Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.
-John 20:19b-20

Lent is so dramatic. It starts in with a bang on Ash Wednesday, and then we have a good seven weeks to reflect, to examine our lives, our brokenness, our mortality. We go through Maundy Thursday and Good Friday -- full of depth and meaning and even drama. And then Easter hits. And then it's done. Or at least that's how it sometimes feels.

Actually, it's not done. According to the Christian calendar, Easter is a season -- 50 days long -- and not just a day. But let's face it: we don't usually celebrate Easter as a season. We have one busy Sunday, and then a few more days of making ourselves sick with chocolate eggs and jelly beans. (I have a bag at home I'm anxious to open!) But then it's back to normal. The day after Easter often strikes me like a little bit of a let-down.

Why does this happen? As a pastor, I can say that one reason is likely the fact that we run around like idiots during holy week, planning a bunch of different services. Easter morning is a marathon, and then we crash. It's likely a little better for lay folks (though not always)... but all the same, I'm guessing you can relate to having a bunch of work go into something, and then, when it's done, feeling more tired than happy. But besides the fatigue that comes from the pre-Easter rush and Easter craziness, I think there's a deeper reason for the day-after-Easter blues.

Lent is easy to live with because it seems so real. It's easy to see brokenness and alone-ness in our lives and in the world, so it's easy to reflect on the stuff we're supposed to be reflecting on. But it's different with resurrection.

Easter is filled with the message of the power of new life, of death's defeat. Jesus triumphs over his death and ours, and it's a day full of gladness. So we sing with all the joy we can muster. We're full of alleluias as we get into the spirit of the day. "Christ is risen!" we say as we shake hands. "Indeed!" I know I'm having a good Easter when I feel that little nudge of hope stirring in my heart. Resurrection seems true -- it's possible to conceive that things can be different than what they are. The Easter vibes stuck with me through a nice family get-together... but then I got tired. I took a nap. My husband and I spent the evening up to our eyeballs in income tax paperwork. Alleluia, I thought. Jesus is raised from the dead. But I'm still not sure how to fill out this 1040.

There's the rub. In a lot of ways, we're still waiting for the resurrection, and it's hard to celebrate while you wait. And even when we do experience little bits of new life growing in our souls, it's never a complete transformation. We sing about resurrection but know that we're not there yet. For all our Easter joy, we're still the same people that we were during Lent. My cousin still has cancer. People are still hungry, and sad, and struggling with painful relationships, agonizing decisions, and a thousand other things. No wonder the day after Easter can be a little bit of a let down.

But as I drove to work this morning, it occurred to me that maybe I've gotten it wrong. I thought about the resurrected Jesus appearing to his disciples, saying "Peace be with you." And I thought about Jesus showing them the wounds on his hands, and in his side. Even Jesus didn't get rid of all his scars.

Maybe sometimes we Christians have some pretty unrealistic expectations of our faith, and even of God. It's easy to fall into a pattern of wishing that faith would fix things, that God would intervene and turn our confusion to clarity and our sadness to joy, and then feeling disillusioned when it doesn't work out that way, and wondering if there was something wrong with us... or with God. It's a hard pattern to live in. We want solutions, and when there aren't any surely it must be somebody's failure.

Perhaps resurrection doesn't work in the way we expect it to work. Perhaps we experience God's grace, and all the new life that comes with that, but we still have the same wounds and scars we did before. Jesus is transformed in the resurrection, but no so much so that he loses his injuries -- they just aren't killing him anymore. Maybe that's how resurrection works in our lives, too.

So if you ever find yourself having a case of the post-Easter blues, take heart. Easter isn't supposed to change everything... it's supposed to remind us that everything is within the reach of God's grace. So have courage, and patience, and hope. Easter is real, even if it's not easy.