Photo by Pisit Heng on Unsplash
Below, I’m sharing a 4-part, general scaffold to discern the message for any sermon—with examples of three Easter-tide sermons to illustrate the concept (and inspire your own Easter sermons).
Basic Sermon Message Components:
This basic components of any sermon include:
The theological claim: One sentence of Good News based on the Scripture that is the basis for the sermon.
Why it matters: Why is this message relevant?
Stumbling block: If this is Good News, why don’t we believe it? What gets in our way? One or more of the stumbling blocks may resonate with you or your community that you will want to explore.
What if? What if we lived as if the Good News were a way of life?
How to Use the Examples
I’ve created three basic outlines from the components outlined above. They can be used in multiple ways:
To see how these components form the outline of a sermon message
To inspire your own ideas
As starting points to be particularized to your context
As a general guide (rearrange the sections in any order to suit)
Aside from the “theological claim” which I’ve already narrowed to a single idea, I have listed several ideas for each of the other three sections.
I wouldn’t suggest including every idea from every section in a single sermon.
Getting specific and drilling deep on one particular idea for each component is the key to a clear, meaningful sermon of Good News.
As you’ll see, multiple sermons could arise depending on the combination of “why it matters” or “stumbling block” or “what if” you work from—and then how you bring those ideas to life through scripture, illustrations, and your own unique voice.
Whether you adapt any of the specifics below for your own sermons or not, ensuring your sermon contains the four components will ensure you preach a clear message of Good News.
My three examples focus on faith, hope, and love because these sum up the ethos of the Christian tradition.
We have faith that there is life after death.
We live in hope that what seems impossible is possible.
And God’s love has neither a start date nor an end date; love is eternal.
Easter Sermon EXAMPLE #1: Faith
Theological claim
God raised Jesus from the dead.
“He has been raised. He is not here” (Mark 16:6)
Why this matters
To be Christian by definition is to believe this is true: that someone who was dead—all dead (not “mostly dead” for you Princess Bride fans out there)—walked, talked, materialized in the middle of nowhere, ate bread and fish, taught and preached.
Eugene Peterson puts it plainly in his interpretation of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians:
“If there’s no resurrection, there’s no living Christ. And face it—if there’s no resurrection for Christ, everything we’ve told you is smoke and mirrors, and everything you’ve staked your life on is smoke and mirrors. Not only that, but we would be guilty of telling a string of barefaced lies about God, all these affidavits we passed on to you verifying that God raised up Christ—sheer fabrications, if there’s no resurrection” (1 Cor. 15:14-15).
There are many who find Jesus to be a great teacher and leader, many who turn to him as a moral compass.
To say one is a Christian, to claim that we are followers and disciples, however, is to say we believe Jesus rose from the dead and so will we all.
Stumbling blocks
We don’t believe in the sincerity and reporting of those who were there. We don’t think they told the truth, or we think they misunderstood what they experienced.
Death after life is nonsensical so we try to reason our way into believing. For example:
It happens that people are revived after having been clinically dead for minutes; maybe that’s what happened to Jesus.
There are scientific studies and a show on Netflix, “Surviving Death” that explore whether or not some part of our beings continues on after we die.
We make analogies like planting seeds that break open to grow something new
We make analogies like people who were emotionally or spiritually dead who have broken free to a new life
We try to help people imagine something unimaginable, like four dimensions: first dimension, a pencil dot on paper; second dimension, a flat plane like a pencil line on, or the piece of paper itself; third dimension, folding the paper into a cube, but being able to view no more than three portions of the cube at one time no matter how its tipped; fourth dimension, seeing all sides of the cube and inside it all at the same time. Death is as unimaginable but as real as seeing in the fourth dimension.
But analogies always break down, and so does reason.
We can’t reason or logic our way into believing Jesus rose from the dead.
There is a line where faith begins, and it is faith precisely because it cannot be proven.
We all must decide if we can live with that.
What if?
What if we let go of trying to reason our way into trusting that someone who died came back to life?
If we trusted that this life is not the end, what would we be less afraid to lose in this one?
What if our narrative didn’t end here? What hardships might we take on for the sake of others if we knew there was more life ahead? What do we hope people read about our part in this eternal narrative?
What if we didn’t work so hard on constructing a life that can’t last? A life of power, status, protection, or superiority? What if we only worked with constructing a life of eternal building blocks like faith, hope, and love?
Easter Sermon EXAMPLE #2: Hope
Theological claim
Jesus is alive bringing us into a living hope.
“We have been born anew into “a living hope” (I Peter 1:3-9), “for nothing will be impossible with God” (Luke 1:37).
Why it matters
A living hope means we trust that “the way things have always been done” isn’t all that’s possible. In other words, past disappointments are not an indication of future trajectories.
Hope is always a risk. Things might turn out well, or very badly indeed.
But do nothing and the ills, disappointments, griefs, and injustices are certain.
Stumbling blocks
We fear disappointment, our vulnerability, and hard work that might go nowhere.
We trust in human authorities who tell us what’s possible—and what isn’t—instead of listening to God who can do more than we can ask or imagine.
We don’t hope for what God really hopes for, so we never work with God to make it happen. For example,
We say we hope for world peace—as long as someone else makes it happen with no inconvenience to us.
We say we hope for an end to hunger, sickness, and abuse of power, but we really only want to end those things for those we think have earned it.
What if?
What would happen if we lived “as if” these were not only possible, but they were inevitable? That solving these problems were only a matter of our time and efforts because we’ve already got God’s grace, ingenuity, and perseverance to solve them?
What if we lived as if these solving these massive problems were as much of a given as vaccinating nearly everyone on the planet, landing people on Mars, and adding charging stations for electric cars that are coming down the road. These are profoundly complex puzzles that no one know has solved yet but we know they will—because there’s a will.
A living hope lives takes for granted the inevitability of God’s expectation that every person is honored as God’s own beloved.
Easter Sermon EXAMPLE #3: Love
Theological claim
God’s love never ends.
“I have seen the Lord” (John 20:18).
Why this matters
Though the pillars of our society are falling, love never ends.
Many of the ways of daily life have come under scrutiny, danger, or overhaul.
Our government has been at greater risk because of social media and the spread of conspiracy theories than a foreign government
Our health care system has not been able to keep up with the demands placed on it in the last year
The Church is changing dramatically and probably forever after being forced to adapt to a digital presence, and while many have seen an uptick in attendance during the pandemic, it is not enough to reverse the decades of decline
Even our greenhouse gas “backup,” the Amazon rainforest tasked with absorbing the excess gasses contributing to our warming globe, has been so badly damaged that it’s now believed to be contributing to the problem.*
The systems we have counted on are changing so rapidly that it leaves many of us feeling on edge and casting about for someone or something that can make sense of it all and make us feel safe again.
Love is the only thing that endures.
Stumbling blocks
Most of us have multiple stories to show as evidence that love does end or was never offered to begin with.
Love is often intangible while the structure we rely on are things we can point to.
If the things we trust and rely on are falling apart, why wouldn’t God too?
Plus, it’s so much work to love and care for our neighbors!
What if?
What if we lived as though we built, tended, and revised human systems because we know they have a life span, but God’s love doesn’t?
How might we “systematize” God’s love? Not in terms of a making rules and regs designed to protect itself way, but in a habitual, “love is the way we do things” way?
What if instead of defaulting to our current system of individualism as the supreme value, we defaulted to the needs of our neighbor as being the most important?
What if instead of defaulting to “my rights” that gives us a sense of entitlement to serve ourselves, we saw “my rights” as the privilege it is to serve another precisely because we don’t have to?
If love of neighbor were our perpetual default in making decisions, we would choose cooperation over self-protection, community over individualism, and self-sacrifice over self-interest.
In other words, we would choose the eternally life-giving way of Jesus.
”Start to Finish” (S2F) Holy Week Sermon Prep
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*The National Geographic, by Craig Welch, 3/11/2021. “First study of all Amazon greenhouse gases suggests the damaged forest is now worsening climate change: The first broad look at all of the gases that affect how the Amazon works—not just CO2—reveals a system on the brink”
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