I’ve enjoyed the way that “April Fool’s Day” has often fallen during Holy Week, as it does again this year. In particular, I’ve quietly savored those times when it has coincided with Good Friday or Easter Sunday. Not that these sacred days are any sort of joke, but the Cross and Passion of our Lord and His Resurrection from the dead did come as a surprise to the devil and his minions, and the joke was on them! As we sing with Paul Gerhardt in the Hymn of the Day for the Easter Sunrise Divine Service, “the foe in triumph shouted when Christ lay in the tomb; but lo, he now is routed, his boast is turned to gloom!” (LSB 467, stanza 2). And as the tide is turned against the old evil foe by the atoning sacrificial death of the incarnate Son, Christ Jesus, as He demonstrates in His triumphant descent into hell and in His bursting from the spiced tomb on the Third Day, all the might of “hell’s satanic crew” is but “a joke, a mere façade!” (LSB 666, stanza 3).
It is St. Paul who most clearly states that the foolish preaching of the offensive Cross of Christ is, in fact, the power and wisdom of God to those who are being saved through faith in the Crucified Son of God. And His redemption and rescue of those who were poor and weak and nothing at all is the revelation that the foolishness of God is wiser than man, and His weakness is stronger than man (1 Corinthians 1:18-25). That is at the heart and center of the Epistle appointed for Tuesday of Holy Week in each series of the Three-Year Lectionary. And it is very much to the point.
The foolish wisdom of God is another way of describing the theology of the Cross. Not only that our Lord accomplished the redemption of the world by His voluntary suffering and death, though that is most certainly true, but that in doing so He reveals the one true God under the opposite of all expectations of divine glory, power, and strength. And until He comes again for the great and final Day of Judgment, it is by the Cross that He continue to come, to reveal Himself, and to give Himself to us within His Church on earth. And we, in turn, share His glory by sharing His Cross, not by any wisdom, reason, or strength of our own, but by His Word and Holy Spirit, by faith in the midst of darkness and death, in the face of despair, in much poverty and weakness and fear.
It is not to the wise and intelligent that the Father makes Himself known, but to the poor and weak and lowly and despised, to the babies and the little children, and to those who become like little children through repentance and faith and the new birth of Holy Baptism into the dying and rising of Christ Jesus (St. Matthew 11:25; St. Mark 10:14-15; St. John 3:1-8; St. Luke 18:15-17).
It all appears so foolish and nonsensical, as though it were some kind of joke: The donkey ride into Jerusalem, the washing of the disciples’ feet, the giving of His Body and His Blood as a new Passover Feast – to those who would betray, abandon, and deny Him over the next few hours, as He well knew ahead of time. And not only did He love His fearful, fickle friends, even “to the end” (St. John 13:1); He also loved His mortal enemies, He prayed for those who crucified Him, and He forgave those who sinned against Him. We know that to be the almighty power of God made perfect in the gracious exercise of mercy, but it flies utterly in the face of all worldly wisdom. He does not defend Himself, He does not save Himself nor come down from the Cross. Like a lamb before the shearers is silent, He opens not His mouth to protest or plead. Instead, He prays to the One He loved and trusted above all else, the One who could save Him even from out of death. And in that piety, faith, and confidence, He goes quietly and willingly into base humiliation.
The spotless Lamb of God “bears the stripes, the wounds, the lies, the mockery, and yet replies, ‘All this I gladly suffer’” (LSB 438, stanza 1). He’s treated like a joke by the jeering crowds that encircle His Cross, the chief priests, scribes, and Pharisees, the soldiers, and even one of those two malefactors who were crucified alongside of Him. But as crazy as it all looks and sounds, it is the Lord who laughs in derision of the rulers of this earth. For in lifting up His Son upon the Cross, He has installed His King upon Zion, His Holy Mountain, by whom He calls disciples from all nations to Himself, to give them an unexpected inheritance of peace and joy (Psalm 2).