One of the great challenges of preaching is finding a way to communicate the power of the Easter story. Preachers look everywhere we can for help...movies, sports, advertisements, and just about anything else we can get our hands on. It happens to me every year (this year is no exception) until we finally give up in the trust that it's really through the power of the music, prayers, silence, and scripture that the message of life's victory over death can be communicated at all.
So this year, I'm going to take Frederich Buchner's observations about the gospels as a personal directive for the sermon:
"It has always struck me as remarkable that when the writers of the four Gospels come to the most important part of the story they have to tell, they tell it in whispers. The part I mean, of course, is the part about the resurrection. They are trying to describe it as truthfully as they can. It was the most extraordinary thing they believed had ever happened, and yet they tell it so quietly that you have to lean close to be sure what they are telling. They tell it as softly as a secret, as something so precious, and holy, and fragile, and unbelievable, and true, that to tell it any other way would be somehow to dishonor it."
This weekend, the music will be exquisite, the flowers gorgeous, the crowds large and the preaching so quiet as to be almost a whisper, just like it was originally told.
See you this weekend,
