April 4, 2010: Easter Sunday Family Service
Easter Sunday Parish Hall 2010
There are many wonderful symbols we carry around, exchange, and decorate our homes with as we joyously celebrate the Easter Season. Pastels, clean bright whites, silver and gold all shout out their colorful sensibilities. Chocolate, jelly beans, marshmallow peeps, and other candy of all varieties remind us of the precious sweetness of this life, a life given back and restored. A celebratory brunch and/or dinner to break the long fast of preparation that is now behind us helps us to mark as well the joyous new life that has leapt forth from the tomb.
But no other symbol seems quite as interesting as the humble egg. In real form the egg holds within its fragile walls the boundless potential of new life. From the humble chicken that can break through this shell to spring forth in fluffy newness, to the great egg of the giant birds, to even the eggs of the sea turtle that incubate so close and yet just so far from shore, eggs ponderously sit awaiting their precious cargo’s birth. What better harbinger of Spring and the returning hope of creation than the egg.
And for that more modern invention, the plastic egg provides us endlessly creative possibilities. We can lock away all sorts of treasures and then meditate on their meaning. The candy we pack in their and then let our children hide and find echoes back to all Easter candy, whose sweetness on the lips and tongue helps us to remember that the sweetness of creation is being renewed. Symbols of our faith we lock away, storing up our heart’s essential needs. A coin (or even a folded up bill!) to remember the treasures and gifts that God has given us. A palm frond to remind us of the Lord, the King of Kings, who enters Jerusalem. A piece of bread to remember the gift of the Eucharist. A thorn to remember the pain of Good Friday. All can be locked up inside the egg, a precious safekeeping for us to hold as we make our daily journeys.
And the humble plastic egg holds one more gift for us. For it can hold so much, but it can also reveal so much more than lip tingling sweets or symbolic treasures. For as much as we want to contain our faith in bits of memories and symbols, God again and again tells us that his life, his creation, his joy, cannot be contained. No human container exists to hold it all. And even though his Son dies for us, redeeming all of creation, and suffers death itself to express his solidarity with the rest of his creation that likewise has or will experience death, yet still God’s joy cannot be contained. We will need to go searching again for Jesus, because the tomb is empty, his is risen, and he goes before us. After you have finished enjoying your Easter candy, you still hold in your hands the most incredible gift of all, a symbol of God’s boundless love and joy in this his creation: an empty tomb. A place where the sorrow of death is no more, a place from which our hearts learn again to sing and dance for joy. He is risen indeed! Rejoice my friends!
