Essential Elements of an Easter Message

On Easter Sunday, I went to a local beach with my parents for a sunrise service to celebrate God’s making all things new in the resurrection of Christ.  A highlight for me was watching the sun rise in the east as the full moon set over the Gulf of Mexico.  It made me wish I had a better camera than my old phone because God put on a lovely display of celestial glory for all to see in a cloudless sky.  The sermon, however, was less than stellar.

I know I’m pickier than most about the content and delivery of sermons, but more than just the missed opportunity, there was enough doctrinally wrong to confuse people and keep them walking the wrong path. That is what made it a travesty.  It made me think about the essential elements that must be present in a good Easter message.

It’s not just reading the Easter story for the bazillionth time (although frankly, one can’t go wrong with God’s own narrative of the event).  It’s easy to see how pastors can feel like it’s hard to make such a familiar passage fresh and interesting, especially on a high-expectation day for “Christmas and Easter Christians”.  That is perhaps the reason the pastor at my son’s church didn’t read it at all.  He focused on other Scriptures…which ironically made for a better Easter message than the one I heard.

It’s not enough to mention Jesus’ name. 
Or saying He is Risen indeed!
Or that the tomb was empty.

There are probably lots of people whose name is/was Jesus, even in that day as Colossians 4:11 and “Jesus, called Justus” would suggest.  Someday, all of us in Christ will rise and our tombs will be empty. 

He wasn’t just the first to figure it out
like the first figure skater to successfully perform a quadruple or quint axel. 
Without Him, we would never be resurrected to eternal life.

Therefore, here is my list of Essential Elements of an Easter message and you can see how yours stacked up:

Mankind must be presented as both the pinnacle of God’s creation and as sinners.  We are:

• God’s Image bearers. 
• But we have a sin nature due to Adam and Eve’s sin in Eden. 
• God’s Image is present but broken, and we are unable to earn our way or to help ourselves out of this situation. 
• The curse of sin is death. Mortality means all people die until Jesus returns.
• Any hope rests in God defeating death.

Jesus must be presented as the unique Son of God. 

• Fully God, able to change our predicament. 
• Fully man, able to represent us. 
• He must be completely sinless, crucified, fully dead, and buried in a tomb. 
• He must fulfill all Scripture about the Messiah as well as what He predicted 
• He must be in the tomb for 3 days and then rise from the dead. 
• His resurrection must be of His body.
• He must appear to witnesses to prove to man what God later affirms as acceptable sacrifice in the ascension and giving of the Holy Spirit.

Without the essential elements regarding mankind, there is no need for a Messiah.  No need for payment for sin.  No reason it couldn’t be a do-it-yourself project of earning your way to be with God like every other world religion.  We are not rather good people who just need a little Jesus and to show kindness by seeing Jesus in everyone.  We’re (even the best of us) sinners and mortality is our outcome. 

Instead of perfect endless living (eternal life),
pure endless dying is what we’ve earned. 
That’s called “Hell” and Jesus came to save us from that.

I don’t know how your Easter message stacked up this year.  But next year, listen beyond the surface, the jokes, and the attempts to make Easter fresh and interesting.  Listen for what is essential and how God made all things new in Christ.