The Easter message is clear and unequivocal. Those who saw the empty tomb and were witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus, were told to go and tell others.
Matthew 28:10 – “Do not be afraid; go and tell [the others] to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”
Mark 16:7 – “Go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee.”
Luke 24:9 – “They remembered his words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest.”
John 20:17 – “Go and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'”
Our Easter worship services are modern re-enactments of that first resurrection commissioning. We announce, “Christ is Risen! He is risen indeed!” We re-tell the story and sing triumphant hymns. We share communion, allowing God’s Spirit to feed us and send us out to proclaim the gospel in the world. It’s a day of joy, a day of hope, a day of both tradition and newness of life.
Easter Sunday is a perfect time to invite people to join us–people feeling depressed or troubled, those seeking hope and the assurance of God’s victory over injustice, suffering and death. Yet Easter is often a “family reunion” service, mostly attended by people who’re already part of the church, while Christmas Eve is a service in which it’s easier to invite non-members and friends. Why is that?
Christmas offers comforting images that have been secularized by society. It’s a story about a family and the birth of a child, all wrapped up with carols and candlelight designed to evoke memories from our own childhood. The Easter story has largely resisted secularization. Despite the commercial symbols of Easter bunnies and colored eggs, the Easter story speaks about life and death, about injustice and triumph over evil. The baby born in the manger is now a resurrected Savior, who emerges from the tombs and looks each of us in the eyes as if to say, “The world’s order has been changed forever. Will you walk with me now as people of the Easter good news?”
The uniqueness of Jesus’ resurrection does not mean that it’s a story only to be told among ourselves. Dr. Cynthia Campbell stressed in her book “A Multitude of Blessings,” the fullness of Christian faith affirms both the universal extent of God’s love and the particular confession that it is through Jesus Christ this love is fully known and experienced. The uniqueness of the Easter story makes the Christian faith compelling and life-renewing. God is at work in people and places beyond our imagining with “a wideness in God’s mercy, like the wideness of the sea.”
For people wounded or disappointed by other churches, inviting them to join you for Easter can begin a healing conversation in their lives. For people who are uncomfortable imagining themselves in a church pew on Sundays, sharing in a story that is too big for mere words, yet too persistent to be easily dismissed, can prompt an honest reflection about the nature of God in our world. For people of other faiths or of no faith, words of conviction spoken about a love stronger than death does not diminish how God is active in other places, other traditions, and in other stories. It’s by sharing what we believe with integrity and humility that we enter into conversations that allow us to hear others’ stories.
There is too much hope, joy and new life contained in the Easter message for it to be limited to “members only” gatherings. Throw wide the doors! Extend forth the invitation! Resurrection begins now, let all the world rejoice!