On the days before Easter, Easter, and the day after

Easter is pressure.

I’m not sure Easter is any minister’s favourite time of the year. If it is, they’re no minister I know of. I have a friend in the ministry and between the two of us we have agreed that Easter Monday is our favourite Easter day. It’s not that we don’t like Easter per se, of course not, on most levels, it doesn’t come better than Easter! But Easter never arrives at a minister’s door without asking for something substantial in return.

Very seldom is there this same pressure to perform as at Easter time and the services follow each other like a set of waves rolling in relentlessly off North Beach; no sooner have you kicked your way to the surface than the next one arrives ready to pound you back into the deep, leaving you scrambling and hoping that the direction you are kicking in is up. Only a few days ago I was staring down the barrel of 9 services in 6 days, one of which went on for 4 hours. Look at most ministers a day after Easter and you will notice the subtle signs of someone rather punch-drunk, speaking in monosyllables and dribbling from both corners of the mouth; someone who has attempted once again to deliver a familiar story in fresh and stimulating ways. A minister mate of mine is preaching 7 times in 7 days, enough preaching to make you question the existence of a loving God - an Easter irony if ever there was one.

I recall one bishop, sharing how we all feel from time to time, when in front of a group of ministers he whispered dejectedly while hunched over the lectern, ‘You know, eventually you get to a stage where you just don’t know what else to say.’

It is even harder when you are in a church where there is a certain expectation; things have unfolded so well and for so long you feel the need to improve on the tradition year in and year out, or at least not falter, like a team on a winning streak where the thought and inevitability of a loss is strangely increased off the back of every victory. All it takes is one person to say, ‘Can’t wait for that sunrise service pastor, always so special that one!’ I’m inclined to pinch them. Hard. But lovingly, you know, like Jesus would. Every positive comment of experience in years gone by settles on your shoulders like a weight. Every year at our Taize service I have to refrain from the urge to burn bigger and better candles. ‘Like last year people, only brighter!’ Already our church is lit up in a way that would bring our insurance policy under review.

It doesn’t help that Easter is also holiday season; people move off to do all sorts of things. Young families head off into the Drakenseberg for a few days. ‘Oh, we are off to Champagne Sports Resort.’ I want to weep. 

When the pressure is on I ask, ‘Can I come along?’

‘Haha!’ They reply.

‘No really.’

‘Oh.’

And so it goes.

We have this sunrise service. It takes a lot of logistical effort to set this thing up. I mean a lot. We have to cart a cross down from the church that, no kidding, is not that much different to how the original cross might have been; it is the mother of all Easter crosses. We have to prepare posies to place in the cross at a moving moment in the church service. (Here I am employing liberally the royal ‘we’, having never personally prepared a posy in my life.) Every year we drive it, tied precariously to the back of a bakkie, down to the view site. I’ve often wondered about the spectacular effect of that cross coming off the bakkie. I’ve imagined someone, at Easter, driving along and praying to God, ‘Dear God if you would only send me a sign!’ only to see this air-borne cross with flowers floating around it appearing on the horizon. Now that would be an Easter story. 

We have to get sound equipment down there. We have to arrange electricity and so we have to schmooze one of the neighbours to steal a line from their house. It also leads to canvasing the neighbourhood, dropping flyers and letting people know that, if they hear strains of ‘Christ the Lord is risen today!’ penetrating their bedrooms before sunrise, they are to please refrain from phoning the cops. 

Oh, and we have to get to the view site at 5am.

I mean, this is a mission.

But then alongside all this something else happens almost every year: The sound system has worked, people have received communion and placed flowers in the cross, and now sit happily tucking into hot cross buns cradling warm cups of coffee, and in that moment, it is special. There is little obligation in that moment, less on your shoulders. Sure, the main Easter service is an hour away but there’s a sense that this is under control and the finish line in sight. And in that moment, with the flowers in the cross, and the sun kissing it and all before it ever so gently, it feels a little like Easter. Like most, I’m a sucker for a cool breeze and a rising sun, and a silhouetted cross.

Be kind to your minister this Easter wherever you are. Easter will mean many things to you, but it almost definitely won’t come with nearly the amount of pressure felt by your clergy. The best a minister can hope for is a few moments in a whole week where it all kinda feels right. And I don’t think any of us should necessarily expect more; after all Jesus was dead and then he was alive - One astonishing moment, a blink of an eye easily missed that birthed a new world of possibility.

When that person says, ‘Cant’ wait for sunrise it is always so special!’ Part of me wants to respond with, ‘Urgh.’ 

The more redeemed part of me thinks, ‘You know, it really rather is.’