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Early Years Easter

What follows is a simple re-telling of the Easter Story - it is not theologically or biblically accurate, it is not an academic high brow piece of writing - so all you who may be mortally offended don't bother reading it. What I think and hope it is, is away of introducing the Easter stories to under 5s without terrifying or baffling them.

(Red indicates props, Yellow for questions)

Do you remember all the way back to Christmas? The nativity play, the little donkey carrying Mary, The camel with the hump and some baby being born? Now what was his name, who can remember?

Jesus.

That’s right, Jesus whose birth some people celebrate at Christmas. Some people believe Jesus was a very special baby who came from God to make the world a nicer place. They are called Christians. Other people believe Jesus was a special person who could help people. Other people believe that Jesus was in lots of stories but wasn’t real, and that is just fine as well. We all have our own beliefs and as you grow bigger you will make your minds up what you believe.

Today I’m going to tell you a story that Christians believe is the most important one about Jesus.

Our story today is about when Jesus was much older, we think he was about 33 years old when this story took place. So he was not as old as me but much older than you guys.

One of the things Jesus really enjoyed doing was talking to people, making friends with people that maybe other people didn’t want to be friends with. He was a very kind man. He told people who were frightened or lonely that he would be their friend. He helped people who were poorly to get better. He got food for people who were hungry. And he also told people that were being meanies  that it wasn’t very nice to be mean and unkind. Jesus had 12 special friends he had met during his life, we call them disciples which means followers, some of them had met Jesus when they were working as fishermen, he had helped them catch lots of fish. But now they were Jesus’ helpers, his followers.

Jesus told lots of people that all of them that were frightened or hungry or bossed around by the meanies  that one day soon, everything would be better. Now the people were happy about this but the meanies, knew that meant things were going to change and they didn’t like that idea. They got cross with Jesus.

One day Jesus came to a big town called Jerusalem, he didn’t come on the metro or the bus, but a little donkey, (isn’t that funny because a little donkey carried Jesus’ mummy in the Christmas story). People were so excited because they believed Jesus was coming to tell the meanies to stop being so mean, and they were so excited they cut down the branches of the palm trees and laid them on the road for the donkey to walk on (paper palm), like a special carpet as if Jesus was a King. The meanies really didn’t like that, they said things like, “that Jesus thinks he’s so special! Let’s get rid of him!”

Now Jesus knew the meanies were going to be cross with him and so he had a special meal with his best friends. During the meal Jesus took some bread from the table and he said a special thank you prayer to God and then he said to his friends “Whenever you eat bread, remember me”. This was a way of Jesus saying to his friends when you are scared or lonely, remember all of the things I have said to you about being kind to each other and looking after each other, and then things won’t seem so bad.

Later that night when Jesus was saying his prayers, the meanies sent some soldiers to take Jesus away. They were mean to him and even though he had been kind to people and done nothing wrong, they were nasty to him. Even when they were being nasty to him, Jesus was being kind to people, he told his friend John to look after his mum and he was a friend to two other people that were in trouble with the meanies, telling them not to be afraid but to have hope.

Now have any of you seen the film Big Hero 6? Yes Picture of Baymax

Baymax the big robot is built to help people, as part of the story he and his friend Hiro go to rescue a girl. After the thrusters on his damaged armour fail, Baymax uses his armour's rocket fist to propel them back towards the portal opening, and stays behind. Hiro and Abigail make it back but we think Baymax is dead. I even cried in the cinema when I saw this bit. But, Hiro discovers Baymax's healthcare chip (which contains his entire personality) clenched in his rocket fist, and rebuilds him, whereafter the six friends continue their exploits through the city, fulfilling Tadashi's hope of helping those in need.

In our story today Jesus is rather like Baymax, because of being kind and thinking of others, he finds himself in trouble and his friends believe he has died and they won’t be able to hang out with him anymore. They are really sad and take Jesus to a safe place so that nothing else can happen to him. This place is a big dry cave in a hill, set in a beautiful garden. It doesn’t have a door so they push a big stone across the cave entrance and they go home, sad and lonely…all of this happened on a Friday, which came to be known as Good Friday, which is a very strange name for such a sad day, is it not??!!!

For a whole day nothing happens, Jesus’ friends stay in their houses, everything is still and quiet. Then on the Sunday morning, really early one of Jesus’ best friends Mary, goes back to the garden, she walks quietly up to the big hill where the cave was. When she got there do you know what she found? The big stone that had been used to cover the cave entrance had been rolled away. The cave was empty. Jesus’s body wasn’t there anymore. Mary was totally shocked. She turned around and saw the man who did the gardening (no it wasn’t Mr Thompson). He asked her why she was crying, and when she looked at him, she saw it was her friend Jesus.

Can you remember we talked about Baymax  and how sad his friends were that he had gone? In the film, Hiro discovers Baymax's healthcare chip (which contains his entire personality) clenched in his rocket fist, and rebuilds him, and he and his friends are all together again.

I think this is what it must have felt like for Mary. She thought her friend had gone and she would never see him again, but an amazing thing happened and here he was in the garden talking to her. She was so happy. Jesus told her to run all the way back to where his other friends were and tell them that everything was going to be alright, that he was fine and that he would see them soon. They didn’t believe her and some of them went to look for themselves and just found the clothes that Jesus had been wrapped in. They were all a little bit puzzled but excited.

Do you remember I said some of Jesus’s best friends had been fishermen? Well they had gone back to their boats fishing and it wasn’t going well. They heard a voice shout to them, “put your nets in the water on the other side of your boat”. They did and the nets got full of fish, (just like in Finding Nemo!!) They looked at each other and said, “this has happened before hasn’t it, when our friend Jesus was here.” They looked at the beach and there waving at them was Jesus. Peter one of the friends was so so so excited he jumped into the sea and swam all the way back to the beach, still in all his clothes!! When they all got to the beach, Jesus told them to sit and eat the breakfast he had made them. He took some bread and said those words again, “Whenever you eat bread, remember me”. They were all so happy.

Now though let’s look at that big stone that was rolled away from the cave. It has a very funny shape about it doesn’t it? What does it look like? An egg. I wonder if underneath it we might find, unwrap rock paper to reveal an Easter Egg. So that is why at Easter we have Easter eggs, because they remind Christians that even though the meanies thought they had taken Jesus away from his friends, and even though everyone was really sad, something amazing happened and the stone rolled away showing us that Jesus was alive and with his friends.

Christians believe that all of this happened so that Jesus could show the meanies that there was nothing they could do that could stop goodness and love in the world. It doesn’t matter if you believe in Jesus or God or if you just think this a story, all that really matters is that you are kind to each other, that you look after each other and that even if sometimes things seem bad never to lose hope. Think about your Easter egg and how it reminds us that big stones can be rolled away and show us that amazing things can happen.