A WORD FOR TODAY, April 21, 2025
Peggy Hoppes
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Blessings. Peg
A WORD FOR TODAY, April 21, 2025
“As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions. One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables. Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him. Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand. One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God. For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living. Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God; for it is written, ‘“As I live,” says the Lord, “every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.”’ So then each of us will give an account of himself to God.” Romans 14, 1-12, WEB
We had a huge Eggstravaganza at our church on Saturday. We invited children from our church, school, and community to come and play, eat, craft, and then hunt Easter eggs. I know there are some who are bothered by this practice. As a matter of fact, a man approached me as we were getting ready to go inside and eat our lunch. He asked, “What’s going on here?” I wasn’t sure about his purpose, but I said, “We are about to go in for lunch. Would you like to join us?” He didn’t seem to have children with him, but we are always open to visitors, and who wouldn’t enjoy a corn dog on a fun and lovely Saturday?
He became verbally aggressive and said, “You know you are celebrating a pagan holiday, right?” I have heard this many times in the past. Yes, some of the theories of the name “Easter” seem to point to some pagan celebration at the spring solstice, but there is actually no real evidence of this being true. I have seen several theologians talk about this very question several times, and I’ve done some research myself. I answered, “No we are not.” He said, “Do the research. You are.” I repeated, “I have done the research, and we are not,” because eggs and bunnies or not, we were celebrating our faith in Jesus Christ by sharing love and grace with our neighborhood. We were reaching out to the community, feeding them, welcoming them, sharing the story of Jesus in story time and with gifts. We invited them to come back on Sunday to hear once again the glorious story of Jesus’ resurrection and the life we have in Him. I wish I had said more, but the man turned around and left us to our pagan ways.
I don’t want to make this devotion about justifying our practices, but I read something interesting about coloring Easter eggs. There was a time when eggs were forbidden during Lent, along with certain other foods, like meat products such as milk, lard, and butter. Fruit was also forbidden because it was sweet. Isn’t it interesting that Lent falls at the end winter when many of these foods were not readily available? Chickens stop laying eggs. Fruit doesn’t grow. Even milk production can go down. So, the Lenten fast not only promoted sacrifice in spiritual and devotional ways but also gave the source of those foods a rest until springtime. It helped store foods until spring when fresh ingredients were becoming available again. We don’t understand how difficult it was at the end of winter for them because we can go to the grocery store and buy everything we need, but most people in the old days suffered from hunger by April because there was not enough food left in their cupboards. Coloring eggs became a way to celebrate the first eggs of spring; the colored eggs were cracked open and eaten on Easter. This was a fun way to break the Lenten fast and it symbolized the emergence of Jesus from the tomb.
I have to admit that I have the same struggles with Easter Egg hunts as I have with Halloween. Sometimes these events bring out the worst in our children. Some become aggressive and greedy. They overindulge. And no matter how much we focus our attention on Jesus being the reason for the season of Easter, many of the families were there on Saturday just for the fun. The best we could do was share God’s grace and pray God’s Spirit would plant seeds and work in the hearts and minds of our visitors. The man who approached me may have had a point about the origins, but we were not celebrating a pagan holiday during our Eggstravaganza. We were celebrating Jesus with fun and laughter and love. And if just one more family came on Sunday to hear the Gospel, then it was worth it all.
This is not a new problem. Paul had to deal with the question in the churches he established and encouraged through his letters. Many of the Christians in Rome were former pagans. They knew that the meat that was purchased in the marketplace had most likely been sacrificed as part of the ritualistic worship of the pagan community. They did not feel they could eat that meat because they knew where it had come from and why it had been slaughtered. They did not want to support the worship and ministry of the pagan communities, so they chose to avoid eating that meat. Paul knew that though the meat was slaughtered as part of a ceremony that the meat itself was still good and acceptable to God. He also knew that it would weigh on the conscience of those former pagans. So, he treated the issue with grace.
He called the community to join together not based on what they would eat, but on the Christ they worshipped. Eating meat or not eating meat is not a salvific issue. Hunting eggs or not hunting eggs is not a salvific issue. Instead of rejecting or judging one another, the Romans were encouraged to see Christ in their brothers and sisters and to live together in a way in which both could do the work they were called to do as a community of faith. The meat-eaters and the vegetarians all had gifts, gifts that are needed to do the work of God in the world. To reject or judge others means cutting off a part of the Church that Christ has called together. Like those Christians who reject the celebration of Easter, especially with bunnies and eggs, we tend to think the world must conform to our vision of what the church is meant to be. But God has a much greater vision in mind, a vision that includes all those who believe using their gifts for His sake.
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