Easter time for ministers
to share life with devout
It is interesting to notice how religious publications and editors of church newsletters deal with the now-familiar good news that Jesus was raised from the dead on Easter Sunday.
Well, not necessarily on Sunday - but at some point during the year - the disciples discovered that something grand had happened. Jesus, they seemed to know, would be with them forever.
Some publications try to get funky, not knowing how to dress up the resurrection so that the right people are intrigued. For instance, I have here a religious newspaper that features a picture of a jazz musician plucking a banjo. Next to him is the bell of a trumpet - presumably played by someone, though that person is not visible in the photo.
The picture is on the front page while the story appears inside, recounting the funeral liturgy of a Louisiana jazz great by the name of Danny Barker. I have no doubt that Barker was a great banjoist and a fine man. But using this story as the Holy Week focus has me wondering if Easter is about life or death.
Looking at the featured story on a conservative Christian publication leaves nothing to the imagination - Easter is definitely about death. In this story, the magazine reports that more than half the people in Uganda face death through AIDS. The cover photo shows an African man debilitated by AIDS.
The story is about Christian relief organizations in Africa striving to stem the pressing tide of AIDS. Certainly the message is that Easter is about Christian people doing heroic service as the world reels from violence, starvation and sexually transmitted diseases.
Another little newspaper, an ultra-conservative tabloid, is filled with stories designed to prove that the body of Jesus, not just his spirit, was raised from the dead - resuscitated, sort of - and then transported to the heavens, where he now sits at the right hand of God.
There are others - parish newsletters, for instance - that announce festive worship services that promise a bonus of spiritual thrills and chills. So, in those congregations, the message of Easter is worship: Be there or be square.
It does not surprise me that these religious organs are stretching for a new angle on Easter. Facing the audience year after year with the same basic story can strain the imagination. Preachers face the same arduous task as they struggle with the Passion texts through a 40-year pulpit career.
Mercy, I have known preachers who started preparing their Easter sermon on Ash Wednesday and spent the better part of Lent trying to find something in those passages that might spark some interest in the slumbering laity. And I have also known preachers who quickly jotted down notes as they waited for the pulpit hymn to wind down on Easter morn.
On Easter, hundreds - nay, thousands - of preachers will be sitting in their studies, Bibles open, wondering what they can say that will make the Easter story come alive for their people. What will make those faces of stone - those well-intentioned, wonderful Christian people, who have heard the passion story every year of their lives - what will make them think about the resurrection in a fresh way?
The secret is this: There is nothing that can achieve that miracle. To all you preachers who have not finished your sermon for Easter Sunday, it's time to relax and fall back on the one sure-fire technique for a memorable Easter sermon.
The secret lies in latching on to a little time for meditation, to get deep within yourself and examine what the resurrection has meant to you through all the years of your spiritual pilgrimage.
The question should not be: How can I raise these people from their spiritual doldrums? But, rather, it should be: What raises you - what gets under your defenses and makes you real?
There is nothing like the resurrection to make people rear back and open their eyes to reality. And there is no better vehicle for that message than a preacher who is willing to open his or her life before a yearning people.
Clark D. Morphew
4-1-94
