It is Easter time again! The shops have been full hot cross buns and Easter eggs along with other chocolate treats for months, but now you can barely move without being confronted by chocolate. It must take the chocolate confectionary manufacturers months to gear up for Easter. The variety of products and concepts is so all encompassing that you can buy chocolate themed for any interest a person may have; and somehow many of the offerings are egg shaped, or contain egg shaped objects. Now, even though I enjoy good chocolate, and I do find something quite attractive about the symbolism of eggs and new life, I struggle to find anything in it that is vaguely related to the Gospel of Jesus, his death and his resurrection.
By now you might be saying, but Chris, the symbolism of eggs and new life are strongly connected to the resurrection of Jesus. Right?
Well, certainly Christ Jesus is credited, as the Word, in the beginning, as the one who made all things, and through whom all things are made (John 1.1-4; Colossians 1.16). And, certainly the life that comes through Jesus, by his Spirit, to those who believe, is “new life”. But, the new life of the risen Jesus is very different from the new life we see emerging from an egg! The new life of Jesus is not the fluffy yellow new life of a chick that needs protection, nurture and the training of a mother hen. God’s Spirit speaks of the risen Jesus in very different terms:
“all things were created by him and through him and for him. And, he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning and the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.” (Colossians 1.16b-20)
The “new life” of Jesus, the new life that he owns and that he gives to his people is much more than the new life of a chick hatching from an egg, wonderful and adorable as that is. The life that Jesus has, the life that Jesus gives is life itself. His life is not a naive infancy, but the all knowing life of the one who made and sustains all things. He is the living God, from whom all life is given and is sustained.
So, as you give your gifts of superfine chocolate, and as you enjoy the gifts you receive in return take a moment, or more if you dare, to consider how much better and richer is the new life that Jesus holds out to those who trust him for life itself.
