Jody Serey’s Reflection

Easter Monday

By Easter Monday, the chocolate rabbits have lost their ears.

Plastic grass has begun migrating across the living room carpet, and at least one brightly dyed egg will not be discovered until midsummer, when it rolls out from under the couch like a small explosive archaeological artifact from the holiday.

The lilies are still beautiful. But already they look a little tired.

This is the day after.

The church calendar calls Easter a season, not a single day, but most of us behave as if the celebration expires sometime Sunday afternoon, around the moment the ham is carved and the grandchildren begin their sugar-fueled sprint through the house.

By Monday morning the world has snapped back into place.

The news is still alarming. The bills are still sitting on the kitchen counter. The planet still appears to be on fire in several different directions at once. If resurrection was supposed to fix everything overnight, it seems to have missed a few spots.

But then again, it always did. We sometimes forget that the first Easter Monday must have felt just as strange.

The disciples had been through a week that would have exhausted anyone: the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the tense arguments in the temple, the Last Supper, the arrest in the garden, the trial, the crucifixion, the burial, and then the bewildering news of the empty tomb.

Some had seen Jesus. Some had not. Mary Magdalene was telling a story that sounded either miraculous or impossible. The authorities were still dangerous. Rome was still Rome.

Resurrection had happened—but the world itself had not yet caught up with the news.

I suspect the disciples were simply tired. Even joy can exhaust you.

Those of us who have lived long enough recognize the feeling. Weddings end. Funerals end. Holidays end. Eventually there is always a quiet morning afterward when the house is still and the big pots are still soaking in the sink.

Faith does not live only in the trumpet blast of Easter morning. It also lives in the long Monday that follows.

Perhaps that is why older people sometimes understand Easter differently than the greeting cards do. We know that resurrection does not arrive like a magic wand sweeping away every sorrow. The world remains stubbornly imperfect. Bodies still age. Nations still quarrel. The evening news continues to offer its daily catalogue of human foolishness and failures.

Christ did not come into a perfect world. He came into this one.

And somehow that changes everything without immediately changing anything. Hope, it turns out, is not a one-day event. It is something practiced quietly, the way we water the plants or set the table again or step outside to see whether anything new has bloomed overnight.

So if Easter Monday feels a little subdued, perhaps that is not a failure of faith. Perhaps it is the beginning of the real work of resurrection.

The lilies are still on the table. The chocolate rabbits may be missing their ears.

And hope, stubborn as ever, is still here, too.