The "Why" of Easter

A Protestant pastor says my homily this morning is probably going to flop.

I don’t take it personally. He thinks almost every Easter homily, Protestant and Catholic, is likely to fail.

Carey Nieuwhof says our sermons won’t connect with the people we want to reach the most —the folks who aren’t regularly in church. The seekers. The curious. The former members.

Where’s the problem and why isn’t there any easy fix?

Nieuwhof says that I and most other preachers, Catholic and Protestant alike, can't help talking today about what happened at Easter. We’re going to proclaim and exclaim the marvelous news that Jesus has risen from the dead.

The only problem is that you already know that. From the most devout soul in church to the most disillusioned, everyone knows that Easter is about the resurrection of the Lord. Even those who don’t believe that know what Easter is about.

So, the homily is “like knowing how a movie ends before you begin watching it; the suspense is gone.”

Year after year I preach about the “what” of Easter. Like countless others, I talk about what you already know. We don’t get from what to why.

Yet if we can’t figure out the “why” of Easter, we’ll never be changed by what we’re celebrating today.

In his blog post about Easter sermons, Carey Nieuwhof challenges his fellow pastors to preach the why; but he doesn’t tell us how to do it.

I came up with five answers to the question “why should Easter matter to me?”

One. Easter matters because it’s the foundation of faith. St. Peter says that there were people—trustworthy people, real people—who ate and drank with Jesus after he was crucified.

The Bible is full of appearances of the risen Lord, in different places, at different times, to different people. Once you believe that there really were eyewitnesses and that their testimony is reliable, you are getting pretty close to faith.

It’s not easy to deny the historic truth of Easter unless you think an awful lot of ancient history is also made up, because some of it rests on weaker documentation than the Resurrection.

And let’s not get too stuck on the “show me” argument—“I have to see him for myself.” St. John “saw and believed” when he went into the empty tomb, not when Jesus later appeared to him.

Two. Easter matters because it’s the start of something more. Much more. Jesus tells Mary Magdalene “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father.” Easter is the supreme moment, but it’s part of a continuous act of redemption that includes the Ascension and the sending of the Holy Spirit.

We’re not celebrating today a one-day wonder, but the high point in a drama with more acts to follow, and which continues to unfold—and to enfold us.

Three. Why Easter matters has much to do with us, with each of us. It may sound brash, but Easter is not only about Christ. It also about us. St. Paul says in our second reading “you have died, and your life is hidden in God.” When are we going to start to unpack that, if not today?

Each of us is a part of the Easter mystery, because when Christ is revealed, we “also will be revealed with him in glory.”

Is it any wonder that the second reading tells us to set our minds on things above? Do we think that truths as deep as these will sort themselves out without any effort on our part? Easter is an annual challenge to “seek the things that are above, where Christ is.”

You can sail sentimentally through Christmas, but you can’t really engage Easter without some work.

A fourth “why.” Easter arms and equips us against the greatest sorrows of life. If we’re suffering right now, this feast offers some relief. If we’re not, it gets us ready for when the time comes, as it does for everyone.

If, as I’ve said, Easter is not only about Christ but us as well, then his victory over suffering and death is our victory as well. It’s not a vague promise of redemption but a here-and-now triumph that we can claim as our own in times of trouble.

Finally, a fifth reason why Easter can make a difference in our lives: it puts everything else in perspective.

The opening prayer at Mass today says that the Son of God “unlocked for us the path to eternity.” Think about that. When Christ rose from the dead in a human body, he inserted humanity into eternity. Mortality, the most final thing about being human, is overcome at Easter.

I’ve been reading a book about what a rush we are all in. It talks about the stress of trying to get everything done or wanting to do everything. We suffer from what the author calls “existential overwhelm.”

But the book says “premodern people weren’t much troubled by such thoughts, partly because they believed in an afterlife: there was no particular pressure to ‘get the most out of’ their limited time, because as far as they were concerned, it wasn’t limited, and in any case, earthly life was but a relatively insignificant prelude to the most important part.”

Easter is not the end of a story but the beginning. We can make that story our own.

Preachers will never stop proclaiming the what of Easter. There’s a good reason we all know what we are celebrating. But today let’s remember why Christ rose from the dead: to make all the difference, for all of us.