April Fool's Day

Today, Christ enters Jerusalem, the Holy City, riding on a donkey. He is greeted as royalty and palm branches are thrown down before him to honor his passing. But in five days time, he will be paraded as a fool before the courts of men. Such is the folly of the world. Its praise is conditional and short-lived. And even superstars are expendable when their life shakes us out of our comfort zone.

But such also is the folly of Jesus, who presses on against all reason and his disciple's warning cries. This Palm

Sunday is our April Fool's Day, for Jesus comes heedless of the threat of death, knowing full well that the religious leadership of his day despises him, cannot understand him, and feeling jealous of his fame is already plotting to kill him.

He rides on. Like a fool, he moves through the crowds, passing through their hollow hosannas, through the pale gleam of this spotlight. Towards the olive press that is Gethsemane, towards the crushing blows of the whip and the hammer that will literally carve from his body a Masterpiece of Love.

In the immortal words of the old song "Wise men say only fools rush in...." And that rush into danger and death can only be blamed on love, for he "can't help falling in love with you..."

This love of Jesus is a holy madness. His love leaps into the lion's den, into darkness. His love risks all, gives all to find all, to free all from bondage. The question for us is: Will we follow him all the way? Will our love share in this Love? Or will we back away into the shadows, afraid to appear the fool, mumbling to the crowds "I do not know the Man"?