The Fool
Your kids will post April Fools jokes today. Two thousand years ago, the joke was a man they beat until his own mother couldn’t identify him.
My wife asked me what I wanted to write about this morning.
I told her I couldn’t stop thinking about Mary.
Not the stained glass Mary. Not the statue Mary with the soft face and the folded hands and the blue robe.
The real one. The one standing in a crowd watching Roman soldiers take turns punching her son in the jaw. The one who could smell the blood from where she stood. The one whose legs gave out at some point — they must have — because no mother on earth stands upright through that.
She nursed that boy. Changed Him. Taught Him to walk. Watched His hands learn to grip a hammer in Joseph’s shop. Small fingers curling around the handle. Sawdust on His knees.
Those same hands were nailed to a beam this morning two thousand years ago.
I’ve got five kids.
If someone touched one of them — if someone laid a hand on my child — I would burn the world down to get to them. I would walk through a wall. I would kill a man with my bare hands and ask God to sort it out later.
Mary couldn’t do anything.
She stood there. She watched. She heard the hammer. She heard whatever sound her son made when the iron went through His wrist. And she couldn’t stop it. And she wasn’t supposed to stop it. Because this was the plan. The plan she said yes to in a room in Nazareth when she was barely old enough to drive.
“Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.” — Luke 1:38
She said yes to this. She didn’t know it yet. But she said yes to watching her son die naked on a Roman cross on a Friday morning while the city smelled like Passover lamb roasting in every kitchen.
It’s April 1st.
Your kids are taping “kick me” signs to each other’s backs. Your group chat is full of fake engagement announcements. Someone at work microwaved fish and blamed it on the new guy.
Two thousand years ago today, the world’s idea of a joke was dressing God in a purple bathrobe and shoving a crown of thorns into His skull until blood poured down His face like sweat.
“Hail, King of the Jews!”
They knelt. They bowed. They pretended to worship. Then they stood up and hit Him in the mouth.
April Fools.
I’ve been preaching since I was fourteen.
Forty-five years old in eleven days. Twenty-plus years of teaching and preaching. And I still don’t have language for what happened on this day.
The flagrum took the skin off His back. Not metaphorically. Literally. Strips of flesh hanging. Exposed muscle. Bone visible through the wounds in some places. The instrument was designed for it — leather straps with shards of bone and metal at the tips. Each strike wrapped around the torso. Each strike took something with it on the way back.
Thirty-nine times.
Then they made Him carry the cross. Rough timber across raw shoulders. He collapsed in the street. A stranger had to carry it because the Son of God was too broken to stand.
At 9 AM — two hours from right now — they drove the nails.
At noon, the sky went black. Middle of the day. Darkness like someone threw a blanket over Jerusalem.
At 3 PM He screamed. One sentence. Psalm 22:1. Still preaching. Still teaching. Dying and still pointing them to the scripture that described this moment a thousand years before it happened.
Then quiet.
“It is finished.”
“The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.” — Psalm 14:1
Your pastor will quote that today. The atheist is the fool. Clean sermon. Ten minutes. Nobody’s late for brunch.
But the fool on this day wasn’t the man who denied God.
The fool was the man who had God bleeding on his floor and couldn’t be bothered.
Pilate looked at the Truth and asked “What is truth?” and walked away before the answer came.
The Pharisees spent their whole lives memorizing the prophecies about the Messiah and then killed Him when He showed up because He didn’t look the part.
The crowd chose Barabbas. A murderer. Over the Messiah. Because the murderer made more sense to them than a king who wouldn’t fight.
The soldiers gambled for His clothes at the foot of the cross. God was dying six feet above their heads and they were arguing over who got the robe.
Fools. Every last one.
“Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” — 1 Corinthians 1:25
The foolishness of God.
A king who dies for the people who killed Him. A father who sacrifices His son for a world that won’t even look up from the dice game. A God whose battle plan is to lose on purpose.
That looks foolish.
It looks foolish to a world that measures power by who can destroy the most. Where strength means never taking a hit. Where winning means the other man bleeds and you don’t.
Jesus bled out on a cross He could have avoided with one word.
Twelve legions of angels. Seventy-two thousand warriors. One word from His mouth and the sky rips open and every Roman soldier in Jerusalem is dust.
He didn’t say the word.
That’s not weakness.
That’s the kind of strength most men will spend their entire lives pretending they have.
Brother. Father. Husband reading this before work.
Your wife is going to ask you what’s for dinner. Your kid is going to spill something. Your boss is going to say something that makes you want to put your fist through drywall.
And none of it — not one second of your hard day — compares to what happened on this morning two thousand years ago. To a man who had every reason to quit and every power to walk away and chose to stay.
He stayed for you.
Not because you earned it. Not because you’re good enough. Not because your theology is perfect or your prayer life is consistent or your marriage is solid.
He stayed because He decided you were worth dying for before you ever gave Him a reason.
That’s the fool.
And on Sunday morning, the fool walks out of a tomb and the whole world changes.
Happy April 1st.
The biggest fool in history is the only reason you’re still breathing.
P.S. — It’s Holy Week. At 9 AM this morning, the nails go in. At noon, the sky goes dark. At 3 PM, He cries out. You’re living on the same clock as Calvary right now. Don’t waste it scrolling.
i’ve read somewhere that it’s called April fools because they shifted the months around and there should be 13 months with April 1 being the first month of the new year because regrowth in spring has started. This would ultimately have 13 months each have exactly 28 days starting on a Sunday and ending on a Sunday. I think I would much prefer it.
Blown away. Thanks for sharing your heart