Preaching and Easter (Part 1)

Easter (like Christmas) can be a very challenging time for pastors. How do you take “the old, old story” and give it fresh life, meaning, and perspective? Many pastors struggle under the challenge to find a new angle to enrich their people’s appreciation of the most momentous events in human history. Over the next few days together we want to consider this annual challenge in pulpit ministry and see what we can do to enhance our preaching on Easter. So where can we begin? Today, I want to suggest two things—one tactical and the other personal.

On the tactical side, one thing that brought fresh life (pardon the pun) to the resurrection story in my own pastoral ministry was to see it as an actual story, rather than an event. Instead of merely focusing on resurrection on Easter Sunday alone, I developed a series of messages, sometimes up to 3 months’ worth, focused on telling the story of Christ’s passion and culminating on resurrection day. By approaching the story, as opposed to the approach you would take to an isolated event, there was a sense of progress and direction—the understanding that we were going somewhere as a church family, that we were going together, and that the destination was deeply significant.

On the personal side, I found my own heart benefiting from this approach. As I did the spadework for a series of messages that would start our journey in the upper room and then follow the Master through the footsteps of His passion, I found my own heart stirred by the depth of His sacrifice for me. It was more than an intellectual exercise. It was a rediscovery of the wonder of the Son of God giving Himself for someone like me. Without that personal sense of wonder, how could I hope to awaken wonder in my people? Essential to meaningful Easter preaching, it seems to me, is a rediscovery of the awesome nature of the greatest story ever told. There is no better place to begin than in our own hearts as servants of Christ.