Yes, Easter continues. For that matter, every Sunday is a celebration of the resurrection, even those Sundays in Lent. Yet in terms of all the build up and preparation leading to the services on Easter morn with huge crowds and brass quartet, the big day has come and gone. Even if we keep watering and caring for those Easter lilies, they're starting to look a bit bedraggled by now.
I love the way we do Easter big. Unlike Christmas, most of the excitement is not about secular things (Easter bunny aside) but about the good news that Jesus lives. There is a problem, however, when Easter is just a celebration of something that happened long ago, and not about the start of something.
If you read this blog often, you know that our congregation is letting Brian McLaren's book, We Make the Road by Walking, guide our worship. He uses the theme of "Uprising" for all of Easter, and today's theme is "The Uprising of Discipleship." It draws on the story in John 21, where after the resurrection, after Jesus has said to the disciples, "As the Father has sent me, so I send you," after Jesus breathed on them saying, "Receive the Holy Spirit," after Jesus appeared to Thomas, after all this Peter says, "I am going fishing," and a number of other disciples join him.
Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but it feels a lot to me like Easter was over for Peter. No doubt he was thrilled that Jesus was alive. Considering how badly he had failed when Jesus was arrested, it was wonderful that his denial of Jesus wasn't the last word. But now Peter was going fishing, going back to what he knew. Did he think his failure had disqualified him? Was Easter a great moment for him, but now it was over; now it was time to get back to his regular life?
If Peter is thinking that way, Jesus sets him right. In a threefold question and command formula, Jesus seemingly undoes any lingering trouble from Peter's threefold denial, and Jesus commissions him to care for the flock. And he utters the original call once more, "Follow me."
Peter nearly gets off track a second time when he looks over at "the beloved disciple" and asks "What about him?" There's always a "what about" that gets in the way of following Jesus, isn't there. If anything, Jesus sounds more irritated with Peter here than he was when he "undid" the denial. In so many words he tells him, "That's none of your concern," and then he calls once more. "Follow me!"
I don't think John's gospel includes chapter 21 (it looks like it could be an addition to a work that seems to finish with chapter 20) just to tell what happened to Peter. Most of us find ourselves in Peter's place from time to time. There are things we've done, things about us, ways that we've failed that surely disqualify us. There are also "What about?" questions that get in our way. But Jesus reminds Peter and us that Easter is a beginning, not an end.
The big celebration of Easter may indeed be over, but the work of Easter is just getting started. And it continues when we hear Jesus speak to us, dismissing our failures or whatever else think disqualifies us, redirecting us from our inevitable, "What about?" and calling us once more, "Follow me!"
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