Easter 3A Luke 24:13-35

I will confess honestly but sheepishly that I am relieved Easter is over. Don’t get me wrong here, I love Easter. I even love Lent! But all of the Lenten activities leading up to the big Festival of the Resurrection Sunday service, all the excitement Easter brings….whew! It is a lot! Days off seem few and far between. It’s a little bit like working in retail at Christmas. All this Lent and Easter stuff, soup suppers and evening prayer, the emotionally and spiritually moving services of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil, the pancake breakfast on Easter Sunday, the beautiful tulips, and the big Easter story, too… well… it’s great and all, but did it really make any difference? Ok, so Jesus did all those things. All those really great things. Healing and teaching and all that. Then they killed him. And then he “rose from the dead”. Ok.

But did it really make any difference? After all that, after all the work of Easter, is the world really any different? Looks to me like things are back to normal. Looks like we are back to the everyday grind. And really, I’m tired of it. Aren’t we all tired of it? Here in this every day ordinary life, is there anything sacred, mysterious, holy going on? Where is God? Did all of that Easter business make any real change in the ordinary world? After all the fantastic stories of miracles, life and death struggles, crucifixion, resurrection and magical bodily appearances of the Jesus who is suppose to be dead, today’s Gospel is, let’s face it, well, a little peculiar but mostly ho hum.

In some ways, it’s back to the everyday world. A couple of guys walking along together and they are kinda depressed. Maybe they were tired, too. Don’t we all feel that way sometimes? Therapists say that there is such a thing as post-holiday blues when we may feel a bit depressed after a big festival or holiday like Christmas or Easter. It’s not uncommon. After any big event that’s suppose to ‘change the world’, we can all feel a little disappointed when it doesn’t seem to have worked. At least, not the way we thought it would…..

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