One woman in our church in California lived for this day. Not Maundy Thursday, April Fools. Ann was famous for her pranks which she had to devise increasingly elaborate traps as the people in her church became ever familiar with Ann and her connection to April Fools. One time she gave me a cake in the church kitchen. The icing was beautiful. Some members of a group were meeting and she told me to take it to them and serve them. When I arrived in the meeting room and started to cut the cake, only then did I realize what day it was. Underneath that beautiful icing was a piece of Styrofoam shaped just like a cake.

The other 364 days of the year were just run ups for April 1. Ann brought squirt guns to church especially on Sundays when there were baptisms. “Might as well get everybody wet” she would say. If she went on a ski trip, you better check your boots by holding them upside down. You would likely find a rubber spider or snake in there.

Paul told his community in Corinthians that we are to be “Fools for Christ.” And by the world’s standards most of what we believe, say and do is foolish. For the first few centuries the Romans held followers of Jesus in low regard. In the city of Antioch the Romans made fun of this strange group comprised mainly of women and slaves who followed a crucified messiah. Although followers of Jesus did many good works in the city, they were the butt of jokes. Eventually the Romans referred to them as “slaves of Christ” or in Greek they were referred to as “Christians.” The name was originally a put down.

In one of his final actions with the disciples Jesus gives his followers a new commandment. Since this commandment to love one another appears three times in the Hebrew scriptures we may wonder what is “new” about this commandment. The new part is the comparison part. We are to love other people in the same way, JUST AS Jesus love us. This is a pretty tall order. Jesus laid down his life for us and he asks us to do the same for one another.

But there is more to this commandment. While it is true that we only have one life to give for others, the way this commandment is phrased in Greek means more than just a single self sacrificing action one time in our life. The verb form indicates a continuing, sustained action. We are to love one another NOW. We are to continue loving one another in the FUTURE. And we are to do this without ceasing. All of this love that we shower on other people must be given in the same way Christ loves us.

One of the most beloved writers on Christian spirituality was the Dutch Roman Catholic priest Henri Nouwen. After twenty years of teaching at some of the top divinity schools in the world – Notre Dame, Yale, Harvard, Henri took a position of pastor of a community of severely mentally disabled people in Toronto. He went from the top of top in academia to share his life in a community that most of our society would view as the bottom of the barrel. Father Nouwen lived there a twelve years before he died and wrote several more books including one about his close friend, a resident there named Adam.

It took him nearly forty years to discover that his vocation and homecoming was not the upward mobility of the academic world but downward mobility living with the poor. The following is from one of his biographies:

Nouwen began to discover the difference between being productive and being fruitful. Having succeeded in the academic world where productivity was an expectation, he discovered the pain and joy of caring for people who might previously have been thought of as useless…. Henri was attracted to the extreme vulnerability and honesty of the disabled community. Nothing was hidden and everything was exposed. … It was to these people that he was called and it was these people that he was to embrace, comfort and love. Further, these were the people that were going to bring him the words from God that he was to bring to others in his writing. They were to be his teachers and he was to bring their message to the average Christian.

Nouwen’s life gives us a modern example of foot washing – servant leadership. If we are going to be fools for Christ, we must love one another in the same way that Christ loves us.