Yesterday morning, my family woke up with holiday excitement. My daughters zipped into Easter dresses, my wife prepared food for the feast at the in-laws, and we drove to a church packed with smiling people. We sang our hearts out, worshiping the One who died and rose for us. All day, we celebrated with joy and thanksgiving, ham and potatoes, chocolate and lilies. It was wonderful.
And then today, we woke up to work and school, laundry and dishes, homework and headaches.
Every year since the earliest centuries of the church, Christians have spun through this cycle. For some traditions, it starts back at Ash Wednesday and a long 40 days of Lenten abstinence. Then we experience the utter joy of Easter before a return to everyday life. Piety, party, and normalcy. Fast-forward to Christmas, and we’ll do it all over again.
It’s easy to move from abstinence to feasting. But how can we think about the sometimes bumpy transition from party to normalcy?
For the Eastern Orthodox, the answer is extending the party. Historically, they considered the week after Easter one long day. The churches were open, the bars were closed (at least in imperial Russia), and everyone sang praise to God all week long. These days, Orthodox-majority countries such as Greece or Romania celebrate “Bright Monday” as a public, nonworking holiday.
We’re not Eastern Orthodox. But the bright light of Easter can change the way we move through cycles of piety, partying, and normalcy.
Better Kind of Piety
When I was a teen, every year I went to a Christian camp for a week. Every year, I made bold commitments for God. Every year, I experienced God in newer and deeper ways. But every year, I came down from the spiritual mountain, and piety at the peak dwindled to vanity in the valley.
If you’ve been a Christian for any length of time, you know this reality. Sustaining spiritual disciplines may seem easy for a special week out of the year, but the rest of the year turns into an “I think I can, I think I can” sort of uphill climb.
It’s like the journey of Cleopas and his friend that day after Easter (Luke 24), just a handful of miles outside Jerusalem but a thousand miles from God in their hearts. The hopes and dreams they’d felt during Holy Week ended up dashed (v. 21). My heart aches with these disciples because I fear that the exuberance of my Holy Week will be dashed by yet another hopeless week. Are the heights of my worship on Sunday doomed to spiral back into doubt (vv. 25, 38, 41) and despair? I fear a case of the Mondays will reveal my temporary reverence and suck me away from God.
But Bright Monday gives me hope for holiness that lasts, for persistent piety. The Monday after Easter offers an opportunity to open up Holy Scripture and see in it the person and work of Christ afresh (vv. 27, 32, 45). Looking in the rearview mirror at Easter doesn’t mean we have to accept a fleeting encounter with Jesus. It means we get to relish the daily experience of our hearts coming alive as the Scriptures are opened to us by the power of the Spirit, who’s pointing us to the living, risen Son of God (v. 32).
Bright Monday gives me hope for holiness that lasts, for persistent piety.
We commute this Easter Monday, not to the wilderness where we must survive until Sunday but to a place where heaven has intersected with earth. The resurrection echoes into Monday, making every job site a patch of holy ground, every lunch room an altar of worship, every moment on the clock a call to worship, every blue-collar believer a white-robed priest (John 4:21–24; 1 Cor. 6:19–20; Col. 3:23; 1 Pet. 2:9).
Better Kind of Party
“I’d be glad to follow Jesus, but does that mean I have to stop partying?”
I remember a young guy on a subway in Brooklyn asking me this question. I’m sure I fumbled the answer. But it’s one of those questions that sticks with you. Because of Easter, because Jesus Christ has demonstrated himself to be the King of kings and Lord of lords as surely as the sun and sky are marked out from the ocean (Rom. 1:4), does this drive a stake through the heart of a life lived to the full on Monday?
In John 2, we get a picture of what Jesus does to the party life. On Saturday night, the groom gathers the bride and her wedding party. She spends the night surrounded by her ladies-in-waiting. Then on Sunday, the festivities begin. Late Sunday evening, the wine is out and the party is about to come to an abrupt and embarrassing end. And in that moment when the joy of the party is about to wind down, Jesus steps up and works a miracle of new creation. He turns water into wine. The party that was about to end is only getting started. The party that everyone found satisfactory just got dialed up to 11.
Bright Monday is an opportunity to imbibe the wine of the new creation, to drink it in all of its richness and glory. The Monday after Easter allows us to savor the best wine, with aromatics and aftertaste unappreciated by those drunk with lesser wines. So as we lift a glass at our Lord’s table, we remind ourselves the real party has only just begun.
As you sit down at your desk this Monday, you have every reason to smile wider than the non-Christian who sits in the cubicle next to you. You can laugh louder at the office jokes. You can goof off with the kids; you can take yourself lightly. You can spread joy to others because the transcendent joy of the resurrection reaches into Easter Monday.
Better Kind of Normalcy
Francis Schaeffer once said that because of the uniqueness of the first creative act of God, there are “no little people.” On a similar note, the new-creation act of God—seen unmistakably in the empty tomb—means there are “no little Mondays.” Settling into your cubicle, car, cafe, or construction site will never be the same. His work forever alters ours. Something of the elevated worship of Easter Sunday comes with us into Bright Monday.
It’s an opportunity to imbibe the wine of the new creation, to drink it in all of its richness and glory.
The resurrection teaches us to expect God to do the unexpected amid the regular, grayscale, cubicled pattern of life. Instead of the nine-to-five routine, the workweek is full of adventure. The ordinary becomes an opportunity. Normalcy becomes novelty. Even the 3:00 p.m. lethargy becomes part of a bigger story, a story of redemption and restoration that has come to include our own.
The new normal for those of us who have experienced the new-creation work of Jesus is the joy of stepping each week into our varied vocations by the light of resurrection day. Bright Monday enhances and improves the cycle of party, piety, and normalcy because Easter Sunday breathes new life into all three.
The Gospel Coalition