In a Year of Passion, an Added Sheen for Easter

From Easter sunrise services on hilltops and beaches to joyous observances in packed cathedrals, evangelical mega-churches and humble storefront missions, the 2,000-year-old story of a Jewish holy man rising from the dead after a brutal crucifixion is expected to draw larger-than-usual crowds this year.

At Bel Air Presbyterian Church, Senior Pastor Mark Brewer is urging his regular churchgoers to attend the 7 a.m. Easter services, or rare evening Easter services, in order to make room for worshipers likely to fill the pews at prime-time midmorning services. “I’ve even promised them Krispy Kremes and lattes,” Brewer said. At Will Rogers State Beach in Pacific Palisades, where sunrise services are held every year at 6 a.m., regulars are being advised to show up an hour early instead of the usual 15 minutes.

In Garden Grove, the Crystal Cathedral’s annual extravaganza, “The Glory of Easter,” is breaking attendance records, with 50,000 people expected by the time the last performance ends, a 25% increase. Palm Sunday services this week at St. James Episcopal Church on Wilshire Boulevard drew 406 people, a 23% increase over last year.

Why all the interest?

A confluence of events, pastors, priests and others say, is fueling interest among seekers. Mel Gibson’s blockbuster motion picture, “The Passion of the Christ,” renewed media interest in Jesus and other Bible personalities, and the publication of the latest book in the “Left Behind” series, in which a triumphant Jesus returns to Earth, seem all but certain to boost attendance at Easter services.

“No doubt about it. With Jesus on the cover of virtually every news magazine and the discussion of religion increasingly on the evening program schedule, there sure is more interest,” said Pastor Ted Haggard, president of the National Assn. of Evangelicals and leader of the 11,000-member New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colo. “We’re planning on quite a jam-packed day.”

Others say the Gibson film and media interest have come at a time when there has already been an upsurge of interest by a new generation of disillusioned seekers worried about the future.

“All of a sudden, we’re finding uncertainties in life,” said Father Virgilio P. Elizondo, a Roman Catholic theologian and priest in San Antonio, Texas, and author of the recently published “A God of Incredible Surprises: Jesus of Galilee.” “We’re looking for something to anchor our life on [instead of] floating in a little boat in an open sea.”

Is this the beginning of a new “Great Awakening” of the sort that fired the nation’s religious fervor in the 18th century? Or is all the media interest destined to fade, having given Jesus his 15 minutes of fame? Few would suggest that Jesus will rise and fade like some ordinary superstar. That is hardly a description of a man whose story changed world history and whom 2 billion believers continue to worship 2,000 years later.

However the ebb and flow of faith may play out, the fascination with Jesus among seekers as well as both nominal and committed Christians is being seized upon by pastors as an opportunity to preach, as the 18th-century hymn says, “the old, old story of Jesus and his love.”

“It has stopped us in our tracks and invited us to reflect on who Jesus is for us,” said Robert Johnston, professor of theology and culture at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena.

At Biola University, a fundamentalist Christian institution in La Mirada that teaches the inerrancy of Scripture, it would be hard to imagine students any more committed than they already are to Jesus. But Erik Thoennes, an associate professor of theology at the school, said he believed students were more desirous than ever of transcendent truth and “God centeredness.”

Popular culture’s infatuation with Jesus comes at a time of growing disaffection with the culture itself. “I’ve noticed in 12 years of working with college students, and a long pastoral ministry, an increasing disillusionment with the sort of baby boomer culture with [its] emphasis on a more marketing, entertainment mentality,” Thoennes said. “There’s a feeling there’s got to be more.”

But Thoennes is enough of a realist to laugh at the fact that Gibson’s “Passion,” while still drawing large audiences, has been overtaken by Sony Pictures’ “Hellboy,” about an action hero who fights evil and villainy. No doubt, he said, it’s drawing a different audience.

But other things happening in the culture may point to increased interest in Jesus, including the violence in Iraq and problems at home.

“Day by day, there is news of death -- in Iraq and Afghanistan, in Haiti and the Holy Land, on the very streets of our city, and in our neighborhoods,” wrote Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, Roman Catholic archbishop of Los Angeles. “We tire of the news, becoming numb to the reality of death all around us.”

Brewer, the Presbyterian minister, agrees. “Enough people are being wounded and dying now that it’s starting to be, ‘I know somebody who lost somebody.’ That always sends people seeking shelter.”

Mahony said it was important to see the big picture, religiously speaking. Popular culture often has a narrow focus. Gibson’s film, for example, concentrated on the death but not the resurrection of Jesus. Its scenes of the beating and crucifixion of Jesus may have been etched into the consciousness of a generation. Christians, however, believe that for all its horror, Good Friday is but the darkness before the dawn.

“The Paschal mystery,” Mahony said, “cannot be dissected and placed into separate compartments: First the agony, then the Passion, then the death, then the descent, then the Resurrection, and finally the Ascension. Christ’s Pasch is a single mystery of the power of love prevailing over evil, the life that conquers death.”

That can be a reassuring message for seekers looking to religion in general, and Christianity in particular, during a time when there appears to be unusual openness toward the sacred in the midst of secular concerns.

The Rev. Dr. Ernest Hess, pastor of Community Presbyterian Church of La Mirada, said the Gibson movie made Easter all the more dazzling. “It opened people up to glimpsing at that dark side of life,” he said. “Whenever that happens, it makes the good news of the Resurrection all the more shining.”