Easter turns the darkest day in history into the brightest. The tomb is empty, death is defeated, and everything that follows is coloured by that morning.
These four Easter stories about the resurrection, retold in our own words, come from a Sunday school classroom, a theologian's notebook, a school basketball court and a Hollywood film. Each ends with a takeaway you can use in an Easter sermon or devotion.
Stories in this collection:
- Philip's Empty Egg
- Just Like the Butterfly: What Will Resurrection Bodies Be Like?
- "It Means Jesus Is Gonna Win": A Janitor Explains Revelation
- "Then He Was Born and Everything Changed": The Picture Bible in Amistad
Philip's Empty Egg
This much-loved story is usually credited to the Episcopal minister Harry Pritchett Jr. We retell it here in our own words.
Philip was born with Down syndrome. He was a pleasant, happy child, but as he grew older he became more and more aware of how different he was from other children. Every week he went faithfully to Sunday school, where he was in the third-grade class with nine other eight-year-olds.
Anyone who knows eight-year-olds can guess what happened. Philip, with his differences, was not easily accepted. His teacher was sensitive to him, though, and he worked hard to help the group care for one another as well as they could. They learned together, laughed together and played together, and in their own way they really did care about one another, even if eight-year-olds rarely say so out loud.
But there was an exception. Philip was never really part of the group. He had not chosen to be different, and he did not want to be. He simply was, and that was the way things were.
On the Sunday after Easter, the teacher had a wonderful idea. He collected ten of the large plastic eggs that some brands of stockings used to be sold in, and gave one to each child. It was a beautiful spring morning. Each child was to go outside, find something that symbolised new life, put it inside the egg and bring it back. Then they would open the eggs one by one and share their surprises.
It was glorious, noisy and chaotic. The children ran all over the church grounds gathering their treasures, then came back and put their eggs on the table. The teacher began to open them as the children crowded round.
In the first was a flower, and everyone oohed and aahed. In the next was a little butterfly. Beautiful, said the girls, since it is hard for eight-year-old boys to say beautiful. The next held a rock. Some children laughed. How is a rock supposed to be new life? they asked. But the clever boy who had found it spoke up. He had known everyone else would bring flowers and buds and leaves and butterflies, he explained, so he had chosen a rock because he wanted to be different. For him, that was new life. Everyone laughed again.
The teacher said something about the wisdom of eight-year-olds and opened the next egg. There was nothing inside. That's not fair, the children said. That's stupid. Somebody didn't do it right.
Then the teacher felt a tug on his shirt. He looked down. It was Philip. It's mine, Philip said. It's mine.
You never do anything right, Philip, the children said. There's nothing there!
I did so do it right, Philip insisted. I did do it right. The tomb is empty!
There was a silence, a very full silence. Those who tell the story say that a miracle happened that day. From then on, things were different. Philip became part of the group. The other children took him in. He had been set free from the tomb of his differentness.
Philip's family had known since he was born that he would probably not live a long life, because there were other serious problems with his health. The following summer he caught an infection that most children would have shaken off quickly, and he died.
At his funeral, nine eight-year-old children walked up to the altar with their Sunday school teacher. They did not bring flowers to cover over the stark reality of death. Instead they laid on the altar an empty egg, an old, discarded plastic egg, empty.
Because the tomb is empty.
Philip understood what many adults miss. The point of Easter is not that something beautiful grew in the tomb, but that the tomb was empty. Death could not hold Jesus, and in that empty space lies the hope for every child who has ever been left out, every family that has ever stood beside a small coffin, and every one of us.
Takeaway: The empty tomb is the heart of Easter. As the angel said, "He is not here; he has risen" (Matthew 28:6). Sometimes it takes the simplest faith to see it most clearly.
Source: Widely shared Easter story, usually attributed to Harry Pritchett Jr.
Just Like the Butterfly: What Will Resurrection Bodies Be Like?
The Bible holds out the great and glorious hope of resurrection, not just life after death, but a renewed, bodily life with God. But what will a resurrected body be like?
The English writer and theologian Harry Blamires offered a helpful picture: the caterpillar and the butterfly. As the caterpillar is to the butterfly, he suggested, so our present body is to the resurrection body. There is continuity, because it is the same creature. But there is also dramatic difference.
The caterpillar's body is suited to life on the ground, crawling slowly among the leaves. The butterfly's body is made for flight through the open air. In the same way, our present bodies are suited to this world, marked by weakness, sin and death. Our resurrection bodies will be suited to the life of the Spirit, in a world that is eternal and without limit.
And just as even the most intelligent caterpillar would struggle to imagine what life as a butterfly will be like, we struggle to imagine resurrection life. Paul himself reached for a similar picture when he spoke of a seed sown in the ground and a plant rising from it (1 Corinthians 15:35–44).
Finally, Blamires reminds us that when we think about a caterpillar, we tend to think of it in terms of what it will become. We define its present existence by its future. So too, our present lives are defined by the future God has prepared for us.
Takeaway: Paul uses a similar picture of a seed and a plant in 1 Corinthians 15. What is sown perishable is raised imperishable. Our future with God defines who we already are.
Source: Based on Harry Blamires, "The Eternal Weight of Glory", Christianity Today, 22 May 1991.
"It Means Jesus Is Gonna Win": A Janitor Explains Revelation
While he was a student at a theological college in the United States, Bernard Travaieille often played basketball with friends on the court of a nearby school. A friendly old janitor would wait patiently until they had finished their game before locking up for the night.
One day Bernard noticed that the janitor was sitting reading his Bible while he waited. When he looked more closely, he saw that the old man was reading the Book of Revelation.
Bernard was surprised. Revelation is a notoriously difficult book to interpret, even for highly trained Bible scholars. Do you understand it? he asked.
Oh yes, the janitor replied. I understand it.
Now Bernard was really intrigued. Here was a book that baffled scholars and fuelled every kind of speculation and conspiracy theory, and this old man, a janitor with little formal education, said he understood it. You understand the Book of Revelation? Bernard asked. What do you think it means?
The old man looked up at him and said very quietly: It means that Jesus is gonna win.
Takeaway: Revelation is full of strange imagery, but its central message is simple enough for anyone: the crucified and risen Lamb wins in the end. That is the Easter promise.
Source: Reported by Bernard Travaieille in Illustrations Unlimited.
"Then He Was Born and Everything Changed": The Picture Bible in Amistad
Steven Spielberg's film Amistad (1997) is based on the true story of a group of Africans who had been kidnapped and sold into slavery. In 1839 they seized control of the Spanish slave ship La Amistad and demanded to be taken home. Instead the ship ended up in American waters, where they were imprisoned and put on trial.
In one memorable scene, as the prisoners wait for the court's verdict, one of the men, Yamba, sits in a corner of the cell turning the pages of an illustrated Bible that someone has given him. Their leader, Cinqué, tells him he does not need to pretend to be interested; nobody is watching.
Yamba says he is not pretending. He is beginning to understand it. He cannot read the English words, but he can follow the story through the pictures. When Cinqué comes over, Yamba explains it in their own language.
These people suffered even more than we have, he says, pointing to pictures of persecution. Their lives were full of suffering. Then he turns the page to a picture of the baby Jesus surrounded by light. Then he was born, Yamba says, and everything changed.
Who is he? Cinqué asks. Yamba does not know, but he can see that the child must be special. He turns through the pictures. Jesus rides on a donkey while people praise him, a golden halo shining around him. Wherever he goes, Yamba says, the sun goes with him. In picture after picture, light surrounds Jesus as he heals people with his hands, protects an outcast woman and welcomes little children.
But that is not the end. Something happened, Yamba says. He was captured and accused of some crime. Cinqué insists that he must have done something wrong. Yamba asks why. What did we do? he asks, thinking of their own imprisonment. Then he shows Cinqué how they killed Jesus.
Yamba grows emotional. Cinqué reminds him that it is only a story. But Yamba shakes his head. This death was real. And look, he says, that was not the end of it. His people took his body down and laid it in a cave, wrapped in cloth, just as we do. They thought he was dead. But he appeared to his people again and spoke to them, and at last he rose into the sky.
Then Yamba strokes a picture of heaven. This is where the soul goes when you die, he says. This is where we are going when they kill us. And looking at the picture, he adds quietly that it does not look so bad.
Two men who could not read a word of English had grasped the heart of the gospel from pictures alone.
Takeaway: The resurrection gives hope precisely to those who suffer unjustly. The story of Jesus' death and rising is good news for every prisoner, every victim and every person facing death.
Source: Amistad (1997), directed by Steven Spielberg.
Final thoughts
An empty plastic egg, a butterfly, a janitor's confidence and a picture Bible in a prison cell. Each story tells the Easter message in its own way: the tomb is empty, and Jesus is going to win.
For further reading, Sopranu reviews The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus and the film Ben-Hur.
Christ is risen! We hope these Easter stories help you share that news this year.
More stories you may like:
These stories are retold in our own words for teaching and reflection. Sources are credited under each story.
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