Why Easter Sunday Matters on a Monday

April 6, 2015

Sometimes, life flat out knocks you down and knocks you out. Sometimes, life takes all the life right out of you. Sometimes, all the good seems gone, all the light seems blotted out by darkness.

Sometimes, life is a lot like Good Friday. Whether you know the story or you just know Fridays are good because they mean it's finally the weekend, I bet you can relate. On the original good Friday, life was pretty rough. A man was being beaten, knocked down, knocked out, mocked and ridiculed. 

I've never been beat up, but I've been knocked down. I've been mocked. I get that.

On that original good Friday, the life of a perfect, innocent man was taken right out of him. All the good seemed gone, all the light seemed destroyed by a deep and heavy darkness.

I've felt that. I've felt hopelessness. I've felt defeat, despair, darkness. I get that, too.

Sometimes, life is a lot like the Saturday that followed. There were no answers. There was no clarity. There was mourning, confusion, shock, pain. The very thing people had put their belief and hope and trust into was lying dead in a tomb, out of sight, seemingly gone. It probably seemed utterly hopeless to them. Nothing made sense on Saturday. Nothing seemed right. 

I've been there. Those feelings are all too real to me. Disaster strikes, tragedy hits, horrific things happen, and those Saturday feelings set in deep in my soul.

The beauty of it all, yes, the beauty of that Friday tragedy and that Saturday misery, is Sunday still came. Sunday was surprise-- an empty tomb, that crucified man had risen from the dead we thought would hold him down forever! Sunday was glory. Sunday was majesty, reunion, light, life, and all things made right and whole and new again.

Sunday didn't just matter on Sunday. Jesus didn't just rise on Sunday so we could go about our business on Monday like that whole him dying and coming back to life thing didn't matter. It isn't just a happy story we should wrap up in a bow and put in a basket and hide among the eggs and jellybeans and bunnies. 

It's the story that changes everything, and it matters on Monday just as much as on Sunday.

When death was conquered, when the enemy was defeated, we got a chance at a whole new life. The fate we thought lay before us, death as the end, isn't our fate anymore. We aren't doomed, we have hope. We aren't in mourning, we can praise and celebrate. We aren't in darkness, we have seen the rising of the glorious Light of life. We aren't lost, we aren't broken, we aren't bound up by our shame and hiding in a dark and cold cave. We are found, we are free, we are alive, we are redeemed.

That matters on a Monday. That matters every day. That's the whole point of life, really, that death was conquered and Jesus claimed the victory so we can praise His name and join Him in a magnificent and everlasting life together.

Bob Goff tweeted this and I love it: "The way we love everybody tomorrow is the best way to explain what today was all about."

What happened on Sunday was what my pastor once called "the greatest do-over the world has ever known." Everything tragic, sad, heart-breaking and dark turned upside down that Sunday morning. The world we live in now, although tragic Fridays come and miserable Saturdays come, is also a world full of Sundays. It's a world full of incredible beauty, tangible hope and abundant love, all because of a death that didn't stay dead and a love that gave us real life.

It's Monday, but we're living in a Sunday world. That matters today and every day.