An Open Letter to Those Who Preach and Listen to Easter Sermons
Matt Matthews, the co-pastor of the Waldensian Presbyterian Church, wrote the following open letter that everyone in the American Waldensian Society who either preaches or listens to Easter sermons will find interesting and amusing.
Allow me a preacherly moment on the eve of what many Christians call Holy Week to say a word to those who will preach sermons this week and those who might avail themselves of listening to one or two.
You preachers are working overtime pulling together four momentous services. You expect from yourself better-than-usual sermons. The liturgies all bunch up with close, rapidly approaching deadlines. Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter. Throw in a funeral or two and an Easter Vigil or sunrise service, and you have a pressure-cooker-week ahead of you. It’s a doozy.
I’m writing to say be encouraged.
God will speak through you, regardless of you. That is not to say your efforts don’t matter. Jesus is coming, so, naturally, row away from the rocks. But this isn’t about you.
I confided in a preacher-friend once that I felt TREMENDOUS pressure to hit a home run on Easter Sunday. Jim shared the metaphor his preacher-dad imparted: The preacher needs not hit a home run, only to get the ball in play.
Be relieved.
God hits the home run.
My giant ego needs to be reminded that all of Western Christendom does not rest on my eloquence or lack thereof.
But still—and you preachers know what I mean—when you stand up to preach and you see all of those expectant eyes looking at you, and you know some of the backstory of those faces, and you see how lonely and afraid they are, how expectant and hopeful, how bored, hurt, serene, shamed, seasonal, let down, hungry, angry, doubtful, and everything else you see or think you see from the pulpit, you don’t want to let them down.
You love them, and you love the God who loves them.
That’s why you’re in this gig.
I ask a lot from myself on the brink of this holy season.
Especially on Easter, I want to preach resurrection in such a way that my lone sermon untangles all difficulties of modern life, mends racism, and bridges the various and deep political chasms that divide us.
I singlehandedly want to shift the focus of human society from demanding the rights of “I” to embracing the wholeness of “we.”
I want to encourage the flock where they feel down-and-out and tired.
I want to befriend the forsaken.
I want to light a fire while passing out cups of cool water.
And while I’m at it, I’d like all religions and the non-religious to hold hands encircling the world with its beginning and terminus in our sanctuary so we can sing a verse of Kum By Ya.
Non-preachers would think I’m joking. But you preachers know how serious I am.
I want to hit that kind of homerun. I’m swinging for the deepest and most distant eschatological of fences.
It’s not wrong to try hard, of course, to dust off your T.S. Eliot and MLK quotes and to look up a Hebrew word or two, but it is wrong to confuse ourselves into believing that we, actually, can hit that kind of homerun. With God, yes, all things are possible. But we have limits.
Holy Week reminds every preacher of his or her limits, brokenness, vanity.
We all stand empty-handed when we dare to wander into that Passion narrative. Crowing roosters. All that sweating blood in purpled, midnight prayer. The hastily convened lynch mobs. Jesus’ last, plaintive words. The abandoned disciples shivering in those ominous nights and ravaged days.
I suspect we preachers have always wanted to point to the faraway bleachers, like the Great Bambino (Babe Ruth, not Baby Jesus), tap the bat on the swept plate, and coil heroically in a photogenic stance ready to uncork the mighty swing that will knock the cover off the ball. Our flock will get at least a momentary charge, a spark, a thrill as that ball sails over the high wall to which we had just pointed.
If we could do that, they just might adore us.
But that’s idolatry, a definite no-no for those of us who suppose themselves to be biblical preachers. We don’t preach to get the love. We preach to share it.
Our flock doesn’t need a stellar sermon about resurrection so much as a family reunion with the resurrected one. Everything else follows, and preachers need to get out of the way.
We preachers—crooked saints, all—are privileged to stand up each week, even under the enormous stress of Easter Sunday, and point to the one who says, Shuck your dirty clothes; put on light.
This week I’m thinking of you preachers out there, sharpening your pencils, writing those second and third drafts of your sermons, tearing the page up with rewrites and eraser-holes, pacing your carpet threadbare.
I suspect that most preachers (and leaders of every religious tradition) struggle with about equal amounts inferiority complex and grandiosity. Rookies and veterans alike vacillate from ‘I can’t do this’ to ‘Nobody can do it as well as I can.’
Bless your heart.
Yes, you can, and so can they. Leave comparisons aside, and humbly dive in.
When you come up for air on Easter Monday (sometimes called Bright Monday, Little Easter, and Emmaus Walk), you might notice a few shafts of Elysian light gilding the edges of this old world. Parishioner and preacher alike might see things anew, just a little more hopefully, a little more redemptively.
At least until next week—when preacher and listener gather expectantly around the pulpit to try again.
The photo above of the pulpit of the Waldensian Presbyterian Church in Valdese, North Carolina, was taken by Matt Matthews.
