It should come as no surprise to anybody to hear that the world, generally, do not think like believers. But as unsurprising as that news should be, it doesn’t stop believers bemoaning the fact that the world doesn’t think like believers. Nor does it stop churches consistently answering apologetic questions that nobody is actually asking and/or getting irritated when the world doesn’t accept all the evidence we provide to answer a series of perceived challenges they never asked nor find particularly compelling when we do.

This is worth thinking about now as we head into Easter. Many will be holding Maundy Thursday services. Many more will hold Good Friday services. More still will hold Easter Sunday services. Across all these services, a good number of us will be thinking about making them evangelistic. Let’s use Easter as an evangelistic opportunity, let’s invite people to our services and let’s address some potential apologetic questions in our sermons.

But if we manage to get anyone into our services at all, we spend our time answering questions nobody is really asking. We focus on things like the swoon theory or the mass hallucination theory and spend our time explaining how these things are deeply unlikely and point out nobody in the academy has defended these things for well over 100 years now. But we often seem to miss that most people have never heard the swoon theory, or any other theory. Nor are they particularly interested in it. Many are quite happy to accept those theories are deeply unpersuasive. They just can’t see the relevance of them on any level. We end up answering questions nobody is really asking.

More likely, I suspect most of us will find not that many people come into our Easter services at all. Yes, yes, I know – you no doubt no somebody who was saved at an Easter service once. Read this, this and this then get back to me. But for the most part, most people aren’t really thinking about Jesus at Easter. Nor do they really care. Even if they get an invite to our Easter service, they’re not really sure why they should bother going or what it’s got to do with them. For most, Easter is nothing more than a commercially driven long weekend and an excuse to eat some chocolate eggs.

Many Christians seem annoyed by that. People should pay attention to Easter being about Jesus. They should be more interested. Well, whether that’s true or not, they aren’t and nobody is going to start thinking about Jesus, his gospel or enter the kingdom because some Christians got annoyed that they aren’t paying attention to a church calendar they have lived their lives perfectly happily up to now ignoring. We might make them think a bit about Jesus by getting grumpy about them not thinking about Jesus, but it isn’t likely to do anything positive nor move anyone one iota closer to genuine belief in Christ. What the world needs is people to love them, not scold them. They need people to tell them about Jesus, not get annoyed they aren’t already thinking about him.

But we seem to have this habit of expecting unbelievers to live and think like believers even though they aren’t believers. We seem shocked when unbelievers act like unbelievers inevitably will. We seem to think the values and mores of the church ought to be everybody else’s values and mores, what we are thinking about is what everyone else ought to be thinking about, especially when a larger number of people in our did so in the past for entirely cultural reasons. But we have to accept that we do not live in Israel, but Babylon. We are not one nation under God, we are a minority group in a pagan land. Even when Christendom was a thing, these things were still essentially true and since Christendom ceased to be a thing – or went into terminal decline in Western Europe – these things are simply more evident rather than masked by Christianised language and a few external fig leaves.

And what do we think pagans in Babylon and Rome, or even in modern day Japan or China, make of Easter? About the same, when it boils down to it, as the average Brit. Only, we have a four day weekend that most people vaguely know has something to do with Jesus for historic reasons (as they judge it) that seem entirely mysterious. But that probably isn’t so different as how many view Chinese grave sweeping today, a somewhat jarring remnant of a past time that no longer has much to do with modern day to day life but nevertheless brings a nice day off so nobody is complaining.

So, as a minority group living in a pagan land, where does that leave us with Easter? I suspect invites to Easter services will be viewed by many as little different to being asked to a seder or holi; nice enough to be invited but entirely unclear why! We are starting some way back with people, needing to do more than just prove that the resurrection can be historically supported; we need to explain what Easter is and why we bother with it at all. Before we invite anyone to our services explaining it all, most people will need some reason to assume why coming is of any value whatsoever to them. After all, who needs an explanation about why we eat loads of chocolate? We can just eat the chocolate! It probably means an invite to an Easter service somewhat misses the point. What people need is less an Easter invite and more a Christian friend who will tell them about Jesus and why we think the cross and the resurrection are at all important, perhaps even entirely apart from Easter and without the pressure of a looming invite they suspect may be coming.

In the end, we need to get less cross about pagans thinking like pagans, and bemoan the fact that we are a minority group in a pagan land these days, and instead make effort to simply love and befriend a lost world in need of a Jesus they know precious little about. Being grumpy that the world isn’t thinking about Jesus at Easter, and doesn’t understand the significance of Easter for us or them, won’t bring anyone into the kingdom. Nor, I suspect, will attending a one off service. I don’t want to say it wouldn’t happen, and certainly don’t suggest it couldn’t happen, just that I think most people will need more time and more input over the long haul to come to believe the gospel.

Rather than getting cross that they don’t know or care about Easter, wouldn’t we do better to simply point them to the cross? Rather than assuming knowledge they don’t have, and getting annoyed when they show scant regard for it, wouldn’t we do better to simply love them, show them how Jesus has worked in our own lives and speak of his greatness to them because it is what we think irrespective of what they think? Isn’t a positive message about the greatness of Jesus going to do much more for them, especially lived out over the long run, than grumpiness that they don’t care for him yet with an invite to a meeting that they don’t understanding the purpose or meaning of?