How many of you have already found Easter eggs this morning?

Did you bring any to church with you? Can I see them?

(It would be ideal if you could have some kind of Easter egg – paper-egg tattoos? eggs made by the kids? – to pass out to everyone this morning. If you do this, don't go any further until everyone has an Easter Egg.)

How many of you still have purple and green and pink streaks and spots around your fingernails form coloring a few dozen Easter eggs yesterday? Can I see them?...

When you think about it, the tradition of hard-boiling, dyeing, hiding, and then rediscovering eggs in grass nests and reed baskets has got to be one of the strangest rites in human existence.

Oh yes, it is solemnly steeped in symbolism – spring, rebirth, chicks cracking out of a tomb-like shell. But for most of us – tell the truth now – it really is just a little silly.

So what is it that still delights us about finding rainbow-colored eggs in all the odd places? For our children – and for all of us with childlike yearnings – the Easter egg is wonderful exactly because it is so outlandish. Its color is flamboyant. Its location a secret we must uncover. Its presence ridiculous and unexpected. No matter how old we get, we still hope for surprises and are delighted by their materialization.

Easter eggs have gone through some necessary transformations over the past few years. Salmonella scares have made most Easter egg hunts into a search for plastic replica eggs. Since these are filled with small candies and chocolates instead of crumbling yolks and slimy whites, this is a definite improvement.

More recently, Easter eggs have been "post-modernized," becoming a part of computer-culture. If you don't know yet, your kids can probably tell you how to discover "Easter eggs" hidden inside standard computer programs, games, and even boring old spreadsheets of information. It seems those techno-wizards composing the software that run our computer programs get bored writing the same old codes over and over again. To amuse themselves and assert their individuality computer programmers insert secret codes into a program that, when correctly accessed, deliver a surprise Easter egg to the searcher.

In Tomb Raider II, Lara Croft, the female Indiana Jones-type heroine who makes Barbie dolls look like G.I. Joe, may suddenly turn into a fireball. Why? It's an Easter egg. Programmers have hidden in the computer code for the game this surprise: if Lara takes one full step forward, one back, turns around three times and then leaps forward, she explodes.

Easter eggs sometimes direct you to the names of those who programmed the software: replete with pictures of family members, pets, etc. Some Easter eggs give you hints on how to play the game, and make it easier. Some Easter eggs attack competitors.

In Apple Macs, you can sometimes find the cry "Help, I'm being held prisoner in a system software factory."

In Corel Draw, you'll find flying zeppelins.

Adobe PhotoShop has hidden an electric cat, which in the Macintosh version, makes a loud belch when its nose is clicked.

In Microsoft Word 97, you can play pinball.

You can go flying in Microsoft Excel 97.

Meet Mozilla in Internet Explorer 5. (For more on Easter eggs, see "Messages from the Hall of Tortured Souls," The Economist, December 18, 1999, 75-76.)

God, too, has hidden Easter egg surprises throughout the software of our lives. These are events that startle us with their appearance, surprise us with their spontaneity, and inspire us with their truth.

On one middle-of-the-night drive to West Virginia we rounded a sharp turn on a pitch-black country lane and the headlights suddenly caught and captured a beautiful Easter egg. A doe was cautiously leading her obviously only minutes-old fawn across the lane to the safety of the woods. The unbelievably spindly legs of the newborn barely worked up and down, and coordinated together not at all. We sat there for probably ten minutes watching and waiting as that baby figured out how to pick up one leg then another, slowly, ungracefully, inching across the roadway. At last mother and baby reached the grass and the thick woods that lay just beyond. We slowly crept on, our whole trip transformed by such a simple, ordinary, exquisite event.

Sometimes Easter eggs are events. Other times Easter eggs are "all in our heads" – that is, the explosion of a dazzling "aha," a mind-blowing "wow," an idea or insight that alters our perceptions, sharpens our vision, and transforms our lives.

Here are some of history's most famous Easter eggs.

• Mendel's flowers
• Gutenberg's Moveable Type
• The Magna Charta
• Luther's 95 Theses
• Calvin's Institutes
• Mozart's Requiem
• Jefferson's Declaration of Independence
• Pasteurization
• Immunization
• Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation
• The 19th Amendment
• King's "I Have a Dream"

Today we celebrate the biggest Easter egg ever dropped into human existence: He is risen!

Say it together: HE IS RISEN!

Again: HE IS RISEN!

Imagine the setting in Luke's gospel for that first Easter egg-plosion (NOT "explosion" but "egg-plosion"). It's the crack of dawn. Sleepy and still shell-shocked from the events two days before, the women make their way to the place where they had left Jesus.

They are tired. For the Sabbath, the "day of rest" in Jewish culture has never been all that restful for the woman of the house. Food had to be prepared ahead of time, and then served to a housefull of family and Sabbath guests. Children still had to be tended, and the animals cared for. But the women know they must get to the tomb as early as possible to complete the preparation of Jesus' body. If they arrived after the sun had warmed the tomb's interior, the stench from the decaying body would have been sickening. The spices the women carry were to mask that odor of death that would have been present on this "third day."

This third day starts with physical exhaustion – not to mention all the emotional upheaval and suffering the women carry with them. They are looking forward to nothing except Jesus' cold, smelly, dead body. There is nothing more they can do for Jesus except prepare him for burial.

That's when they find their first Easter egg. It's a huge one – a stone, probably set with an official Roman seal that forbade anyone from moving it upon penalty of death. But the stone had been moved. It had in fact been "rolled away" from the tomb entrance like some enormous granite egg.

Approaching closer and looking in, the women discover a second divine surprise. Jesus' body is not in the tomb. He is gone! Now two dazzling angelic messengers suddenly appear next to the women. These beings are not themselves "eggs." Rather they are messengers – the basket, if you will – that carries God's most precious Easter egg for all creation. To some astounded, perplexed women, they proclaim Jesus isn't among the dead, he's among the living: He is risen!

Can you say it again: "HE IS RISEN!"

Can you say it again when your third day comes: HE IS RISEN!

These women's third day – what had promised in every way to be a draining, dreadful, soul-sucking day – was suddenly transformed by some Easter eggs into the most miraculous day creation would ever witness.

Every one of you here this morning has experienced third days in your lives. Experiences, moments, sometimes years, that appear to offer us nothing but grief, and a put-your-head-down and nose-to-the-grindstone "just get through it" mentality.

These "third days" are life's Rubicons. Watershed times that determine the future course and current of our lives.

When do you cross a Rubicon? When one way of life dies and another is born. Rubicons can be the most frightening, end-of-your-rope, quicksand-under-your-feet times of your lives. But if you trust God's grace, these Rubicons, these third days can be for you a resurrection and an Easter egg of divine surprise.

"Scripture, in fact, identifies thirty defining events-occurrences the result of which the Jewish community, Jewish history, or Jewish understanding of the ways of God on earth were never the same again – as having occurred on the third day.' On `the third day,' for instance, God seals the covenant with Moses. On `the third day' Esther goes to the King to beg for the safety of the Jews. On `the third day' Abraham prepares to sacrifice Isaac.' " --(Joan Chittister, In Search of Belief [Liguori, Missouri: Liguori/Triumph, 1999], 135.)

Your third day is your "crossover moment in time" beyond which nothing is the same again: a threshold moment after which nothing is the same again.

What's your third day?

• The day your marriage died?
• The day your child died?
• The day you were fired?
• The day you filed bankruptcy?
• The day you...

Will you crack open some Easter eggs this week?

Better yet, will you allow some Easter eggs to crack you open this week?

Will you allow God to...

• Crack open your despair.
• Crack open your hopelessness.
• Crack open your alcoholism.
• Crack open your crack habit.
• Crack open your crankiness.
• Crack open your mediocrity.
• Crack open your fears.
• Crack open your...

Will you let Hosannas fill the hollow of your soul?

Will you trust God to turn your every third day into a resurrection?

I have bad news for all you pessimists out there...

CHRIST IS RISEN.

I have bad news for all you passionless out there...

CHRIST IS RISEN.

Best-selling author Michael G. Moriarty gives us a handle on what our response to these Easter eggs should be. Larry King, the CNN interviewer and radio/TV personality, tells of a visit to Miami's Joe Robbie Stadium before a spring training game.

"King said manager Tommy Lasorda was introducing him to players and having a good time. They walked past Eddie Murray at first base and Lasorda said, `Hey, Eddie, how you doing?' Murray replied simply, `Okay.' At that, Lasorda went wild. `Okay? Okay? Two million dollars a year. It's March. There ain't a cloud in the sky. You're standing there wearing a major-league uniform. You're thirty-three years old, you're going to the Hall of Fame, and you're saying okay? You say, "Great, Tommy!" ' Murray, looking at Lasorda like he was a maniac, seemed at a loss for words. Lasorda tried again, `You say it: "I feel great!" ' So Eddie started saying, `I feel great!' " --Quoted in Michael G. Moriarty, [15]The Perfect 10 (Zondervan, 2000), 133.

Christ Is Risen, church.

All your sins are forgiven. You're on your way to heaven. Jesus is alive and living in you.

Say it like you mean it: "I feel great."

Say it like you mean the world out there to hear it: "I feel great."

"Christ Is Risen." "Christ Is Risen."

Now go out and crack open some Easter eggs.

And let them crack you open.