Martin Luther once said, “God creates everything out of nothing; and everything he is to use, he first reduces to nothing.” More than we know, this is an Easter statement—that of dying to self, only to be raised to new life. Jesus dies on the cross, only to be raised to new life that we celebrate on Easter.
Seven years ago Easter fell on April Fool’s Day, April 1, 2018. It won’t happen again until 2029. There used to be a tradition, most prevalent in the Greek Orthodox Church, devoted to telling April Fool’s jokes. People saved up their best jokes for the day after Easter.
The reason was to imitate God, because Easter’s resurrection was God’s way of pulling a cosmic joke on the devil. The devil thought he had won and tricked people into killing God’s Son. For three days he laid in the grip of death. It looked like it was over. The devil was smug. He thought he had the last word. But God set the world to laughing when Jesus rose from the grave and became victorious over the devil, sin and our last enemy—death.
I hope you and your family will join us for the great cosmic joke we celebrate on Easter Sunday. We’ll have a sunrise service at 7:15 am and two more services at 8:30 and 10:00 am. Live Streaming available at 10:00 AM.
Pastor Steve Trewartha
