Weekly Preaching: Easter Sunday 2020
Easter preaching, to me, is so hard — in three ways. There’s normally such a “prettiness” to the day, with lots of sightseers, the Christmas and Easter peeps, flowers; people are there not so much out of heightened religious interest, but just because. What will it be this year? Record crowds this year? Not so much.
It's fascinating that Easter became the big political target, tied to whether Covid-19 will have passed, or not... Clearly not. So what is Easter without the throngs? It's important to name that on Easter #1, there were very, very, very few people, and they were confused, afraid, uncertain. That's where we are in 2020. Not a bad take, theologically and pastorally.
The goal is always communicating that Easter isn't about you and me: It's about God, and Jesus, how amazing they are, as we will see. You can view the sermon I did years ago (featuring some Winston Churchill humor, reflections on the deaths of a two year old and a teenager in our church family just before Easter, and some wisdom from Julian of Norwich).
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The plot of the Easter accounts in the Bible seems to be not Jesus rose so you get eternal life but Jesus rose, so you are forgiven. And Jesus rose, so he’s vindicated, he’s amazing, he’s the One. If you’ve followed my blog, you know I advocate preaching sermons that aren’t Here’s the text, so go do such and such, but are rather just reflections on how amazing Jesus was/is. I think the Gospels do this. It’s just Wow, he really is the Messiah, the crazy things he said and did now most clearly are, wonderfully, the way.
Matthew 28 interestingly begins “After the Sabbath," meaning this kind of thing unfolds during the day of rest, when we aren’t laboring but are only trusting God’s hand to be on what we aren’t managing or producing right now. This reminds me to encourage all clergy to watch Claude Alexander give the best sermon for clergy I’ve ever heard; it’s on this business of the women, the tomb, and the Sabbath.
I wonder about the role of personal testimony at Easter. I did this after The DaVinci Code came out, along with the other anti-Christian books that sell so well. I clarified that for me—as a guy, not as pastor, not under instruction from the bishop, but just me, a naturally cynical guy—I really believe Jesus didn’t stay dead, but he rose, he appeared. I can clarify various things, like It’s not a resuscitation, etc. But I really believe this miracle happened.
If I were asked for proof, I’d go for the one several others have advanced: In those days, lots of great, heroic leaders died; some were even believed to be messianic. After their deaths, their followers trudged home and gave up or looked for the next great thing to come along. Jesus’ followers never went home, but launched out into the world, risking everything, and often winding up dead or hurt, because of one thing only: They had seen the risen Lord. As Rowan Williams said in The Sign and the Sacrifice, “It’s hard to see how this new age faith could come into being without an event to point to...The very untidiness of the resurrection stories is one of the main reasons for taking them seriously. What’s going on is clearly people struggling to find words for something they had not expected.”
While we welcome Easter as so pleasant, we should note that, unanimously, the first witnesses were flat out terrified. Don’t forget it was Matthew who shared that between Jesus’ death and Easter proper, there were earthquakes. All creation trembled, and it’s all of creation that is ultimately redeemed by this God, not merely human souls headed to heaven.
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The “He is not here, he is risen” reminds me of the many places we think Christ must be when instead he’s on the loose, not so blithely contained where we expect him to be. Maybe for the sermon, you might ask "Where do we not expect God to show up?" and "Where does God show up we didn't envision?"
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