The nasty text caught me off guard.
I didn’t expect such unkind words from someone I perceived to be a friend—words of vicious critique, assuming motives and beliefs on my part that were patently untrue. The text stemmed from a literal misunderstanding that we both had the evidence to correct (in my favor, even!), and yet she didn’t seem to care. I read the text several times, bewildered, my eyes falling on the terse ending words: Don’t respond.
Well, I thought dryly, Easter’s over.
And then, just a moment later: actually, this is where Easter matters most.
I wish I knew what the disciples expected to happen in the immediate aftermath of seeing Jesus again. Despair turned to giddy triumph in a heartbeat—and then what? Did some of them retain their old assumptions about political power and earthly glory, molding them to fit the new circumstances? When Christ opened the minds to Scripture, did they realize that the grand plan involved his leaving? When they returned to the temple praising God after the Ascension, did they have any sense of what might come next?
Because what came next was both the major and the minor: the profound and the seemingly inconsequential, all at once.
The major: Pentecost, and the unleashing of the Holy Spirit, and miracles and preaching and growing numbers of believers. Cool stuff! Acts is giddy with it. But also, the seemingly inconsequential: life stuff. Bickering, repairing tents, haggling over the price of boats, figuring out how to oversee all these new believers.
Post-Resurrection life, it turns out, is just…life.
That doesn’t mean there are not moments of staggering beauty. Doesn’t mean there aren’t awe-inspiring miracles and the unleashing of the Spirit and amazing, wonderful, write-this-down-because-nobody-will-believe-it things. But also, there’s just stuff. Daily, grindy, earthly, sometimes-cruddy stuff.
The Christian and mathematician Blaise Pascal experienced a spiritual encounter with God that was so profound he wrote it down and sewed it inside his coat pocket. The words he jotted down do sound like the desperation of someone trying to capture a moment with God, knowing that the experience will fade and yet not wanting to forget it.
I understand why he felt compelled to put it on paper. Those glimpses can be rare, and they fade.
I have experienced God in ways I cannot forget or explain. I have had dreams that were clearly not dreams. I have had moments where something happened that was so strange and exquisite I knew God was present. I have worshiped in churches and felt the palpable sense, unique to corporate worship, of the Spirit of God descending. During my mother’s suffering before her death, God appeared to me in ways I could not mistake for anything else and have never forgotten.
And then, you know, life goes on.
The barista makes the coffee wrong and we’re late to work and someone sends a nasty text. We forget something we didn’t mean to forget, we realized we have developed a habit of gossip, we ask forgiveness, we forget to read the Bible. We drive to and from church and work and home and school and forget that this where Easter lives, this is where the resurrection matters.
On the most micro-scale, then, here is what I mean:
I got a nasty, unkind text today. A normal nasty text on a normal nasty day, part of the grind of life. But because Easter lives in the everyday I was able to read that text and do meaningful things. I examined myself for what flaws or failings I might have exhibited in the exchange, and I asked God to forgive me for them. I realized that if I expected God to forgive me, I also needed to forgive that nasty text and the person who sent it. I worked on being able to pray for that acquaintance kindly, asking the Holy Spirit to do for her what my own heart currently feels unequipped to do. I grew grateful for a God who loves me, and all of us, in spite of our failings.
That is what Easter means. Christ redeems the sick, the sad, the suffering, the lost, the depraved. He has overcome death, yes. But He redeems our small sorrows too, our stumbling sins, our habitual problems, our tiny grudges, our daily drudges. He is here and remains here in the middle of it.
There is no part of our lives, small or large, untouched by what the resurrection has accomplished.
Samaritan's Song 