NRHStewart Ruch III on Best Practices for Holy Week Preaching, and on preaching Easter Morning year after year.
…I’ve grown in this as a preacher—that I have learned how to renounce the expectation that I will preach a great sermon on Easter Day. I’ve learned to refuse to live by that. I do want to preach a great sermon on Easter Day. But if I go out with the result of preaching a great sermon on Easter Day then I’ve already lost the battle of the Easter Day sermon. So I really try to refuse to try and meet the expectation, usually my own and some others, frankly, that I preach a phenomenal sermon on Easter Day. I refuse that. I try to compartmentalize that and put that away, and I try, instead, to work really hard at asking: What’s the word for this year, Lord, from your Holy Scriptures? That’s what I’m going to preach.
The whole article is full of great pastoral wisdom.