It was time for the next question on the list. As I listened to it a smile grew on my face. It was a bizarre one, but somehow not surprising at all.
“How about the story of Jesus and the time that he changed the eggs into chocolate? Where in the Bible can we find that story?”
Just last Friday, I found myself sitting on a wooden stool at the front of a large group with the eyes of a few dozen middle school teens from our community looking at me. For the next 25 minutes, I would be asked questions — and some very unique questions — about Good Friday and Easter Sunday and have the privilege of teaching and sharing some answers.
I don’t know what comes to your mind when you think about the Easter weekend. If you are like most of us, it’s a mix of bunnies and colourful eggs, candies and chocolate, kids and extra days off work. This is the image that marketing firms have been promoting for decades, but it turns out the story that has sparked two days off of school for our teens and a statuary holiday for our nation has little to do with furry animals and calorie counting and everything to do with an event in history that has massive impact on each of our “forever after.”
Let me back up for a moment, because the question about the Jesus and the eggs wasn’t the first question that was asked. It actually started with something much more basic, “What is Good Friday and Easter Sunday about anyway?”
I shared with the teens before me, the Bible teaches us that it’s all about God stepping into human history in the person of Jesus to change something that had gone horribly wrong.
On what we now call, “Good Friday”, Jesus took our sin-curse upon himself with the goal of fixing what had been broken. “Easter Sunday” is the sequel to the task, where he returns from the dead in order to bring life back to our souls and restore each of us into relationship with our Maker which was fractured so long ago.
With this answered and the present holiday re-framed, the follow-up question that I am sure everyone was thinking about was asked: “How about the story of Jesus and the time that he changed the eggs into chocolate?”
It’s a telling question; a reflection of the information mess we have around the holiday.
The shocking answer is that, although Jesus is transforming water into wine, dead people back into living people, small amounts of fresh fish and newly baked bread into a meal for thousands (not to mention the left-overs), and blind people into 20/20 vision types, there is no egg metamorphosis mentioned.
At this point there are many disappointed teens in the room: no biblical basis for chocolate egg and bunny purchasing trips to the local corner store. Oh well.
But there is still good news, I assure them.
It is the good news that there is still one transformation that occurs even today because of what Jesus has done in Good Friday and Easter Sunday. It is the transformation of lives that are separated from their created purpose and that are broken by sin and the effects of sin to ones that are no longer that way.
This is a transformation that literally changes the eternality destiny of people from a forever apart from God to a forever in his presence.
It is the transformation from a dead soul to a soul that is made alive by Christ.
The teens’ response?
“Hey, that really is good news! Now, do we have any chocolate?”
