The principle though of April Fool’s Day is an important theological one. It is a reminder that we can all be duped. It’s the realization that as serious as we may want to be, God ultimately won’t let us take ourselves too seriously. That’s why I’m always as delighted to be on the receiving end of the joke as I am at pulling one off. You have to care a lot about a person to take the time to make them laugh.

There were hints in the Psalms that God might just have a great joke in mind to pull on all of humanity. As the 118th Psalm unfolds, this prayer for all of Israel offers thanks to God for God’s steadfast love even in the midst of enemy territory. “It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to put confidence in mortals,” the prayer says. But I suspect that when Israel was surrounded by hostile nations on all sides, there was still a great deal of confidence put in the weaponry of the day and the number of soldiers still standing before the victory songs could be sung. In the end though, the underdog succeeds. Israel swings open the gates of righteousness, for they are allowed to stand as an independent nation among peoples who seemed far greater in military strength than they were. They rejoice and celebrate saying, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.” When we say as we turn to God in worship, “This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it,” it is from this Psalm that we get the quote. The day that God has made is a day in which the mighty powers of the world are upended. The little guy wins. “The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.”

In this instance, what would generally be seen as bad business becomes good theology. Who here would want their home’s foundation built around the stone that the builders said was no good? When we came to Oak Ridge to look at houses 4 and ½ years ago, the ones with questionable foundations were rejected by us outright – even if the realtor told us that the damage could likely be repaired. Israel could sense that many of their more powerful neighbors saw them as a joke. But the good news is that they could laugh at themselves because they were actually God’s joke. God pulled a fast one on the nations that thought they were important by calling a puny bunch of wandering nomads like Israel to be God’s chosen people.

But the joke doesn’t end there. Once Israel could laugh at itself, but fast forward a few hundred years, then Israel started to think of itself too seriously as the rightfully deserved chosen nation. The uber-Israelites, known as the Pharisees were not a humor filled bunch. They no longer recognized the punch-line. No one wanted to see what would happen if you put a wax apple in one of their lunchboxes! You might get punched in the face.

So God has to think up a new way to make the people laugh. It seems almost as though it’s the same joke, for it has a familiar punch-line. The little guy wins. The power of the powerful is seen for what it is –insignificant in God’s eyes. Once again, the stone that the builders rejected would become the cornerstone of people’s faith. This cornerstone is Jesus.

Jesus is a nobody from a nowhere town. He’s the son of a carpenter who wasn’t even sure that the child was really his. He doesn’t have much of a real job. He runs the lecture circuit with a bunch of fishermen and tax collectors as his so-called “students.” The regular rabbis wonder if he’s for real. He doesn’t seem to be very authentic. Rumor has it that some people have called him the Messiah, the anointed, the chosen one. By the time we get to this point of the story in Luke’s gospel, Jesus has already had several run- ins with the Pharisees outside of Jerusalem, and he was about to enter their sacred turf. Could they grasp that his story was as familiar to them as the Torah? Would they see that he was the underdog they could root for? Would they soften their stiff upper lips, relax, and laugh at how stodgy they’d become?

Well if at any time Jesus was trying to make a point, it seems like this entry into Jerusalem might have been a good time to do it. He had receptive audiences out in the hollers. The people around the fishing towns and removed from the big city had been awed by his compassion for them. They smiled through tears of joy as he healed them, and prayed with them, and told them of God’s great love. They laughed out loud when he told them that they were important in God’s eyes. They cheered when he offered them miracles of abundance when they knew only scarcity. But this was going to be different. He was coming into enemy territory, but this enemy was all too familiar. These were the ones who inherited the story, to whom the story rightfully belonged, but they couldn’t see it.

Jesus comes to familiar country first to gather his thoughts and his provisions for what would happen next. In the comfort of Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples to the next village to find a colt that has never been ridden. It must have been an unusual request because he has to instruct the disciples what they are to say if someone doesn’t really want to give the colt to them. They are to say, “The Lord needs it.” It seems to me that wouldn’t be enough either, but I guess Jesus knew what the answer would be.

The disciples come back with this animal and had to be astounded when Jesus actually decided to ride it into Jerusalem. This was not the “noble steed” promised for every fairy tale prince and conquering hero. This was part of the grand joke. Jesus comes into Jerusalem playing up a scene that would have been at once familiar and unfamiliar to the religious zealots. In their own history, the oracle of the prophet Zechariah announces for the people to rejoice, for the King will come to them, “triumphant and victorious, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” (Zechariah 9:9) Now, whether they were mad because they remembered or mad because they were humiliated, I don’t know, but as they watch this strange processional, people waving palm branches, shouting with joy and blessing, and throwing their cloaks on the road, the Pharisees got their briefs all in a bunch.

They yelled at Jesus at once saying, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” Even knowing that they could spit venom at this point, Jesus keeps on with the joke. He says to them, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”

Get it! The stone, the cornerstone that they had once hailed as the Lord’s marvelous doing, was now the stone they themselves were rejecting. They lost their sense of humor. They could no longer see that this too was a day that the Lord had made come about. But lest we begin to wag our fingers at the shame of the Pharisees, we need to ask ourselves if we can laugh at the same joke.

When we look at these two “Palm Sunday” texts together, it’s all too easy to make the connection that the Christians got it and the Jews didn’t. It’s too easy to say that the joke’s on the chosen people and that we’re the chosen people now – but that’s exactly where the Pharisees goofed. The blessing happens when we can still laugh at the joke, when we still see that God is playing the underdog and lifting up the little guy. I remember reading somewhere once that the devil never laughs. I believe it. When God wants us to laugh, the devil tries to tell us to take things more seriously, to accumulate more power, to lock down the rules. God will ever find new ways to make us laugh, to shake us out of the molds we find ourselves in. God will always use the lowly to humble the mighty. Jesus goes out for us on a victory march that we know will end in tragedy. The joke isn’t always pleasant; sometimes it seems like the ultimate prank if we fail to pay attention. It will seem as though there’s no hope, and all we will end up with is a building with a faulty foundation. It is only through God’s eyes that the misfit cornerstone will find a place of prominence.

So it pays to be a little foolish, to be willing to do those things that others say cannot be done, to welcome the people that the world tells us deserve to be ignored, and to shake up the system when it gets too stuck in its own ways. Jesus was all about that – even though right after this text he weeps for the city of Jerusalem, and gets furious at the goings on he finds in the temple. God’s sense of humor can be a little dark.

Today, I’ll be remembering my mom and her infamous wax apple as a reminder that sometimes there are jokes told over and over again that never get old. The foolishness of God is greater than any human wisdom. My old friend and pastoral colleague from Pennsylvania showed everyone his passion for God’s humor every time he drove down the road. It didn’t hurt that he was trained in clown ministry, but on his car’s vanity plate, it read, “FOOL 4 X” – standing for “fool for Christ.” April fool or Christ’s fool – maybe it doesn’t matter. We could all stand to laugh at ourselves just a little bit more.

Amen.