I’ll never forget, in fact I often look back at the pictures of sons Brady and Greyson when they were young hunting Easter eggs in our yard.
We’d all boil and dye the eggs and then hide and hunt them ... and hide and hunt them ... several times. There also was an Easter egg hunt at the church.
Eggs were, in pagan cultures, a sign of fertility and rebirth, but they were used by early Christians as a symbol of the Easter story representing the empty tomb and Jesus’ resurrection.
They were blessed by the priest and distributed at the end of the “paschal vigil” on the Saturday before Easter, i.e., Holy Saturday. The hard shell represented the sealed tomb of Jesus and the cracking open of the egg represented the resurrection of Jesus.
During the six weeks of Lent leading to Easter, Christians had abstained from eating eggs and meat. So, the “Paschal eggs” were the end of that fast which began on Ash Wednesday, the day after our present-day Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) when people eat up all the eggs and meat and sweets and leaven — and much more.
The early Christians in Mesopotamia began to dye their “Easter eggs” red to symbolize the blood of Jesus and his death on a cross for our sins. Later, missionaries began to use a variety of colors to tell the Easter story — red for the death of Jesus on the cross, yellow for the resurrection, and blue for love.
One of the earliest Easter egg hunts can be traced to Martin Luther when men would hide eggs for the women and children. Their joy as they hunted and found the eggs mirrored the joy of the women who found the empty tomb.
Paul wrote to the Romans:
“By our baptism, then, we were buried with him and shared his death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from death by the glorious power of the Father, so also, we might live a new life.”
— Romans 6: 4
The two sacraments of the Protestant church are baptism and holy communion. The Catholic Church has seven — baptism, confirmation, Eucharist (holy communion), penance, anointing of the sick, holy orders, and marriage. I really wish the Protestant church had kept marriage a sacrament.
In particular, baptism, from the Greek “baptidzo,” is the symbol of our transition from sinner to saint, from guilty of sin to set free from sin, as well as our transition from the world into the church of Jesus Christ.
In “country boy” Greek, “baptidzo” described the process of dyeing cloth. The cloth is put into a colored solution and absorbs the dye giving it a new color.
The cloth is one color going into the dye and the same cloth is a different color coming out of the dye. We and our sins are immersed in the blood (red dye) of Jesus and come out whiter than snow.
Then we are set free from the guilt and penalty of sin in a process called justification or salvation.
Finally, the Holy Spirit gives us power over sin, and we’re resurrected to a new life through a process called sanctification — all symbolized by a boiled egg dipped in a colored dye.
Charles “Buddy” Whatley is a retired United Methodist pastor serving Dawson Street Methodist Church in Thomasville, Ga. With wife, Mary Ella, they are missionaries to the Navajo Reservation.
