Easter Exhale

Hello Emmanuel,

For those of you who don’t know, this is a big day for me…. No, not Opening Day… 

It’s the Easter Exhale.

Starting way back on Ash Wednesday, churches everywhere start the slow build-up to Easter morning.  It starts with a clear admittance to needing God and ends with a clear declaration of salvation by resurrection.  In between is this sense of anticipation that starts soft, but gets louder with each passing Sunday.  By the end, it is this roar of expectation.  Pastors want Easter to go just right…. to not allow Lent to end with some anti-climactic thud…. But to help people see and feel the miracle in their personal lives.  So much pressure, right?

And then Monday gets here and we let out a big sigh of relief.  It’s as if Easter hinges on how we implement our roles as Church leaders.  And when it is over, we feel we can relax a bit.  ‘Whew!  Jesus rose from the dead again this year!  Made it through another one!’

I often amuse myself.  Certainly, I don’t want to minimize my role.  As Pastor, I am in charge of getting the right ears in the right places to hear the right story.  And then I need to be prepared to listen to the hearts of others and fill any needs of hope and love where they are absent.

However, is the Easter Exhale really necessary?  I try to remind myself that the Good News is Good enough.  Does it need much embellishment?  Do we church leaders really need to work hard at helping the Good News look Good?  Or do we see ourselves as a little too important at times?

I don’t always know the answer to the above questions.  On one side is a sovereign God whose story is etched in stone (or printed on paper) through the eons and has trumped any human effort to silence its effects.  On the other side is the human tendency to become desensitized to the miraculous triumph of Christ and yawn through another Easter morning. 

Somewhere in the middle of the two sides is the church whose job it is to proclaim the miracle.  The church finds itself on this balance between seeing itself as the important messenger of God, but not seeing itself as so important that it becomes the Message.  Maybe that is why it is tiring work for me.  Striking that balance is not always so easy. 

So this Easter season I will exhale again.  But in the midst of exhaling, let’s not lose perspective on who we are and our role.  We must continue to reach out, welcome, inspire, teach and send forth.  We need to find new and innovative ways to keep from becoming desensitized to a Divine message of new life.  And as we do so, let’s keep our eyes on the Divine as the humble servants we are called to be. 

Another Easter Sunday has passed.  God is the Good One.  Let’s point people to Him.

God is Good,

Pastor Joe