Interactive Easter service to cut out and keep
Just before I ‘tidy away’ Easter, I thought I would offer an Easter idea to anybody who would like to use it. Knowing tat numbers were likely to be small for Easter Sunday evening, I wanted to do something interactive – so came up with the idea of ‘Easter mysteries’, as detailed below. The small congregation were offered their pick of six hollow Easter eggs, each containing a ‘mystery’ from the Easter story. There were only two provisos. The first was that they should read out the clue contained within the egg, and the second was that they should leave the green and gold egg until last. Each mystery was then dealt with in turn, as listed below:
1. Peter’s private meeting with Jesus (Luke 24 v.34)
When did this meeting take place, and what was said at it? Maybe Peter needed a private moment of forgiveness and reconciliation after his o-so-so public denial. Like Zaccheus earlier on in Luke’s Gospel, there are times when God must deal with each of us very privately.
2. The lying soldiers (Matthew 28 v.11-13)
Did they ever get to enjoy this hush money, or even to live? Maybe the survival of the story indicates that at least one of them did. Here we see proof that the resurrection divides people from the very first second, just as predicted.
3. The Cleopas revelation – Luke 24 v.28-32
We looked at Caravaggio’s spirited rendition of this scene, and speculated as to how Cleopas knew it was Jesus. Was there something familiar about his voice or his gesture? In fact, v.31 tells us that it was none of these things. Theirs was a miraculous binding and an equally miraculous restoration of sight. We should not always leap to the rational explanation of things which may be miraculous.
4. The undead of Jerusalem – Matthew 27 v. 51-53
We looked at Stanley Spencer’s depiction of the resurrection in Cookham, and puzzled over this strange passage. Nobody knows whether these resurrected people lived again until death took them a second time, or were simply a temporary apparition. However, the most significant word in this passage is ‘after’ in v.53. The graves may have split open at the moment of the earthquake, but nobody rose until Jesus led the way. Matthew reminds us here that after the resurrection of Jesus a new world order was begun.
5. Who counted the fish? (John 21 v.11)
Using a whiteboard, we looked at various complex calculations about the early church fathers regarding the number 153. These included seeing it as factorial of 17, which could then be multiplied by 3 and three again for good measure to reach the total! The simplest explanation is that somebody wanted to remember this remarkable day in every detail. When God does an amazing thing – we should do our best to remember it.
6. The other things – John 21 v.25
We looked at the Darlington Testament – all hand-written in different styles, and recognized that this verse is the one bit of the Easter story which includes us today. The story continues…
____________
Feel free to plunder this little basket of eggs another year…
