‘Fools!’ Jesus rebukes his mourning disciples – have we misunderstood Easter?

By Tolulope Oke

My Sunday morning was far from quiet. The streets were alive with their usual symphony, the meruwas, the ‘iron men’ carting away with condemned poles. My gate man called out a cheerful, “Good morning,” and I nodded as I walked past, taking it all in. From nearby churches, the strains of morning praise and worship drifted through the air, mingling with the scent of exhaust and road-side pepper.

I have been trained, or perhaps conditioned, to keep my heart in expectation for every church service, because, as I have long believed, each is a meeting with God. And so, even amid the chaos of the streets, I withdrew from my usual distractions, stepped off the familiar path, and allowed myself to focus.

I made my usual preparations for church, getting my jotter, straightening my shirt, and phew, off on a bus –  almost as if the heavens had whispered it straight to my heart, I saw the theme of the service: “The Alignment.”

The word struck me with the subtle weight of a revelation I hadn’t known I was waiting for. For centuries, we Christians have approached Easter with solemnity, with quiet mourning, with the ritual of reflection that tells us, in no uncertain terms, that the day is ours to observe. Good Friday is sorrow; Easter Sunday, rejoicing. We know this dance well. It has been performed by the faithful in the same rhythm for generations.

But today, today I began to wonder what this day meant not for us, but for Him. What did Easter mean for Christ? What did the resurrection mean from His eyes? Too often, we frame the narrative around ourselves, our sorrow, our celebration, our relief that sin has been defeated. And yes, that is correct. But what if there is a perspective above ours, a divine alignment that far exceeds our human sentiment? What if the view from heaven is less about our grief and more about the glory we cannot yet comprehend?

And then my Reverend, P.N. Utomi, read Luke 24:13-27, and I was struck as though a lightning bolt had split my morning. After His resurrection, Jesus met two disciples on the road, those who were still mourning, those whose eyes were shadowed with doubt and grief. And His first words were not gentle, not comforting. He called them “Fools” — in Yoruba, “ode.”

“This is someone who literally just died and woke up,” my Reverend said, “and the first thing He says to people mourning His death is to call them ‘Fools.’”

I had to stop. Breathe. Process. Imagine someone surviving a tragedy and the first thing they say to those grieving is… fool. To the untrained mind, it sounds cruel, even absurd. Yet, the question lingered: why? Were their feelings invalid? Was the act of mourning itself misguided? Or was it, perhaps, a deeper invitation to shift focus, to see beyond the surface of sorrow and into the purpose of glory?

It became clear to me then: many of us, in our rituals and celebrations, risk being those very fools Jesus rebuked. We engage with the Easter story through the familiar, the solemn hymns, the feasts, the symbolic gestures and yet we miss the essence, the alignment with God’s purpose, the invitation to partake in the glory that lies at the heart of the resurrection.

As RPN, as my Reverend is fondly called, explained: “The plan was for Jesus to suffer for the sins, reconcile them back to God, and in doing so, be the first to be partaker of the glory.” Yes, the glory, the very reason for the season. Not merely crying on Good Friday, nor feasting on Easter Sunday, but the expansion of God’s glory on earth. Romans 3:23 reminds us of our imperfection, yet the resurrection illuminates the divine design: Christ’s triumph offers us a blueprint for alignment with God’s will. Every Easter should invite reflection: how much of God’s glory is visible in my life? How aligned am I with the eternal purpose revealed in the death and resurrection of Christ?

Consider the celestial perspective. Would angels mourn every Good Friday only to celebrate on Easter Sunday? Likely not. For them, glory is constant, their daily bread. If Jesus instructed His disciples to mirror the heavens, then our focus should not merely be on the rituals we’ve perfected, but on becoming partakers of the glory — the same glory that demanded His life, the same glory that transforms mourning into purpose, despair into hope, ritual into alignment.

This is the weight of Easter: that the ultimate celebration is not in our joy, nor in our sorrow, but in the reality of God’s glory manifested in the world. That glory is not an idea; it is a living, breathing truth. And if we are to be aligned, we must let it shape us, guide us, and define how we live. In doing so, we move beyond being the fools on the road to Emmaus and step into the rhythm of divine alignment that Easter was meant to teach.