Eggs can fly

So what's Easter all about? (Show images associated with Easter, especially including a cross, and eggs and cute little baby chicks.)

I've got something special for you in here... (rooting around in a box, and pulling out a box of six eggs, two of which are hard-boiled). What are they? (EGGS!) Who likes eggs? (Take one of the uncooked eggs, break it into a glass bowl.)

Mums and Dads, Grannies and Grandfather... and especially you children...

I've got a strange idea for you: that eggs... can fly.

Who here believes that an egg can fly? (Any hands?)

Let's see, shall we? Let's try... throwing it up, giving it a boost!

Or... using a hang-glider?... Or a cannon? ... (And so on - these stupid methods all naturally fail.)

But an egg can fly. Or at least there's something about the egg that can fly. What's that?

(Child answers: the bird has to hatch...)

That's right. The egg has to be broken. Then the baby bird can come out and grow and stretch its wings and one day... it will fly. But the egg still has to be broken. It must break or else the flying won't happen at all.

That's part of what Easter is all about. Being broken. Christians believe that the whole story of Jesus and his cross are all about him being broken. How he had a tough start as a child and was born in a nasty place and then had to be an asylum seeker. And when he was older and doing good things, he was called all sorts of names, and had all sorts of horrible things done to him - for being good. He was broken.

But then something else happened. He didn't just die. He came back and said that other people could do the amazing things he did - if they could learn to trust him and come to think of God as their loving dad. But there had to be a breaking first - and that's the cross. And that's what Easter is all about, too: new life coming out of something that seemed dead. God takes the broken things and mends them, making them new.

Let's pray.

Father God, sometimes I feel broken. I mean to do the right things, but sometimes I feel broken inside. Help me to listen to you, and trust in you, so that you can make something new out of me. Amen