Stale Peeps, Jelly Beans and Hope

Easter Monday.  It's not a real holiday.  Except maybe for worn out preachers.  It's just the day after Easter Sunday.  OK, some years it is Patriots Day in Maine and Massachusetts.  And occasionally it is Tax Day.  And once in a long while it's my little brother Mark's birthday (not this year, though!)  But in and of itself, it's just another day.

Christians have faced Easter Monday for centuries now.  And every year they have to decide anew what they are going to do now that the annual hoopla about the Resurrection has come and gone.  There are potted lilies and tulips to water--or perhaps replant outdoors.  There are chocolate rabbits to finish up.  (Their ears disappeared on Sunday at the crack of dawn--but the rest of their hollow forms still need to be eaten.)  And those jelly beans at the bottom of the basket.  And, of course, there will be a week's worth of deviled eggs and egg salad sandwiches.  But all that is really rather trivial in light of the fact that we've just recognized once again that Jesus was raised from the dead.  And that, is far more consequential than Peeps that taste like cardboard and a ham that keeps on giving!

So what are we going to do?  How are we going to live?  How are we going to account for the fact that death doesn't win in the end?  How is that going to impact our lives today--Easter Monday?  Or tomorrow, Easter Tuesday.  Or the next day, or the next day, or . . . you get the point.  How are we going to incorporate this new reality into our lives?

I wrestle with it every year.  I wonder, what does it mean that the Resurrection has happened?  And then I think about all the ways hope has transformed the world.  I think about the Civil Rights movement.  I remember abolitionism.  I consider the way hope motivates cancer research and those who fight poverty.  I think of all the folks throughout time who have refused to give up in the face of hatred and indifference and seemingly impossible odds, and I realize once more that the hope made known in the Resurrection is vital to human existence.

Easter Monday.  Maybe it's not just another day after all!