Back to Life
Through the years, I’ve gotten pretty good at vacationing. Don’t get me wrong… I intend to practice a lot more to get really good at it. But I think I’ve figured out the gist. When I leave the office the day before vacation, it takes me no time at all to slip into vacation mode. While away I fill my days with good things: people, food, laughs, dogs, nature, adventure. I haven’t tested exactly how long I could last in that mode, but surely a while. However long a vacation is, though, the last night of vacation always arrives, and with it the thought, “Tomorrow morning is going to be a reality check. I have to wake up and go back to work. Back to life.”
The “return to life” after moments of joy can feel like a reality check – even the Monday after Easter. But resurrection IS our reality now and always will be, so the life we return to now that the tomb is empty is one of enduring joy, even on the hard days.
Globally, the Church acknowledges the Monday after Easter as a day for celebrating the ongoing impact of Christ’s resurrection and victory over sin and death. But what happens two days after Easter? Or three or four? The stone has been rolled away, death has been defeated, and hope is alive. But, two… three… four days later we find ourselves back in the thick of ordinary life – the alarm clock rings, the email inbox fills, the cancer diagnosis remains, the relationship is still strained, the financial struggles mount, and the deep longing for what is missing persists.
The days after Easter invite us into a sacred tension: resurrection joy mixed with the reality – and even grief – of life in a world that is at times still difficult. Still painful. Still ordinary.
The first followers of Jesus must have known this feeling – this tension – well. After Jesus rose from the dead, the disciples didn’t immediately step into a world where everything was suddenly fixed. There was still brokenness. People still needed to be healed. Powerful people and governments still felt threatened by Jesus and his Way. Many of the disciples ended up being persecuted and even martyred. In the days after Easter, their lives probably still felt ordinary at times. Still complicated. Still unfolding. But, they had something they didn’t have before: a new and living hope. If God could do what God did to death through Jesus, then NOTHING is beyond the reach of God’s redeeming power. Broken relationships? Reconcilable. Ailing bodies? Healable. Bad decisions? Forgiveable. Guilt and shame? Transformable. All because Christ rose.
Easter does not pluck us out of the lives we live. It doesn’t erase the unfinished or painful parts of our lives overnight. The world is still waiting for the fullness of God’s redemption. As the apostle Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans, “Our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation” (Romans 8:18). And yet, Christ’s resurrection means that Jesus is at work even now in our unfinished lives. In the words of the famous hymn, “Because He lives, I can face tomorrow.” Because Christ lives, we can face the Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday after Easter – and any random day several weeks or even months after Easter.
For many months now, the landscape has seemed tired: brown grass, bare branches, cold earth asleep beneath our feet. Winter lingers long enough that we almost forget what the earth-in-bloom looks like. And then, slowly, something changes. Almost overnight, the ground softens. Colorful buds appear on branches that looked lifeless just weeks before. Tiny blades of grass push up through the soil. Creation comes back to life.
One of the most dramatic displays of springtime rebirth is a phenomenon known as a superbloom, which happens in Death Valley National Park along California’s eastern border. The desert region is too arid to support widespread plant growth, so billions of dormant wildflower seeds accumulate beneath the desert soil. However, every 10 - 15 years, the perfect conditions of above–average rainfall and temperature coincide, causing the excessive number of dormant desert wildflower seeds to suddenly bloom all at once. Hillsides that spent months looking barren and dead burst into fields of wildflowers – poppies, lupine, desert gold, gravel ghost, and golden evening primrose stretch as far as the eye can see. Seeds that lay hidden and dormant in the soil for years awaken all at once. It’s a stunning display of beauty. Of awakening. Christ’s resurrection is like that, I think – the stunning display of beauty that woke what was asleep. That gave life to a world that was dead.
Because Christ rose from the dead, WE have been summoned to life. “God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ and raised us up with him […] For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:4-8). The light of the risen Christ shines on what was dormant and dead, causing life to bloom where it didn’t before.
When Jesus called his first followers, they were out in a boat on the Sea of Galilee fishing (Matthew 4:18-22). With a huge assist from Jesus, Peter, James, and John pulled in a miraculous catch, which inaugurated their great adventure with Jesus, traveling throughout Galilee fishing for people. Fast-forward three years. The disciples have experienced many more miraculous things as followers of Jesus: they’ve witnessed healings, they’ve listened to his teachings, they’ve grieved his death and they’ve witnessed his resurrection. And now Peter, Thomas, Nathanael, the sons of Zebedee, and two other disciples are together, and Peter says to the group, “I’m going out to fish,” and they all say, “We’ll go with you” (John 21:1-3). So they go out and get in the boat. They row out into the very same water they had fished years ago before the great adventure began. They cast their nets, but they catch nothing. Meanwhile the resurrected Jesus is standing on the shoreline. He shouts, “Friends, haven’t you caught any fish?! Throw your net on the other side of the boat and you will find some.” They didn’t yet know it was Jesus, but they do what he says and they catch so many fish they can’t pull the net in. The disciples are amazed. Peter is so excited he doesn’t even wait for the boat to reach shore. He jumps in the water and swims to embrace Jesus. According to John, “None of the disciples dared ask him, ‘Who are you?’ They knew it was the Lord” (John 21:12).
In the days after Easter, we go back to life… but not life as we knew it. The resurrection awakens us to life as though we’re living it for the first time. And living in the light of resurrection should excite us like it did Peter! In his book Living the Resurrection: The Risen Christ in Everyday Life, Eugene Peterson suggests the resurrection does not simply console us; it redirects us and sends us back into the world with new eyes. T.S. Eliot says something similar in his poem Little Gidding: “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”
The resurrection means the ordinary days are now in full bloom. It means new life can sprout up anywhere. Breakfast tables, school drop-off lines, quiet prayers, office desks, hospital rooms, difficult conversations, the bike path – these are the places where Christ is transforming the world into the Kingdom of God, bursting through the dust and dirt to fill creation with vibrance and color. The same power that raised Christ from the grave is at work in the middle of our routines, bringing us back to Life!