Easter Preaching

• What is Christian preaching?
• How is it changing?
• What makes a good Easter sermon?

At the invitation of Cathy Jamieson the SCUMC Columbia District Superintendent, I offered practical tips to her ministers along with others from around the state on preaching during Holy Week and Easter this year to encourage and strengthen in them in their preaching. I began:

The Christian faith is uniquely auditory, a matter of speaking and listening. It’s called “Good News,” news is something that you must receive from the voice of another. Not innate, natural. Somebody must tell it to you.

Christian faith can never be the answer to a question like, “Have you ever thought that….?” nor “Have you had the experience that…?” Preaching like this thinks that you make contact with what folks have already experienced or know, then go rummage about in scripture, and that leads to a sermon.

Easter is a challenge in part because it’s not natural, not expected, and there are no good analogies from present human experience: butter fly emerging from cocoon, robin return in spring, crocus coming up through snow. Easter is about a man who was tortured to death by the governmental-religious consortium, who died, and then in 3 days, “loose!”