Easter: A Time Of Returning To The Source
In a culture that commodifies everything, including resurrection hope, Easter 2026 offers a rare moment of spiritual reclamation. The tomb is still empty. The invitation is still personal. The source has never moved”.
BY EMMAN USMAN SHEHU
On Easter Sunday 2026, millions of Christians will stream into sanctuaries—some sleek megachurches with jumbotrons and fog machines, others modest chapels lit by smartphone flashlights recording the sermon for later clips. The pageantry is undeniable: viral “resurrection reels,” celebrity pastors delivering TED-style talks on triumph, and politicians invoking the empty tomb to score rhetorical points. Yet amid the spectacle, a quieter question lingers. Have we, in our hunger for connection, mistaken the messenger for the message?
The original Easter was never meant to be comfortable or curated. It was a scandalous, gate-crashing event. A provincial carpenter, executed as a criminal by the Roman Empire and rejected by the religious establishment, rose from the dead outside the city walls, far from the Temple’s inner courts or Herod’s palace. No press release. No live stream. Just an empty tomb and the stunned declaration of the angel: “He is not here; he has risen, just as he said” (Matthew 28:6). The resurrection bypassed every human gatekeeper of power and piety. Two millennia later, we have spent centuries erecting new ones.
Consider the landscape of contemporary faith. Megachurches with attendance in the tens of thousands function like spiritual theme parks. Influencers with “Man of God” branding amass followings that dwarf the congregations of the apostles. Political alliances turn pulpits into policy platforms. The result is what theologian N.T. Wright has elsewhere called a “domesticated” Christianity—one that feels less like the raw disruption of the Gospels and more like a lifestyle brand. We scroll past carefully lit worship sets and think we are following Christ when, in truth, we are often following a personality.
The danger is as old as the faith itself. In his first letter to the Corinthians, the Apostle Paul confronted a church already fracturing over celebrity preachers: “What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task” (1 Corinthians 3:5). He went further, appalled at the tribalism: “Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptised in the name of Paul?” (1 Corinthians 1:13). The warning could not be clearer for our age of branded ministries and canceled pastors. When faith is tethered to a human vessel—however gifted or “anointed”—it becomes brittle. One moral failure, one financial scandal, one poorly aged tweet, and entire flocks scatter, their confidence in the risen Christ shaken because it was never anchored there to begin with.
This Easter invites a deliberate, perhaps uncomfortable audit of our allegiances. The resurrection was never about endorsing a new religious celebrity. It was about a radical, personal encounter with the living God. Jesus himself rejected the very cult of personality his followers would later invent. When crowds pressed him to become their king by force, he withdrew. When James and John jockeyed for seats of honour in his kingdom, he taught, “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all” (Mark 10:43-44). The path he modeled was one of humility, not hype; of the still small voice, not the amplified stage.
Recall Elijah on the mountain, fleeing the noise of his own celebrity moment. God was not in the wind, not in the earthquake, not in the fire—but in the “gentle whisper” (1 Kings 19:12). That same whisper is available today, yet it is easily drowned out by the loudest voice in the room, the most polished sermon, the most retweeted thread. The Gospels portray a Saviour who repeatedly pulled his disciples away from crowds to lonely places for prayer (Luke 5:16). If the Son of God needed unmediated time with the Father, how much more do we, who are so quick to outsource our spiritual formation to an app or a conference?
Returning to the source means reclaiming the uncomfortable simplicity of the resurrection’s claim: that death does not have the final word, that love is stronger than empire, that forgiveness is offered not by institutional approval but by direct encounter. It is the promise of new creation—“If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Corinthians 5:17)—not a seasonal emotional high delivered by a preacher, but a daily reality forged in the quiet discipline of prayer, Scripture, and neighborly love.
None of this requires abandoning community, tradition, or even the stirring Easter cantata. The early church gathered, broke bread, and sang hymns (Acts 2:42-47). The danger lies in letting the packaging eclipse the gift. This Easter, peel back the layers of performance. Enjoy the music. Cherish the community. But remember that the commitment you made—or are invited to renew—was never to a brand, a platform, or a personality. It was, and remains, to the One who said, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die” (John 11:25).
In a culture that commodifies everything, including resurrection hope, Easter 2026 offers a rare moment of spiritual reclamation. The tomb is still empty. The invitation is still personal. The source has never moved. It is time—past time—to return.
…Dr Shehu is an Abuja-based writer, activist and educator
