Monday
I think one of the things many of us enjoy about Holy Week is how it segments out the human experience—the feast, the anguish, the dying, the waiting, the rising. We know them all, and this past week carved out moments for each of these deeply human experiences.
But what does Easter mean on Monday? This is the question I’ve been mulling over today. Where does yesterday leave us today?
Today we arrive back integrated. All smushed together again—the feast, the anguish, the dying, the waiting, the rising. Cycles that feel endless. The weight of flesh not broken up into bite-sized pieces but rather broken open. Broken open by the weight of grief, betrayal, the ache of knowing the right way to go and it shattering us every step of the way. Broken open by the melodies of dinners shared and wildflowers growing around tombs. Broken open by the reality that the dying will keep coming but so will the rising.
Yet what I believe is that eventually the cycle stops. That one day, after the rising, Jesus will look at us and say “Enough.” And we will walk in fields of flowers and feast at tables that are always full.
I don’t even try to explain it anymore, and most days I try to ignore the questions and frustration I have about why Jesus won’t just go ahead and call it. Some days I worry I only believe all things will be made new because I have no idea how I would survive without that hope. That the belief is nothing more than a coping mechanism for staying alive in a desperately, irreparably broken world.
I wonder what God would think about that. (I guess I do believe They exist.) If my faith in God boils down to just needing hope. Is that enough? If what I need is not to know what happened to my sins on Good Friday. Not what shifted about my eternal destination on Sunday. But rather: Is there any hope left on Monday? Is that enough?
Jesus keeps going. That’s the story of Easter. Jesus shows up. Through betrayal and doubt and humiliation and suffering and death He shows up. Even without the supernatural rising from the dead part, it is WILD that He has seen the absolute worst of humanity (even death on a cross) and shows back up. Jesus’ resurrection is an act of faith. A defiant choice to hope.
Maybe that is what Easter means today.
I am sure I want to follow Jesus. I want to model my life after the ways He showed up in the world. I want to see the absolute worst of humanity and keep going. I want to believe that someday the cycle stops and that it stops on full, abundant, everlasting life. Maybe today and tomorrow and the next day are about the small, everyday acts of faith and hope it takes to show up in a world that crucifies the innocent, betrays the friend, disbelieves the women.
Maybe a theology that hinges on “I just need to believe this all gets fixed” is not shallow but deeply spiritual—a gut belief that this is not the way it is supposed to be and that the circle won’t be complete until it is not so. Maybe it takes a hell of a lot of courage when all you see is death to believe that resurrection is still real. That hope in all things being made miraculously new doesn’t make us silly or scared but rather rooted in the knowledge of both our power and our need.
So today may you gather your hope and keep going. May you remember what made you believe in the first place, yes, but may you hold on even tighter to what on this particular Monday has you believing, in some small way, that the rising really is true.