In France, when Easter is celebrated, there is a common phrase that is proclaimed in cathedrals, shared on sidewalks, spraypainted on walls and plastered on streetlights.

l’amour de Dieu est folie!

The love of God is foolish!

What a great phrase. Why don’t we have anything like it here?

Now, we know God is infinitely wise and omnipotent. It’s a bit odd to call him foolish, isn’t it? It’s simply foolish because we can’t possibly fathom or understand God’s love for us. We are broken, sinful creatures, yet God loves us. Magnificently. Spectacularly. Undeservedly. And I can think of no better time to proclaim the glory of God’s foolish love for his creation than on Easter, the day of Christ’s resurrection and victory over death.

1 Corinthians says it better than I ever could.

“For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,

“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

- 1 Corinthians 1:18-25 (ESV)

Happy Easter!

In thinking about and discussing Easter lately with some friends, I was reminded of a C.S. Lewis quote that I’d seen once before but had never considered deeply.

“There is a stage in a child’s life at which it cannot separate the religious from the merely festal character of Christmas or Easter. I have been told of a very small and very devout boy who was heard murmuring to himself on Easter morning a poem of his own composition which began ‘Chocolate eggs and Jesus risen.’ This seems to me, for his age, both admirable poetry and admirable piety. But of course the time will soon come when such a child can no longer effortlessly and spontaneously enjoy that unity. He will become able to distinguish the spiritual from the ritual and festal aspect of Easter; chocolate eggs will no longer seem sacramental. And once he has distinguished he must put one or the other first. If he puts the spiritual first he can still taste something of Easter in the chocolate eggs; if he puts the eggs first they will soon be no more than any other sweetmeat. They will have taken on an independent, and therefore a soon withering, life.”

Ah, more wisdom from Clive. The type of sentimentality and expectancy Lewis describes is probably more often associated with Christmas in this modern day and age, though the lesson is just as potent for Easter.

Children don’t think in abstract terms, so to the boy, the thing (chocolate) and the sign (Easter) appear to be one and the same. But the thing is ephemeral, and is consumed – while the sign survives the thing in which it was once incarnate. The boy, then, remembers Easter even when the egg is gone, and is thus faced with the choice that Lewis presents.

How then, does the boy “get back” to the time when the chocolate was both delicious and significant? Does he focus on eating more chocolate, in the hopes that the feeling will somehow return? Or does he look elsewhere for the spiritual nature that made the egg significant in the first place?

What we often mistake as a desire to “consume more eggs” is really a desire to find the divine that makes the eggs significant in the first place. One commentary on this passage uses Communion – eating the bread and drinking the wine – as a metaphor.

“If [a] person puts the spiritual first and desires to have the benefits of the death of Christ sealed to his life, he can still use the sacrament to experience this. If [he] puts the sacrament, the physical ritual of eating and drinking, first in his life, he may become a very religious person, but he will have missed the higher reality to which the sacrament is pointing.”  - Will Vaus, Mere Theology

I’m fully aware that this post is a bit “out there” and highly theoretical – but the main point is that we seek an understanding of the spiritual that makes our rituals significant, as opposed to engaging in rituals because we recognize that they once held some sacred meaning. Chasing the “thing,” as Lewis describes, will make the eggs no longer feel sacramental.

So this Easter, I hope you have many chocolate eggs to enjoy – and I hope that they are full of the meaning and significance of Christ’s death and resurrection.