Despite the scope and nostalgia of Christmas, Holy Week is the main act of the calendar for the world’s 2.38 billion Christians. It connects God’s story with humanity’s story to a fine point, gathered into the compact space of seven days.
If you set aside the exhaustion associated with Holy Week, it is also prime time for pastors. Unless they have a level of celebrity outside their congregation, this is their opportunity to shine with larger-than-typical audiences. The greatest story ever told, combined with all the powers of persuasion and marketing, sets the stage for Christianity’s annual membership drive.
For many evangelical pastors in the United States, Holy Weeks like the one in 2025 are especially joyful. These rare Sundays are the Easters farthest from a presidential election.
This makes it easier for them to do what they love most—avoid accusations of being “too political” in their sermons. Instead, they will enter far more theologically comfortable territory: the current state of human hearts and the eternal state of human souls.
In many evangelical traditions, this is Holy Week’s entire, simple message: Jesus’ death “paid our debts,” and his resurrection “unlocked the promises of God.” All that is required of us is to say “yes” to God’s invitation.
Shake, rattle and roll. Pass the deviled eggs!
This is such an easy gospel to believe. It’s no wonder, despite their rapid decline, White Evangelical Protestants are the largest single religious group in the United States.
What makes it so easy is that the “promises of God” unlocked by the resurrection of Jesus mainly include vague ideas of a “good life” on this side of the grave and a “much better life” on the other side. They borrow notions of heaven and hell that weren’t formed in our collective consciousness until Dante came along.
If you attend a church with this theology for Easter, then you’ll likely hear the pastor reference Christmas. It may be a joke about how they haven’t seen you since Christmas, or a sermon point about how Christmas was only part of the story of redemption. Either way, they want you to know you can’t understand Christmas without understanding Good Friday and Easter.
They’re not wrong. The problem is what they highlight and leave out about the Christmas story in their Easter sermon.
Do you know what would be revolutionary (and biblically faithful) this Easter? A sermon hearkening back to the part of the Christmas story where Mary praised God for bringing the powerful down from their thrones and sending the rich away empty, all while lifting up the lowly and filling the poor with good things (Luke 1:46-55).
Listen, I’m still one of those wild and wooly Christians who believe in a literal resurrection that unlocks the hope of heaven. Sue me for not slapping a “Coexist” sticker on the back of my Subaru.
But if heaven was unleashed with the resurrection of Jesus, so was Mary’s vision for the world expressed in her Magnificat. This story is as much about our neighbors with their backs against the wall as it is about what happens to us when we die.
To put it another way: Ask your pastor this week about Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran husband and father sent to a concentration camp by the Trump Administration, which admitted his deportation was due to “administrative error.” Administration officials have since created a public relations campaign to accuse Garcia of being a member of a violent gang, but refuse to charge him with a crime in court.
Have your pastor tell you what the Easter story says about this situation.
Ask them where the resurrection fits in with the lies told about Garcia by members of the Trump administration. What would they tell his wife and child about the hope of God while he languishes away in a prison that has been cited for numerous human rights abuses?
If your pastor hems and haws, or if they stumble through something about hearts or heaven or hell or how they don’t want to get into politics, then look them in the eyes and tell them they don’t know a damn thing about Easter.
But with holy Pentecostal fire, let them know there is still time to repent and be saved.
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Senior Editor at Good Faith Media.
