Our Minister, Rev’d Dr Peter Levitt, sends the following Message for the month of April 2018 ….
Dear Friends,
The last time Easter Day landed on the 1st April was in 1956 and the next time will be in 2029!
So we have not had to think much about Easter Day being on April Fools’ Day for some years and we will not have to do so again for another good number of years.
When I realised when Easter Sunday would be this year, I thought I had not preached on the theme of Resurrection in relation to April Fools’ Day during my circuit ministry, which began in 1982.
I have preached on God’s ‘foolishness’ in using the events of Good Friday and Easter Day to bring about an amazing act of reconciliation between himself and his children but not in this context.
This year I am quite excited at the prospect of linking the two ‘special’ days though you may find that strange and somewhat unsettling.
And it is; though we are in good company because the Apostle Paul did offer a theology of wisdom and foolishness, but not in relation to April Fools’ Day, admittedly.
In his First Letter to the Christians in Corinth, Paul reflects upon the wisdom and foolishness of God; the wisdom and folly of human beings; and most strikingly the folly of the Cross!
Who would have thought that the way to overcome sin and death was to go the way of the Cross and of the Empty Tomb and Resurrection Appearances to mixed up, highly emotional, men and women?
It defies logic and common sense, doesn’t it?
Yet this is exactly what happened, as many people testified to witnessing unexpectedly and it left them ‘bowled over’ by the experience.
Paul was one of them and his experience came later than that of so many others, but he could not deny its reality and power, indeed it transformed his life!
So let us make the most of Easter Day this year landing on April Fools’ Day and be ‘Fools for Christ’ as we celebrate the amazing, life changing, brilliantly inspired, utterly wonderful message of New Life with Jesus our Risen Lord and Saviour who lived our life, died our death and opened the way to Eternal Life at Easter!
It takes a genius to come up with something like this and there is no greater genius than God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and our Loving Heavenly Father.
May we bear witness to this reality with even more confidence and assurance this Easter!
All the joy and blessing of Easter to you!
Peter