P4/5 from St Mary’s Epsicopal Primary School acted out the Easter Journey last week – Here is what they wrote about it for their school’s Acorn newspaper:
Do you know how Easter started? Where, when, and how? Well it all started when a man called Jesus, a healer and miracle-maker died on the cross. But that is not all that happened…P4/5 got to dig a little deeper.
“I’ll get the pickaxe!”
“No Hamish, not that type of digging!”
It all started before the festival of Passover in Jerusalem and whispers were flying everywhere about Jesus coming. We were all given Palm leaves in St Blane’s Church to shout out and celebrate the arrival of Jesus. Then everything went silent – all you could hear was the clip-clopping of a donkey. Everyone was standing at the gate, mouth wide open. Everyone thought to themselves, “Why is he riding on a donkey?”. If he was going to free them from the Romans he would at least need a horse! But still when he came through the gates people still shouted “HOSANA HOSANA” (rescue us) and waved olive branches and palm tree leaves. We all shouted “Hosanna” in the church.
“Sign my leaf!” shouted people.
“No, mine!” people answered.
We all then went across to the church hall where we were met with a scene. This told us all about the time after when Jesus went to the Temple garden to worship God but he found people cheating each other to get money. All this was in the Temple garden and Jesus was NOT pleased. The people were not pleased either when Jesus turned over their tables because he was so angry. He let all the birds for sacrifice free then he tipped over all the money people were making. Maybe the people were not happy but the birds were!
Jesus found a blind beggar and a lame man, he restored the beggar’s sight and gave back the power of the lame man’s legs. Then he said to his disciples, “Let us rent a room to have our Passover meal”. The children then went and lay on the ground to share some food and drink to learn what it was like at the Last Supper. Jesus broke some bread and said, “This is my body broken for you”, then he poured some red wine and said, “This is my blood shed for you”. One of the disciples called Judas then had to leave early for an unknown reason. Jesus said to his disciples, “Come to the garden and stay awake all night with me and we shall pray”.
When they got to the garden Jesus started to pray but all his disciples eventually fell asleep for Jesus’ prayer was long and we think it went something like this, “Please father don’t make it happen but my will is yours and let your will be done”. Then all of a sudden there was the sound of marching soldiers and then guess who showed the soldiers which one was Jesus by hugging and kissing him? It was Judas!
When the cockerel crowed three times one of the disciples, Peter remembered something Jesus had told him, “when the cockerel crows three times you will betray me” but Peter didn’t think so. They took Jesus to the priest and the priest gave him to Pontius Pilot who asked the public, “What shall I do with Jesus?”. There was a rumour around the crowd saying Jesus was bad so everyone answered, “Crucify him!”.
We then watched a video of the point where Jesus was crucified. The Romans put a crown of thorns on him and put him on the cross with nails through his hands and feet. As Jesus died a very strong wind blew that very second and a tear went down everyone’s eye including the Romans.
Peter asked the Romans if he could take Jesus down off the cross where he then buried him in a tomb. We saw into a small room where it was dressed up like a tomb and there was a body lying there.
After this we did some activities – making Easter crafts and doing some drama.
All of a sudden there was a shout from a lady – Mary. She told us to come and see the tomb again and when we got there the stone had rolled away and there was no body.
We all really enjoyed our afternoon at the church learning and listening about the Easter Story. It was great because it taught us why he dies and what sort of person he was. It was lots of fun and made us feel like we were there!
