Easter Sunday 2011

In tidying up the storeroom in anticipation of our home assignment, I was glad to come across this "resurrection dial" I'd made our first year. It was nice not to have to make it over again. Here are the cover and underside of the dial:
But we started our story with the picture of the crucified Christ still hanging on the wall. Then we had "Joseph of Arimathea" go and ask Pilate for the body of Jesus, so that he could bury it in his own grave. It struck me as I was writing this story—I wonder if crucified criminals of that time were generally just dumped in common graves, not given any kind of proper burial? So it was rather important that Joseph did this; otherwise where would be an empty tomb? Anyway, Joseph took the crucifixion picture off the wall and put up the "resurrection dial" on our blackboard/easel with it set on day one, and the door open so all could see the wrapped body inside (which is a bit blurry in the diagram). Then he got a friend to help him push the "heavy stone" over the opening. Then some soldiers came with Pilate's permission and put a seal (sticker) across the edge of the door.

That was the first day. The second day was the Sabbath: we had someone come up and turn the handle so the number 2 was showing on the dial. What do you do on the Sabbath? Nothing, you rest. So nothing happened that day.

Then it was day three, and we had someone move the dial to number 3. That day, several women got up very early to go and see the grave. But on the way there, suddenly there was a great earthquake—I shook the easel while standing in front of it, and pulled the door open on the dial. So the women get there, and they can look inside, and they see that Jesus' body is not there! But then an angel in a halo appears and says, "Why are you looking in a tomb for someone who is alive? Jesus is risen!" The women are excited and run back to where the other disciples are. They tell them that Jesus has risen. Mostly they are not believed, but Peter and John go look for themselves. The women come with them. They look in, and John is convinced and shouts, "Jesus is risen!" But Peter says, "I'm not so sure." They and two of the women go back and sit down, but one woman stays behind, crying.

Suddenly there is a man behind her, wearing a jacket that covers his head so she can't see his face. He asks her what is the matter. She says she doesn't know what has happened to the body of Jesus. He says, "my dear daughter," (I decided not to use the name as we've had too many Mary's to keep track of already), and takes off his hood. Mary sees it is Jesus and she is overjoyed. She hugs him and then runs back to tell the disciples she has seen him herself. Once again, they don't believe her. But "that evening" (about five seconds later), Jesus himself enters the room and they see that he is indeed alive. Everyone greets him with delight, hugging and high-fiving.

We talked about how the woman did not recognize Jesus when His face was hidden by His cloak. How about us? Would we recognize our moms if their faces (and bodies) were hidden behind a sheet? We had all the moms line up behind a sheet help up by two volunteers, shifting positions between each child's turn. The child would feel through the sheet and try to guess which one was their mom. Most got it right, but not all! I love it that Mrs. Chu crouched down so she seemed to be the shortest (instead of one of the tallest), and her intelligent daughter was fooled!

Easter and butterflies always go together, so we made these butterflies with their clothespin feet.

Pilate’s Dilemma

I'm back in the US now, finally with a little breathing room to get caught up on some of the "backblog". On April 17^th, we did the story of Jesus' sentencing by Pilate. We introduced Jesus and talked about how everyone liked him but the religious leaders. Introduced the priests, who talked about how they hated being told that they were sinners when they didn't think they were, and how if everyone followed Jesus they would quit paying the priests to intercede for them with God, and they would lose out. So they were looking for a way to arrest him. Along comes Judas, one of Jesus' disciples who accepts a bagful of money to lead them to Jesus.

Jesus prays in Gethsemane while Judas and the priests plot His downfall in the background.

Judas and a couple of armed soldiers come up to Jesus. Judas kisses Him (that was the stage direction, anyway. We got just cheek-to-cheek) & the soldiers drag Him away. Judas then has a change of heart and wants to repent & give the money back, but it's too late. He throws the bag down and disappears into a side room & the people are told he kills himself.

We skipped all the back and forth between Pilate and Herod as being too complicated, and not adding anything to the point of the story. They went straight to Pilate and stayed there. This was a series on New Testament women, though, so we did introduce Pilate's wife, who sent for Pilate right in the middle of the trial & told him not to harm Jesus, because she'd had a dream about Him & He was innocent. So Pilate doesn't know what to do. He doesn't think Jesus is guilty either, but the crowd is getting ugly. Aha! There's that custom of releasing a prisoner at Passover. He picked the nastiest guy in the prison to have the crowd choose between him & Jesus, figuring they would surely release Jesus.

Actually, our Jesus (in the "trademark" white vest) looks meaner than our backwards-capped Barabbas…

But they don't choose the way Pilate hopes. He's still too afraid to go against the crowd, so he tries to at least shift all the blame onto them by having a basin of water brought, and washing his hands before everyone. Then the soldiers haul Jesus away, and we just put up a flannelgraph picture of Jesus on the cross to show that He was indeed crucified.

For our game, we talked about how Pilate's wife remembered who she had seen in her dream, even though we don't always remember our dream. The game then was to look briefly at a picture of a person ( Xeroxed from the flannelgraph set), and then see if they could find that figure among the many blu-tacked along the walls. For some of the kids, we let them take the picture along to match; we made the smarter kids work their memories a little harder.

For craft time we made these pretty crosses out of ribbon and dismantled clothespins.