Reflection on the Easter Egg

Easter Day (4^th April, 2010)

Reflection on the Easter Egg

 

 

The Sunday School children were planning to have a song presentation and distribute the Easter eggs at the end of the service this morning.  But I have a change of plan and told the teachers to get the children to distribute the Easter eggs between the Gospel reading and the sermon. I want the Easter eggs to be part of my Easter sermon this morning. 

Now each one of us has an egg each in our hand and I want to talk about these eggs and the message they bring.  I still wonder who on earth started the idea of Easter eggs and Easter bunny.  What have they got to do with Easter?

If you read the gospels, you will find many instances when Jesus tried to drive his message using ordinary things.  Jesus used simple ordinary things to bring his message across to people, because some of his listeners were simple-minded people, and they would not understand if Jesus was to speak in a language of theologians about God.  It is quite possible also that people can get their thoughts too complicated that they create confusion. And when we get too complicated we can also fail to see and appreciate small and ordinary things. 

I believe that Easter egg is a small and ordinary thing that can impart the truth about God, especially the Resurrection of Jesus.  We did not ask the adults to distribute the eggs.  If we are to ask the members of the PCC or Women’s Fellowship to distribute the eggs they may a lot of questions.  We adults often think that we are too important to do this little thing.  Children, on the other hands, have simple trust – they do what they are asked and they do it with joy.  The lesson is this: sometimes we adults think that it is only us who have to knowledge and understanding to bring across the message of the Gospel. The preachers for this morning are the children and their eggs.  I am only speaking on their behalf.

The important part of the egg is the yolk because if it is a fertilized egg, that is what turns into a chicken.  It is also the yolk that provides the nutrients. The eggs are given to you with nice colourful wrappings.  The colourful wrappings remind us what our religion looks like from the outside. You look at our church building with great pride (now it has new roof) and you can say it is a nice building. We can spice it up with many programs and activities.  We can present worships with all its grandeur, with modern or traditional music and songs. You can enjoy the good news of the Gospel.  

Likewise, you can choose to admire your Easter egg for as long as you like.  What are you going to do with your egg?  It looks too nice to be cracked opened and eaten.  Put it on your office desk or your study room as part of the decoration?   In the past, some ladies had told me that they put their Easter eggs in their hand bags and somehow forgot about them. Imagine their shock some days later when they opened their bags – they found rotten eggs inside, still covered in their beautiful wrapping papers.

Children, on the other hand, do not often wait to admire the nice wrappings of the eggs.  They will simply unwrap the egg, crack it open and eat the content.    Children are able to know the important part of the egg is the albumen and the yolk.  In the hands of children there is no chance for the eggs to turn bad.

Egg is used as a symbol for Easter because in it is something that can be alive or gives life.  But for an egg to become a chicken or food it has to be cracked opened.  Just now I was comparing this egg with the church building.   It is quite possible for a church to become just something to be admired or appreciated.  It is possible for a church building to become a monument that we visit and pay homage to once in a while. It can become a concert hall where we watch the performance and listen to the music and songs.  It can become a place for debates of committee members or house of gossips between friends. Outside everything may look OK, but because we have forgotten to look at what is inside, we don’t realise that the spiritual life has become stagnant.  We can be a church that does what every other church is supposed to be doing and yet our relationship with God is stale.

Likewise is our personal life.  When God’s message was first presented to us many years ago it came in a nice wrapping.  We received the message with great joy, wonder and delight. Try to remember that day when you were baptized or confirmed – how good it felt! Somehow after some years the message of God is still not out of its wrappings.   Once in a while we look at it with wonder and admiration at its packaging, just like we do to this little egg with its nice wrappings. 

So the message of God that comes with the Easter eggs this morning is for us to get cracking!  After all these things we have done, the message that we have heard, do not just appreciate the fact that we are religious persons.  Don’t just appreciate the fact that we are members of a church.  We need to break out from our false security and make ourselves useful.  If we don’t, then our spiritual lives will be like the Easter eggs that are kept in the bags for days.  They become stale or rotten and will be of little use for God. Eggs that have gone bad are useless eggs even though they may be covered in nice wrappings like this.  Likewise we cannot be used by God if we have gone stale inside, even though we look OK on the outside.   

On Palm Sunday my message was about our need to have the right attitude. On Maundy Thursday my message was about our need to be humble and to allow God to minister to our needs.  On Good Friday morning I talked about the cross, which also requires a humble mind to understand it. And this morning, we have a simple message from a simple thing like this egg.  But this simple egg brings with it a warning, especially to people who are content with themselves.  It is a warning to people who think that they are OK simply because they feel that they never committed big sins.  Just remember, if you leave this nice egg as it is on your table for many days, it will go bad and become useless.  Likewise, if we continue to live a lukewarm Christian life, a life which, in actual fact is neither here nor there: that life is spiritually stale.  It is a life where we deceive ourselves into thinking that we are in perfect relationship with God, but the truth is - we are not.

So we need to heed the warning brought about by this Easter egg. The egg you are holding is an image of you.  You can choose to be wrapped up with nice things of your own doing, and to be admired by others, while not bothering about what is happening inside.  You can choose to remain as a church decoration, to make up the numbers.  Or you can choose to be broken while you are fresh so that you can be useful to God.  God is telling us today if we want to be useful for him, we have no other choice but to discard our wrappings and be broken.