Some of you may remember the 1979 Number 1 hit by the Boomtown Rats called ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’. According to Bob Geldof, he wrote the song after reading a telex report about the shooting spree of a 16 year old American girl called Brenda Ann Spencer who fired at children in a school playground at Grover Cleveland Elementary School in California, killing two adults and injuring 8 children and 1 police officer. When she asked why she had done this, she simply gave the reason ‘I don’t like Mondays. This livens up the day.’
Bob Geldof said “It was such a senseless act. It was the perfect senseless act and this was the perfect senseless reason for doing it. So perhaps I wrote the perfect senseless song to illustrate it.”
In the song, he writes:
“The silicon chip inside her head
Gets switched to overload
And nobody’s gonna go to school today
She’s gonna make them stay at home
And daddy doesn’t understand it
He always said she was good as gold
And he can see no reasons
‘Cos there are no reasons
What reason do you need to be show-ow-ow-ow-own?” (‘I Don’t Like Mondays’, The Boomtown Rats)
‘I Don’t Like Mondays’, The Boomtown Rats
Many of us don’t like certain days of the week; we may even have the ‘Monday blues’ when we go to work on a normal Monday. But the events celebrated this Easter weekend are more than an annual reminder of Christ’s victory over death; the crucifixion and resurrection form the pivotal point of history and affect our ordinary lives every day of the week.
Are we living in the shadow of the cross, confused and bewildered by what is going on around us? The disciples went through so many emotions from Palm Sunday to Good Friday that they must have felt completely drained by that time. They saw no way out, no way that their hopes could be revived. Jesus was dead. It was the end of the story.
Proverbs 29:18 says “where there is no vision, the people perish.” That word ‘vision’ is often translated as ‘revelation’. The Amplified version says ‘redemptive revelation of God’. The Message version says ‘if people can’t see what God is doing, they stumble all over themselves.’ On Good Friday, the disciples couldn’t see what God was doing. They could only see death and destruction. They were not expecting resurrection. The women were discussing how they were going to get the stone moved from the tomb’s entrance: they were not expecting to find a risen Saviour. But the Easter narratives (see Luke 24:1-8 and John 20:1-10) make it very plain that they did not find a body in the tomb and instead met with the risen Christ. It was this experience of resurrection which transformed the disciples and which can transform us.
Paul underlines the crucial importance of the Resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15, when he explains that without resurrection, our faith is in vain and we are left in our sins. This passage in 1 Corinthians 15 makes explicit what the Gospels and Acts touch on: this fact that the resurrection changes everything. Eugene Peterson says that the fact of the death and resurrection of Christ is “an announcement, a proclamation of something that has happened quite apart from us but that makes present the reality in which we live.” (‘Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places’, Eugene Peterson, P 230) He goes on to say that we must understand that the resurrection is more than doctrine and apologetics, that ‘resurrection is primarily a matter of living in a wondrous creation, embracing a salvation history and then taking our place in a holy community and receiving the Holy Spirit’ (ibid P 231). Resurrection matters in our everyday, ordinary, Monday to Saturday lives as well as our Sunday lives because Jesus is alive and with us, 24/7, every day of the week, every minute of the day (see Matt 28:20).
Amazingly enough, resurrection is not just a historical fact or interesting end to the Jesus story. The same power that enabled Jesus to rise from the dead is available to us to help us. The resurrection changes everything. No situation is beyond hope or beyond help. Paul tells the Ephesians of the ‘incomparably great power’ which is available to all who believe: “That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.” (Eph 1:19-21) He tells the Romans: “if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.” (Rom 8:11) Because of this, we can live in the knowledge of His resurrection, presence and power, knowing – really knowing! – that the same power that raised Christ from the dead really does live in us.
‘Mighty Saviour, lifted high
King for ever, Jesus Christ.
Crowned in glory, raised to life
The same power lives in us.
The grave could not contain
The power of His name.
Death You overcame
Once and for all.’ (‘The Same Power’, Ben Cantelon & Nick Herbert)
‘The Same Power’, Ben Cantelon & Nick Herbert