Thursday in the Octave of Easter

"Easter Joy... The Story Continues"
 
Both of our scripture passages from the Lectionary today are Installments-Part II in the continuing, intense, over-the-top Easter Octave joy that flows from encounters with Christ-resurrected. Bring on those trumpeting Easter lilies announcing the Good News, their fragrance filling the whole house.
 
Luke continues his Emmaus saga, where the defeated, discouraged travelers, with the perhaps saddest line in all of scripture, "But we had hoped...," are proclaiming in awe, "Weren't our hearts burning within us?" Now Jesus in his redeemed and glorified body appears to the larger group, not as a ghost or a wistful memory but Jesus --really there, his trust in his God vindicated, eating, speaking, assuring, forgiving, teaching, resurrected --  beyond what a human mind and human perception can grasp, describe, or catalogue, but a real presence beyond history yet connected to it.
 
Fast forward, "proof of the resurrection" now comes in the witness of the transformed lives of the disciples. In our passage from early Acts today, John and Peter, fresh from Pentecostal anointing, have cured a crippled man in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean. Peter delivers his second post-resurrection proclamation to the people. This testimony, so powerful and fervent that Peter and John will be arrested by the religious authorities at its conclusion, is a bold stance from one who had been paralyzed by fear and despair, who had abandoned and betrayed the one who had called him friend. (The resurrected Jesus' opening greeting to the disciples was "Peace be with you." It's hard not to speculate that Peter's gracious, invitational line, "Now I know, brothers and sisters, that you acted out of ignorance, just as your leaders did," comes from his own experience of forgiveness from the risen Lord.)
 
My neighborhood is filled with construction vehicles this week as a new internet company extends its service. I was fascinated the other day watching the process. A trench is dug, then the machine works in reverse, laying the new cable and filling the trench as it goes. In faith, because of the Resurrection we know the end of every human story, our life in Christ now so filled with promise that not even death will separate us from Love. We have the luxury of 'living in the backfill' -- a joy in all seasons; the courage to commit to a life of praise, gratitude, forgiveness, and sacrifice; the assurance that we are needed and a part of something greater than ourselves. How will the joy in the Christ-centered life, in our Christ-promised future, be aborning in us today?