GC Special Easter Message - The Production Number

By Robin Caldwell

GaGa, my grandmother Irene, would create these elaborate Easter displays that we affectionately called, “production numbers.” Each display, from year to year, contained the requisite candy treats, Easter eggs colored by me the night before and some special gift like a new cross pendant or a toy.

I’d receive one of these displays well into my adult years, and even when she stopped I’d beg her to make something, anything. The production number was a hard habit to break.

The most sobering aspect of Easter wasn’t the end to the production number but rather the discovery that on Easter day, when Jesus arose from the grave, little kids in Jerusalem didn’t dress up in their finest or do an Easter egg hunt and eat the heads off of chocolate bunnies. Some grandmother or GaGa during those times didn’t make a production number for her Sugie (me).

Easter wasn’t even called Easter back then. It was just another day.

The next day—on the first day after the Passover ceremonies—the leading priests and Pharisees went to see Pilate. They told him, "Sir, we remember what that deceiver once said while he was still alive: 'After three days I will be raised from the dead.' So we request that you seal the tomb until the third day. This will prevent his disciples from coming and stealing the body and then telling everyone that he came back to life! If that happens, we'll be worse off then we were at first.” Pilate replied, "Take guards and secure it the best you can.” So they sealed the tomb and posted the guards to protect it.– Matthew 27: 62-66 (NLT)

The only fanfare back then involved the discovery of an empty grave. The empty grave was the production number and the risen Savior was the treat. In fact, the only people excited about the spectacle were those privileged to be witnesses – the guards posted outside, Mary Magdalene, Salome and the other Mary (the mother of James) – and privileged to receive the news of Jesus’s resurrection.