AFTER THE RESURRECTION

   BARBARA and I debated about attending the 7:00 a.m. sunrise service on Resurrection Sunday, April 9, 2023, but we knew chilly winds were blowing across the Faith Temple hill. Neuropathy bothers my feet, and the ground is uneven between the church and the giant cross. And I’d have had to stand unless I had taken a chair. I felt sort of guilty about missing the sunrise service. Someone said, “Jesus rose from the dead, and you can’t even rise from the bed!” 

A cold wind drove the Destination COG/Faith Temple (FT) sunrise service into Fleming Hall. Ms. Sandy Brown attended and said they had a good service. 

At the 10:30 a.m. FT Resurrection Sunday service, we sang hymns, prayed, and enjoyed a service planned by Mrs. Ann Burrows. Mrs. Sandra Martin played the piano for the singing, accompanied soloists, and sang a solo. Our church is blessed by her music.

Some folk feel a little letdown after Resurrection Sunday (“Easter” is the common name). We get excited about the day. Spring is in the air; flowers are blooming; the world is emerging from winter. We say, “He is risen!” And friends respond, “He is risen indeed!” Easter Sunday is triumphant! And then, it’s over. 

  

“We have come down from the mountain top of Easter, and now may feel that we are in the valley of the routine,” says the Rev. Charles P. Henderson, a Presbyterian minister. “There always seems to be a let down in the life of the church after Easter. Even if you could, like Thomas, reach in and touch the wounds in his body... Even if you had solid, certifiable evidence that the resurrection was real, there would still be the bills to pay, the meals to plan, the problems of life to solve… So it was for the first disciples.”

  After you experience a great accomplishment or enjoyment, you feel things slowing down, returning to the routine and the mundane, Henderson says. 

  

I remember when my younger daughter, Suzanne, was a preschooler in the early 1980s and we attended the Fowler Reunion at Fleming Hall, Faith Temple’s fellowship building. My late mother, Eva Fowler Crain, was one of nine children, so I grew up with 15 first-cousins on the Fowler side. Many of my cousins attended the Fowler get-together, and Suzanne enjoyed playing with their children. Mark Fleming, child of the late Charles and Mrs. Sandra Fleming, entertained us by imitating an inchworm speeding along the floor of Fleming Hall. What fun! Driving away after the reunion ended, I heard a small voice from the back seat say, “Well, I guess we’ll never do that again.” My late wife, Carol, and I were amused at how quickly Suzanne’s letdown began.

Jesus’ disciples probably had a letdown after that first Easter Sunday, Henderson says, adding, “None of them had actually seen the resurrection. They had heard the reports about the empty tomb; a couple of them had seen a mysterious stranger on the road to Emmaus, but even if it actually were Jesus, so what? Things were quickly returning to normal.”

After the resurrection the disciples woke up to the fact that the world looked pretty much the same as it had looked before they ever met the man from Galilee, Henderson says.  

  

“They began drifting apart,” he says. “Some of them headed north to Galilee where it all began just three years before. They even returned to their fishing boats. It had been a heady three years, following Jesus to become fishers of men. But on the morning after Easter, Peter and the rest turned back to their boats” (John 21:1-25).

  

After fishing all night and catching nothing, they saw a man on the beach. He called to them, “Have you caught any fish?” They said, “No.” The man said, “Throw out your net on the right-hand side of the boat.” They did and caught so many fish (153) they couldn’t pull in the nets. John told Peter, “It is the Lord!” Jesus had cooked fish for them and said, “Come and dine.” This was the third time Jesus showed himself to his disciples after he rose from the dead. He encouraged them in the work opportunities that lay ahead of them. 

  

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:58, “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.” 

  

To be steadfast is to be firmly fixed and not subject to change, to be firm in belief and determination, and to be loyal and faithful. 

  

“Lord, give me firmness without hardness, steadfastness without dogmatism, love without weakness,” Jim Elliot said. 

  

Paul says we should “always” do God’s work and not be hindered by letdowns. 

  

Before Jesus ascended to heaven, he told his disciples, “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen” (Matt. 28:16-20).