Easter is a wonderful day for preachers–with all the great stuff we love about our jobs–fabulous flowers, great music, excited children, nice crowds of friends we haven’t seen for a long time–well, since last Easter, or maybe Christmas Eve. Good times! And it is especially fun this year because, for the first time since 1956–Easter occurs on the same day as April Fools’. Fun as that is, in an age when “normal” news is completely indistinguishable from any run of the mill April Fools’ gag, having a special day for it seems almost redundant.

The origin of April Fools’ Day is obscure, depending upon what culture one might research, but the predominant western theory holds that it all started in 1582 when France adopted the Gregorian Calendar, switching the official beginning of a new year from the end of March (around the time of the vernal equinox,) to the first of January. According to popular lore, some folks refused the change and continued to ring in the New Year on April first and then were made the butt of gags and jokes–the so-called April fools.

With the advent of TV and the internet, there have been many modern international pranks like in 1957 when the BBC reported that Swiss farmers were experiencing a record spaghetti crop, complete with footage of people harvesting noodles from trees, and then there was the year Taco Bell joked that they had bought the Liberty Bell and planned to rename it for themselves. Thankfully, that was not true, but what is true is that after years of relentless advocacy and a national boycott led by our denomination, the United Church of Christ and our partners, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Taco Bell finally did get on board with the Fair Food Act, giving the tomato workers what they had demanded– just one cent more per pound of tomatoes harvested. But there is at least one April Fools’ gag from the 1990s I really wish were true–Internet Cleaning Day. Folks were told that every computer connected to the World Wide Web must be turned off and disconnected for a 24-hour period during which “useless flotsam and jetsam” would be flushed from the system. If only.

It is easy in matters of the heart, life, and death, to be fooled. The poet laureate, William Stafford offers this light-hearted, cautionary tale in his poem, “Easter Morning,” noting how easily the prevailing cultural noise can suffocate the soul and reminding us to guard our one wild precious life! He writes:

Maybe someone comes to the door and says, “Repent,” and you say,
“Come on in,” and it’s Jesus.
That’s when all you ever did, or said, or even thought,
suddenly wakes up again and sings out, “I’m still here,”
and you know it’s true.
You just shiver alive and are left standing there
suddenly brought to account: saved.
Except, maybe that someone says, “I’ve got a deal for you.”
And you listen because that’s how you’re trained–
They told you, “Always hear both sides.”
So then the slick voice can sell you anything
even Hell, which is what you’re getting by listening.
Well, what should you do? I’d say always go to the door;
yes, but keep the screen locked.
Then, while you hold the Bible in one hand,
lean forward and say carefully, “Jesus?”

It’s best to be sure what we are seeing and hearing—to know who is knocking at the door of the heart. The challenge of the Easter story is not whether or not you and I believe in a sort of literal resurrection. Rebirth out of death happens on any ordinary day, whether we believe in it or not—waiting, growing, circling around us. The challenge is that Easter, like April Fools’ Day, invites us to see beyond what appears as “truthiness” to find the still point of hope, to be awake. Stafford says, “Always go to the door… but keep the screen door locked.” Be wise in this world. Look past the apparent dead-ends and see the mystery of all the times when things do change and the arc bends toward justice, and courageous people still find a way to become themselves and press out of various tombs and when from cocoons come butterflies and from dead frozen dried stalks come new plants in the spring.

Mary hears her own name in the garden dawn, and the message is, “Don’t hold on to me.” Don’t hold on to the past. You are alive! Seek the truth beyond the apparent deaths. Let your wild imagination tell and retell this story in your own experience, and then let everyone know– that life and hope and love are greater than death.

The invitation of the Easter stories is to ask in our own experience–are our the eyes of our souls clear, our spirits alive? Are we choosing to be relentlessly who we are–profoundly loved, human and divine, and carefully choosing not to be fooled, compromised, discouraged, or destroyed by the powers of hate and death? Stafford says that fear and hate try to sell us Hell—we get April foolish messages like, “if you amass more and more stuff, you’ll be happy, only guns in schools can protect us, might makes right and violence brings peace, pesky kids can’t make a difference, poor people can’t rise up for change, Earth and her creatures and resources are only here to be used up for human progress.” All lies, packaged and sold as truth. They are dead-ends. And what may seem like a sort of April Fools’ joke but is actually is true is that this Easter story, is not the end—it is only the beginning, because we complete Easter. This is our story–we’re invited to go from graveyards and gardens and to be the change, as the old saying goes. In the scripture, Jesus tells the disciples, “You will do greater things than I, for I am going back to God.” You are alive now. You.

On Easter day we celebrate Jesus’ doing the energetic and eternal dance of life and death and rebirth. And by faith, acknowledge that as he did it, as the god Shiva does it in Hindu tradition, as the subatomic particles do it, so do all those we love, and finally, also shall we. Some days it’s easy to be still all mummified, wrapped up in delusion and the trappings of death. The challenge of Easter is to see ourselves shaking off the grave clothes, coming out and becoming ourselves. That’s the Easter miracle we are invited to every moment of our lives! To come alive as ourselves!

In a minute Talia will embody this truth in her dance to the song, “Graveclothes.” Consider some of the words in it: “She’s been thinkin’ life ain’t givin’ her what she needs. What could make her happy is always out of her reach—but she could not see that everything she wanted was inside of her heart—but she wouldn’t give it away. We don’t need no mournful sound, shake your grave clothes to the ground, shake your grave clothes off. Thoughts you’re thinking make you feel like you’re dead, but you can grow a garden out the top of your head. Self-deprecation, lack of motivation, stealing our aliveness, but in the silence love abounds and has already filled the spaces and replaces them with grace if we would only stop to feel, to see. Shake your grave clothes off!”

The grave clothes that bind us and make us feel like we are dead can be materialism, power over, exploitation, racism, judgment, stinking thinking, despair, confusion, and fear, fear, fear. All of that is April Fools’ Day foolishness. Shake it off. On Easter, every day, finding our way out of those graves is part of our life’s work, but sometimes we do it by fits and starts–sometimes we have to keep going back to the graveyards again and again and again until we finally experience the deep soul message, “Stop coming here to this empty tomb, will you? Why, oh why, do you seek the living among the dead? Go and have hope! The Spirit of truth, life, and love is alive in the world and in you! Alleluia. Amen.

Easter 2018
Shelly Wilson