April Fool

This is the message given in the Sunday night service in the Gettysburg United Methodist church on Sunday, March 28, 2021.  The Bible verses used are John 12:12-19.

            Have you ever been on the receiving end of a really cruel April Fools’ joke?  I’m not talking about the kind of joke that’s innocent and fun.  I’m talking about where someone fools you about something really important.  I’m talking about where someone plays with your emotions in a really serious way, and then pulls the rug out from under you.           

It seems like every year Palm Sunday comes somewhere around April first, April Fools’ Day.  It’s coming up on Thursday of this week.  It seems to me that, in a way, it’s kind of appropriate to have April Fools’ Day and Palm Sunday close together.  After all, what’s the essence of an April Fools’ joke?  It’s convincing someone that something is true when it’s really not.  That happens over and over again throughout the last week of Jesus’ life.

Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem is kind of April Fools’ joke, really.  This huge crowd is cheering Jesus on.  Everyone’s telling Jesus how great he is and how much they love him.  None of them really meant it.  They may have thought they meant it at the time, but it was all on the surface.  There was no depth to their love of Jesus.  Not long after that, some of those same people would be in the crowd that demanded Jesus be killed.  They were telling Jesus how much they loved him, only to say “April Fool” just a few days later.

How about Judas?  Judas was one of the most trusted of the disciples.  He was the one who was in charge of the money.  No one suspected Judas was disloyal to Jesus.  They all thought he was very loyal.  And for a while, he was.  After all, it’s not like he was planning to betray Jesus the whole time he was with him.  It was only at the end that he betrayed Jesus.  He had earned everyone’s trust, only to say “April Fool” and sell Jesus out to the Pharisees.

Then there’s Peter.  Peter was the one who swore up and down that he’d be loyal to Jesus to the end.  When Jesus tells Peter that’s not the way it’s going to be, Peter not only denies it, Peter actually gets kind of mad at Jesus for saying it.  Peter was sure he was going to stick with Jesus all the way, even if it meant he was going to have to die for him.  In the end, though, he said “April Fool” and denied he even knew who Jesus was.

None of these April Fools were fun, innocent pranks.  All of them had to really hurt Jesus.  Jesus was not really fooled at all, of course.  He knew exactly what was going to happen.  Still, it had to hurt him.  All these people said they loved him.  All of them, including the ones who were closest to him, were going to betray him and abandon him.  Can we even imagine what Jesus must have gone through, being with these people, hearing what they said, and yet knowing what was going to happen?

So, how about us?  We say we love Jesus.  We say we mean it.  We think we mean it.  But do we really mean it?  Or is our love for Jesus just an April Fools’ joke, too?

I don’t know that we can answer that question.  I don’t know that anyone can until we’re really tested.  After all, the crowd thought they meant it when they said they loved Jesus.  Peter thought he meant it when he said he’d never abandon Jesus.  Even Judas thought he meant it when he became Jesus’ disciple.

But then came the time when they were tested.  And they all failed the test.  The crowd failed the test because Jesus turned out not to be who they hoped he’d be.  He was the Savior, yes, but not the Savior they wanted.  He was not someone who was going to restore the mighty empire of Israel, the empire that King David had established.  It turned out that they did not love Jesus.  They simply loved what their hopes for Jesus were.  When those hopes were dashed, their love went away.

Peter failed the test because things did not happen the way he’d envisioned them.  When Peter said he would die for Jesus, he was thinking of dying in a battle.  He was thinking of going down fighting for the cause.  Instead, he’d have had to die in a humiliating way.  The same way that Jesus died, of course.  And when Peter found that out, he abandoned Jesus. 

Judas failed the test too, of course.  We don’t know what Judas’ motivations were.  It cannot have been the money—thirty pieces of silver were not worth that much in Jesus’ time.  Some have speculated that Judas was trying to force Jesus to use his earthly power, that he thought Jesus would fight back and wipe out the Roman guards.  We don’t know.  But whatever the reason, Judas failed the test, too.

Maybe that’s why Jesus talked so much about counting the cost of following him.  No matter how much we think we mean it when we say we love Jesus, no matter how strong we think we are in our faith, we never really know for sure whether we mean it until our faith is tested.  We never know for sure whether we can handle the cost of following Jesus until we’re actually asked to pay the price.  And the price may come in a way that we never expected or even thought about.

You know how, in the Lord’s Prayer, we say, “Lead us not into temptation”?  From what I’ve read, that’s not actually the right translation.  What I’ve read is that it really should say “Do not lead us to the time of testing.”  I don’t know for sure if that’s right, but it does make sense to me.

After all, we don’t really need God to lead us to temptation, do we?  We can find enough temptation on our own.  The time of testing, though, is different.  God does put us to the test sometimes, and it can be a scary thing. 

What makes the time of testing scary is that we can fail the test, just like the crowd did, and like Peter did, and like Judas did.  We think we love Jesus.  In fact, we’re sure we do.  We swear up and down that we’ll never abandon Jesus.  Then, the test comes, and it comes in a way we never envisioned.  We get into trouble, we get scared, we don’t know what to do, and we don’t trust Jesus enough to stay with him.  So, we yell, “April Fool” and run away.

That has to hurt Jesus.  There's good news about it, though.  The good news is that we always get another chance.  Even though we fail the test, even though we hurt Jesus, Jesus still gives us another chance to get it right.

Peter realized what he’d done.  He repented, he asked for forgiveness, and Jesus forgave Peter.  Peter not only was forgiven, he became the first leader of the disciples.  

I’d guess that some of those in the crowd, some of those who wanted Jesus killed, eventually realized what they’d done, too.  I suspect some of them repented and asked for forgiveness.  If they did, I’m sure Jesus gave it to them.  

Even Judas eventually regretted what he’d done.  The Bible does not say that Judas ever asked for forgiveness.  In fact, it implies that Judas did not think he deserved forgiveness.  Still, the Bible does not explicitly say that Judas did not ask for forgiveness, either.  If Judas did repent and ask for forgiveness, it’s possible that Jesus even forgave Judas for what he’d done.  In fact, I think he almost certainly would have.  After all, while he was hanging on the cross, Jesus asked God the Father to forgive all the people who were killing him.  Surely Judas would have been included in Jesus’ forgiveness, too, if he ever repented and asked for forgiveness.

We get that same chance that they did.  No matter how much we’ve hurt Jesus, no matter how many times our faith is just an April Fools’ joke, we always get another chance.  We can still go to Jesus, we can still repent, and we can still ask for forgiveness.  When we do, Jesus will give us that forgiveness. 

There is nothing we can do that will stop Jesus from loving us.  No matter how many times we hurt Jesus, and no matter how badly we hurt Jesus, Jesus still keeps loving us.  The salvation Jesus gave us on the cross is still available to us.  All we need to do is repent and ask Jesus for forgiveness.  When we do, we get that forgiveness every time.  We can return to faith and accept the salvation Jesus offers us.

And that salvation is no April Fools’ joke.  It’s a salvation that will last for eternity.