Easter Monday—What's the Encore?

©2010, Randall A. Beeler

29 But they constrained him, saying: Stay with us, because it is towards evening and the day is now far spent. And he went in with them. 30 And it came to pass, whilst he was at table with them, he took bread and blessed and broke and gave to them. 31 And their eyes were opened: and they knew him. And he vanished out of their sight. 32 And they said one to the other: Was not our heart burning within us, whilst he spoke in the way and opened to us the scriptures? 33 And rising up, the same hour, they went back to Jerusalem: and they found the eleven gathered together, and those that were with them, 34 saying: The Lord is risen indeed and has appeared to Simon. 35 And they told what things were done in the way: and how they knew him in the breaking of bread. (Lk 24, DRE)

Without qualification, Easter Monday is my favorite day of the year.

I have had Easter Monday off, celebrated as a "floating holiday," taken it as a vacation day, and worked/gone to school on that day.

Doesn't matter how I keep it. It's the best day of the year, hands down.

Some might ask, "What encore can follow Resurrection? How can Easter Monday avoid being a let-down?"

The ancient pagan world knew why it was no let-down. For the 300+ years that followed Christ's resurrection led to the weapon-less conquest of the greatest empire in human history.

How?

Because the encore is the Resurrection … and it does not end.

The pagan world, like ours today, was ground down by a pitiless sense of fate. Yet, Pontius Pilate's sarcastic, "What is truth?" is answered by the rolling away of the stone from the tomb.

In Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, Truth no longer needs a philosophy or definition.

In the risen Christ, the possibilities are endless—truly endless. For if even the worst imaginable death—torturous execution as a criminal against the state and as a blasphemer—is answered by rebirth in a glorified body built-for-eternity, what can the world throw at us that is not answered by the angels' simple question:

Why seek you the living with the dead? (Lk 24:5, DRE)

Our God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. And we are the ones who live in Him!

No wonder, then, that faithful Jews, Romans, Greeks, Syrians, Cyrenians, "Parthians and Medes and Elamites and inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt" (Acts 2:9-10, DRE) for 300 years flocked to the Risen One on merely the testimony of His Apostles and of those taught by His Apostles—and they did so in the face of the worst, most grisly deaths imaginable, their very blood and courage convincing even their persecutors to believe in Christ the Risen One.

And so, Easter Monday continues to this day and beyond. For all of eternity is Easter Monday. The possibilities  are endless … because they are no longer mere possibilities—they are eternal realities.

The road to Emmaus is not seven miles; it is the eternal return of the Prodigal Son to his senses … and His Father, in the Bread That Is Jesus Christ Himself, broken to make us whole.

He is risen indeed, Alleluia, Alleluia!