For many people today, Easter – much like Christmas – is just about tradition. How can we highlight the true message of Easter?
Traditions are important in a person’s life! We nurture and preserve them through generations, passing on various customs and ways of thinking to the next generations, and that’s a good thing. The question with traditions is whether it’s enough just to maintain, preserve, and pass them on, and then expect others to find them important too. Is that enough today? Probably not anymore. As I once read from Ferenc Sebo:
„ Our traditions can only be preserved if we live them!”
I believe this thought applies well to conveying the true message of Easter: I must live it authentically (not just expect it from others) and radiate from myself the Good News – that there is resurrection!
For most secular people, the essence of Easter – that Christ died for our sins and rose from the dead – is hard to grasp. How can this be made more relatable and understandable? What role should the church play in this mission?
Let me approach this from a broader perspective: the Church today struggles with the reality that a large part of society sees it only as a sort of "religious service provider" – it conducts funerals, weddings, baptisms, and runs institutions, but people don’t think there’s more to it than that.
Why would they, when for many the church has ended up on the same shelf with other traditions? It’s a tradition – one you can’t really hide, since every town has at least one church. People know there are priests, religion teachers, and a few people who go into the church after the bells ring – but what happens inside? They have no idea. And from there, it follows logically:
how can something matter to me if I don’t know it? How can I long for something I don’t even know exists?
In my view, churches shouldn’t be surprised by this but instead we must return to our roots – where faith in Jesus led people to live renewed lives, making sacrifices for one another and their local communities. They didn’t mind spending time or money to bring help to the lonely, vulnerable, or those searching for something beyond what is visible and tangible. This is how Christianity entered into societies 2,000 years ago.
How much responsibility does a believer have in spreading the “Good News”?
You've touched on the core: individual responsibility. Let’s first talk generally about individual responsibility. In Hungary, this is especially important to emphasize, as historical experiences passed down in our DNA have led us to think too much in terms of self-protection. Self-protection, which means striving to experience as few disappointments as possible, and consequently to work for the interest of myself and my family at most.
What historical experiences do you mean?
For example, Hungarian people have lived for at least eight centuries with the sense that some external enemy comes along every few generations and ruins them – they lose their small possessions, sometimes, tragically, even their lives or loved ones. There came the Mongols, Turks, Habsburgs, Soviets, world wars, Trianon, communists – and who knows what’s next?
This is a deep-rooted mindset in our national soul, which keeps us from caring about community matters, and at best, we do something for ourselves and our immediate families.
If that’s the case, personal responsibility becomes hard to interpret because people don’t want to be losers again, to suffer more loss. So, responsibility is projected onto the king, government, or center of power. Why should I take responsibility for anything, when what I did take responsibility for was taken from me so many times?
And this mindset is true even for people within the church.
Believers come from the same society, carrying the same generational trauma. But the Christian message brings the most radical change to a person’s life in that it shifts the focus from personal gain to caring for the well-being of others.
I expect my own well-being to come from doing good to another person. This is exactly what Jesus is talking about when he says, “Do to others what you would have them do to you...”
Jesus flipped the popular saying of the time, which was: “Don’t do to others what you don’t want done to you.” Even that would make the world a better place!
But this is a passive, defensive view of life. Jesus can give more than this: he calls people to an active, proactive life, and defines the guarantee of my own well-being in promoting the well-being of others! Because only in this system of human relationships can gratitude appear, which can prompt people to fantastic actions! Without gratitude, there is no healthy society, family, or individual. And if, by taking Jesus' teachings seriously, I am able to do actions that inspire gratitude, and this has a positive effect on me, then ultimately I will be grateful to Lord Jesus, who started this process in me.
We only take responsibility for what we care about – for what we love! If I care about something, I will act, take responsibility, even make sacrifices for it.
The exact opposite of this is if I'm paid to represent something, to stand up for something. You can do this professionally, of course, but it won't have much soul, energy, or positive atmosphere.
If I’m a Christian, then my life is renewed. Jesus’ teachings have become real in me. He took his truth so seriously, he died for it. So why wouldn’t I take responsibility for spreading the Good News – the very message that saved me, gave me new strength, revitalized me? He rose from the dead! He wasn’t defeated, erased – something miraculous happened. And if I believe that, a miracle can happen in me too, and experiencing that miracle fills me with gratitude!
How did your congregation prepare for Easter this year?
It's not Easter we prepare for, we prepare for daily life. Easter becomes a celebration for us if, in our everyday lives, we experience resurrection – if we see lives being renewed through the Gospel. Resurrection means there is an old life that dies, and a new life begins, without the person physically dying.
We are credible messengers of the Good News when cautious seekers come among us and sense: there is someone here who must be more than just human. Because those who believe in Jesus are capable of doing things for each other that don’t come naturally to human nature.
We operate schools, kindergartens, and a music and arts school. These are huge opportunities to serve even those outside the church with the renewing, beautifying power of the Gospel. We live this miracle in our community! We are deeply thankful for one another and ultimately for the living Lord Jesus, to whom we owe it all.
As a pastor, what are the biggest challenge for you during Easter?
I read that in World War Two, American soldiers were tested to see how effectively they returned fire. Under stress, when they were under fire, only about 20 percent returned fire effectively. That's not very much. However, stress resilience can be developed, and this can bring out much better results in people. Unfortunately, history has given us the opportunity to measure progress; in the Vietnam War, efficiency in similar situations rose to seventy percent. It's a massive improvement, with very serious training and science behind it.
Today we live under constant fire, myself included. A staggering amount of information hits me daily, it's impossible to process everything, but I still read the news, I still take on new and new tasks, and I want to "aim well", that is, to grasp the essence, deal with it, focus on it, do it well, that is, to give an appropriate response to the effects that affect me. For decades, I struggled with this life driven by good intentions, but in reality, ineffective.
Often, I felt lost in my tasks, dealing with things ineffectively, “firing back” poorly. It frustrated me, made me angry and irritable.
These days, I consciously remind myself of Jesus’ words to Martha, who was overwhelmed and stressed by tasks: “You are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed.” I think I’m not the only one asking: what is that “one thing”? Can it really bring order to the chaos inside me? Once I read:
"There is a link between heaven and earth… if you find it, everything makes sense – even death. If you don’t, everything loses meaning – even life."
For me, that “one thing” is that very link between heaven and earth: the cross of Calvary. That forever joined the broken human world with the reality of heavenly strength and blessing.
Because even the cross, even the tomb became empty. Jesus rose again. He defeated death. There is new life, there is eternal life! I’ve experienced it – I am much more at peace today than before, and I believe I aim with much greater precision. As a preacher and pastor, my greatest challenge during Easter is to continue to spread the Good News with the same strength and conviction after twenty years – so people may be moved, so they might find that link. Because that’s all that matters.
