A pastor friend told me once about an experience he had as a seminarian visiting the church of a friend of his who happened to be a pastor’s son. Everyone in the service seemed enraptured by the sermon which had this refrain of “this is the day!” At the end of the service everyone left and the seminarian remarked to his friend about the father’s sermon. “That was really great!” 
The friend responded excitedly, “I know, that sermon gets better every year.”
The seminarian gets a confused look. “That sermon? You mean he preaches the same sermon every year?”
The friend laughs, “He sure does, and every year it gets better.”
I promise that I will actually write a new sermon for Easter this year. But after 10 Easters of preaching, I can get a sense of what the old father pastor was doing. In many ways, the story of Easter isn’t a novel thing – it doesn’t change year to year. Instead, it is something that is the same that gets better every year.
I had an art professor who every year would take a copy of “Old Man and the Sea” by Hemingway with him on vacation. Every year he would read Old Man and the Sea. When he told us this, someone in the class asked, “why do you do that? It’s not like the story changes.”
“The story doesn’t technically change,” he said, “but I do, and because I do, so does the old man.”
You have changed much since Easter. The events of this past year have left you as a different person. The story of Easter hasn’t changed and the sermon hasn’t really changed – but because you have changed, so does the Old Man, the Ancient of Days – Jesus Christ, the one who was and is and is yet to be. So this Holy Week let us not celebrate His change, but ours. And let us read His story again, as new people experiencing the same story all over again.