We Don't Make It Happen
Thoughts on planning for Easter and an Easter call to worship
Hey friends! I know many of y’all who follow this newsletter are pastors, and it’s that time of year: a few weeks before Holy Week and Easter, when you are trying to make sure that everything is ready, and doing a thousand things at once, and probably, if you’re honest, trying to do too much. There is a pressure to make it happen in this season, which is an unhealthy pressure that I am grateful that God is freeing me from.
It’s funny to me that the first Easter was so different. So unexpected, so unplanned for, bewildering to all who were there. The full weight of the empty tomb, the surprise of the resurrection, it comes in fits and starts in the scriptural telling. Jesus appears to a pair walking on the road; he comes disguised in a garden; he breaks into a locked room; there’s these understated, private, seemingly random encounters with Jesus, but from these encounters the apostles would go on to flip the world upside down!
It’s encouraging to me, because none of the witnesses of Jesus had to “make anything happen.”
They did not have to provide the energy or the charisma to get a movement started or a church going. It was all God. God made it happen, by sending the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit’s goal was to point everyone to Jesus. The apostles simply prayed for God to move, and God did it. They prayed for the Spirit to come, and he came. There was nothing sleek or tricky or technical about it, it was only deep desire and hunger for God to move. And God, because he loves us, well, he moved!
So all that to say, I encourage you to work hard in your ministry, but feel relieved of the pressure to “make it happen” in this season. This is not our job.
Simply invite God to come and be present in your church.
Trust in what God has called you to do.
And see what God does.
Something greater than what you expect may happen in spite of your plans, not because of them—an annoying thing when it happens, but God loves to do it.
So, remember today, you don’t make it happen. God does!
Easter Call to Worship (free to use)
I wrote this call to worship several years ago and am going to use it again this year. You are welcome to use it if you would like in your church, and edit or change it in any way you would like. It’s a dramatic reading to invite people into what the first witnesses of Easter might have been feeling. You can have music underneath it as someone is reading it, and I think it makes an effective way to open an Easter worship service:
Easter Call to Worship by Cambron Wright
It was early in the morning. Still dark.
The dawn just starting to cut through the fog.
The air hung heavy with expectation, as if the earth itself were holding its breath.
The echoes of the cross linger. His voice still rings out:
It Is Finished. Into your hands I commit my spirit.
The story comes to us in pieces and fragments, hints and images:
A vineyard garden, grapes ready for the harvest.
A stone, rolled away. The guards asleep at its side.
A pile of clothes, folded in an empty tomb.
Peter and John, running in with disbelief.
Walking out with questions and with hope.
But Mary stays behind. To weep in the garden.
And we weep with her. There is so much loss.
So much grief. So much death.
With her we look up, and through her tears
We see angels, seated in victory on top of the stone.
Do not be afraid, they tell us.
He is not here.
Why do you look for the living among the dead?
He. Is. Not. Here.
From the garden she hears a voice:
Why are you weeping? Whom do you seek?
She still cannot see. The sun is rising.
She is muttering with explanations,
But Mary’s heart starts beating with tremors
Of hope. Whom do you seek?
He is not here.
And like a voice from heaven,
She hears that voice. The voice she is longing for.
The gardener speaks her name: Mary.
Jesus looks at you and Jesus speaks your name.
The world is new as he speaks your name.
You are made new as he speaks your name.
What the angels said was true
And it is true today.
Jesus is alive.
Jesus walks.
His heart beats in victory.
Easter is announced by every breath he takes.
Easter means that love has won.
Death is finished. Satan is doomed.
Evil is conquered. God is good.
Love’s redeeming work is done.
It. Is. Finished. It . Is. Finished.
He is not dead.
He. Is. Alive.
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