Fools for Christ
It seems appropriate that the first Sunday after Easter was April Fool’s Day. After all, it was a cheerful Christian missionary, not some grouchy atheist, who first called Christ followers “fools for Christ” (1 Corinthians 4:10).
I have frequently felt a little foolish right after Easter. For much of my active career in ministry, I suffered from what I call PED, or Post Easter Depression.
It’s a common ailment among pastors. On Resurrection Sunday, we proclaim that the resurrection of Jesus makes all the difference in the world and changes everything – and the next morning we discover that for most of the world, nothing has changed in the slightest. Most of the world simply does not care.
We proclaim, “Christ is risen!” The world shrugs and says, “So what?” It’s deflating. It’s depressing. And I suspect that pastors aren’t the only ones who suffer from it.
I’m sure everyone remembers the day after a special loved one died. That morning, you saw life radically differently than you did 24 hours before. But it quickly became obvious that most of the world did not know about your loss, or much care about it either.
Our sadness in death is mirrored by our gladness in the Resurrection. We have a great message for the world – and the world doesn’t much care to hear it. We shout, “We’ve got good news!” And the world yawns. “Heard it all before. Tell me something I haven’t heard.”
The very word “gospel” means “good news.” This is the kind of news that if it were printed in a newspaper and tossed onto your driveway, the impact would shatter the pavement. This is weighty news. This is news so weighty, so significant, so life-changing, that no matter how many times we announce it, it’s always news – and it’s always good news.
What’s good about it? What makes it news, rather than “olds”?
Let’s start with the micro view – that is, our personal view. Consider the perennial questions. Who are you? Why are you here? What is the meaning of life?
Trust me, you are here for a reason. You’re not an accident. You’re here on purpose, and you have a purpose. You’re not here just to take up space and look pretty and get a sugar high on Easter candy. You have a higher calling. You have a holy calling.
God is calling you to live for God’s glory by becoming the best you that you possibly can be – and you can’t be that person by serving just yourself. You can achieve your full potential only when you serve others. You are here, then, to love and to be loved and to make a difference in this world.
That’s the micro view. For the macro view, let’s turn to this big, fat, scary book we call the Bible. It has two parts. Part One is a whole lot fatter than Part Two. The plot keeps thickening in Part One until it comes to what appears to be a dead end.
Your individual story is in here. Your individual story is the same story that’s told in Genesis chapters two and three – you know, that embarrassing episode with a garden and a talking snake. And that, in turn, is the same story that’s told in all the rest of the chapters of Part One – only now the protagonist is a people called Israel.
Sadly, it’s mostly a story of failure. Israel is charged with being God’s light to the world, and Israel just isn’t up to it because, as a representative of all of us, and just like the best of us and the worst of us, Israel is just so human.
Part One ends without resolution. It’s like a musical chord that hangs in suspension, waiting for the next chord to resolve the tension, only the musician stops playing, and the resolution never comes.
Part Two provides the resolution. Part Two says, “Surprise!” and wraps it up. Part Two says that there is a character in Part One who was there all along, only you didn’t recognize him because he worked behind the scenes, as kind of a stagehand. (I’m mixing metaphors here, you see.)
In Part Two, the stagehand takes center stage, and he wraps things up in a most unexpected way. Like a masterful musician, Jesus resolves the suspended chord.
Jesus is the answer to Israel’s yearnings, and the answer to ours as well. Jesus called his people to a new way of being Israel, and he calls us all to a new way of being human. Jesus sums up Israel’s story, and he makes our lives add up, too.
Here’s the good news as proclaimed by that bandy-legged squirt of a guy named Paul, in one of his letters to some Christians in the ancient city of Corinth. Paul says: “I passed on to you as most important what I also received: Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and he was buried, and on the third day he was raised in accordance with the scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15.3-4).
It all happened “in accordance with the scriptures,” Paul says. That’s the way it had to happen to complete the story of Part One in this big book, though nobody quite expected it to happen this way.
Looking back, it makes sense. Looking forward, you just can’t see it. It’s a mystery that’s been hidden for the ages, Paul says in another letter (Romans 16.25). But it’s not a mystery you’re going to figure out on your own. The answer has to be revealed. The author of the mystery has to reveal what’s been going on all this time.
What God has been up to is rescuing a world that has gone way off course and can’t find its way back, just as each of us has gone way off course and needs to be brought home safely. The Bible’s story is about the rescue and renewal of all creation, and my story and your story are about being rescued and renewed in the process.
We are rescued, yes, from the clutches of what we call sin and freed by forgiveness to be renewed and to become the loving people we were created to be.
How does the Resurrection of Jesus accomplish this? By six o’clock on the evening of what we (strangely) call Good Friday, Jesus was dead and buried. No doubt he was dead. Roman soldiers were trained killing machines.
Jesus was dead, and there was no hope for his recovery because, as everybody knows, dead people just don’t come back. Cry for them all you want, it doesn’t happen.
Except that this time it does happen. And it’s not that his body is re-animated or resuscitated. Let’s get our “R” words right. He is resurrected. He comes back in a new body that is somehow very much like his old body but also very different.
This is the first time it ever happened. But we are assured that it will happen again, at some future time, when all who trust in God are raised with Christ to new life. And we won’t just be re-animated or resuscitated. We also will be resurrected in bodies fit for eternity. That’s our personal stake in this story. Because he lives, we also shall live.
Jesus’ death is important, oh yes. As the Suffering Servant of God, he bears the consequences of our sin. But without the Resurrection, his death would have no meaning. Good Friday makes sense only in light of the Resurrection. Without the Resurrection, Jesus might be just one more of the millions of people who are ground into the dust every year by the tyrants of this world. By raising Jesus from the dead, God completes the story of Israel and fulfills the story of creation and brings salvation and hope to our broken world.
If Jesus is alive today, we ought to be alive as well. Just the way the birth of a baby changes everything in a household, so the resurrection of Jesus gives each of us an opportunity for new birth, a chance to be changed with all of creation, and a chance to give glory to our creator by living according to the master plan, in love and peace and joy.
See, we need to do more than simply believe the good news of Jesus. We need to be changed by it. We need to become good news people. Everything about us ought to be shaped by the good news. We ought to be living, breathing evidence that Christ is alive, and that his living in us changes everything about us and is changing every thing every where all at once.
It's news so good is sounds foolish, news so good that we fools for Christ will keep proclaiming it until all the world understands.