Pete Grassow

“These words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.”  — (Luke 24:11)

April Fools’ Day, occurring on April 1 each year, is an event that sees us playing hoaxes or practical jokes on others, often yelling “April Fools!” at the end. There is an “April Fool’s” type of account in the Bible — where various women who visited the tomb of Jesus were accused of pulling a prank on the other disciples of Jesus.

They claimed that Jesus was not in his tomb, and the disciples dismissed their words as “idle tales.”

I wonder how many of us today still think of the teachings and example of Jesus as just idle tales. Russel Moore, editor in chief of the magazine Christianity Today, tells of multiple pastors who would quote the Sermon on the Mount, and someone would come up after the service and ask, “Where did you get those liberal talking points?” Moore continues: “What was alarming to me is that in most of these scenarios, when the pastor would say, ‘I’m literally quoting Jesus Christ,’ the response would not be, ‘I apologize.’ The response would be, ‘Yes, but that doesn’t work anymore. That’s weak.’”

I wonder how many people will choose to give up on Jesus and choose instead to rely on strong angry men who promise to save us. I wonder at how we instinctively gravitate to powerful rulers who want to lock up and punish the weak and those people who struggle for survival. And I weep at how Jesus’ words of compassion for the poor and the marginalized are reduced to idle tales.

And yet — Easter Sunday is the day that we say, “It is not over.”

Easter Sunday teaches that the goodness, and mercy, and grace and love of Jesus will overcome all the hate, and bitterness and painful character assassination that shapes our culture. This is not weak — this is the Christian way of living. I invite us to choose to be amongst those Jesus-followers who practice love, and grace and compassion.