Holy Foolishness

 

Happy Easter Season!!  While the stores begin to clearance the green, plastic, faux grass, and Cadbury crème eggs, we are an Easter people who continue to explore the mystery and marvel of the Empty Tomb for the next forty-nine days.  In many ways it is appropriate that today is April Fool’s Day, a day of laughing and joy.  The season of Easter to be filled with wonder, awe, cultivating joy, and staying open to the sacred serendipitous of God who has a peculiar proclivity for the unbelievable ~ born in a manger, friend to those on the fringe and fray, calling disciples who betray/deny/desert, facing death on a cross, and resurrection of new life.  The holy humor here is that none of this plays by the rules/gospels of domination or retaliation or revenge or cynicism or economics that we swim in everyday; Jesus’ birth, life, death, and resurrection doesn’t make linear, logical sense and at the same time tastes like good news to the tip of my tongue.  There is a holy foolishness to being an Easter people, to practice resurrection, especially in a world that loves to point out why such a way is naïve and cynically point out the flaws and faults in our thinking.  Some people love to offer color commentary on our lives, even though we really didn’t ask them to apply for that job.  I guess, they willingly volunteered themselves?!? 

 

There is the great line in Luke’s Easter story after the women run back from the empty tomb they tell the disciples, who are held up or hiding in some random room, what they witnessed.  And Luke writes, “But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.”  In our Enlightenment world we believe that more education, evidence, studies, and research using the scientific method will right all wrongs.  But knowledge alone doesn’t change people ~ case in point, we know smoking is bad, fast food isn’t great for our bodies, and alcoholism remains a deadly disease.  Yet, all these items are readily available at a store near you.  Knowing isn’t the end, living is.  Just hearing the Easter story, smelling the lilies and singing, “Christ the Lord is Risen today…alleluia!” isn’t the end.  Living as a holy foolish Eastering people is the invitation for the coming days and weeks.

 

What foolish, playful, joyful, engaging, enlivening, and holy practice might help you embody/embrace being Easter person today?  You can get out your crayons and color with every one in the box, let lose your inner-Van Gogh.  You can go buy bubbles or go for a hike listening to the trees.  You can make soup for someone or call a friend to go to a movie that makes you laugh.  You can sit outside.  Without intention, living as an Easter person doesn’t just happen.  Too many other demands and decrees and people who are self-appointed to tell you what to do will keep on clamoring chaotically in your life.  God’s emphatic, “Yes” to life and love was to set our hearts on a different path that won’t stand up to Enlightenment reason and rational, but that is okay, because we are a Holy foolish Easter People.  Happy April Fool’s Day and may this season of Easter awaken the child-like wonder and joy in serendipitous ways for you.  Amen.