celebrate, Sunday after Sunday, year after year, foolish though it may be to the world, because within its very foolishness, the cross brings all forgiveness and redemption. In a few moments we will share together the Lord's Supper, the most foolish meal of them all on this day that we remember especially the first Last Supper. We will receive, into our very physical beings, Christ, who died for us.
Right here, we heard it just a few minutes ago: He says "This is my body given for you." For you. YOU. And you can't tell in the English, but that's a plural YOU. In Greek class we translate it “y’all.” This is given for y’all. You ALL. Not just the people next to you, not just those who do “enough” or help out the most or sit in the front, not just the ones who pray the hardest, read the Bible the most, smile the best and most often. For each and every single one of us.
[pause] And we find ourselves asking, “What does this mean?” [pause]
It means we are forgiven!
We who continually turn away, who can never DO enough, who KILL the God in front of us, are forgiven, by that very God’s grace. Not because we do anything but because that is what God does through Christ. God. Loves. Us. God Forgives. Us.
This is not mere foolishness, it is the foolishness that comes with a grace that only God can give, a grace that surpasses all human understanding, a grace that we do nothing to deserve, a grace that we celebrate, a grace that we eat.
Because we are April Fools. The world tells us that we are stuck in foolishness, that the calendar has changed: Christmas is toys, Easter is rabbits laying rainbow eggs, salvation is success and the things we do. But the cross says NO! to the world and that method of redemption and so we embrace that which the world calls foolish: a God made human, dying for us on the cross. And we eat of bread and wine that is God’s Word, Jesus Christ. Amen.
