April 9th Easter Sunday

  Talk time ;  Does anyone know what day it is today?  Its Easter Sunday.  Does anyone know what Easter is all about?  Have a chat about chocolate and whatever the kids think Easter is.  Some will know its about Jesus.  Tell them that we are going to hear the Easter story today and pray that we will all understand what Jesus has done for us.

Lesson  Give the children the story cups and help them to turn them as they hear the story

Jesus showed people what God is like.  He was good, kind, He made sick people better, He fed people who were hungry and He told lots of stories to help people understand that God is our Father and He loves us.   All the things Jesus said and did were GOOD.   Do you think everyone liked Jesus?  Well, lots of people did but some people didnt understand what He was saying.  They didnt want to change what they thought or how they lived.  They didnt want to follow Jesus because they thought it was too hard.  So some people didnt like Him at all.  

Jesus went to Jerusalem for the holidays - do you remember He went there when He was a little boy and His Mum and Dad couldnt find Him.   Well when he was grown up He went there again.  People knew He was coming and they waved tree branches and sang as He went along.  He rode on a donkey like the one we saw last week,  He and His friends all had a big meal together with lots of lovely food.  But when they were eating and drinking Jesus told them He was going to die.

His friends were very sad and they didnt understand.  Jesus told them that it was OK because even though He was going to die, after three days He would come back to life.  Jesus went out into the garden to pray.  He prayed very hard because He didnt really want to die but He knew that was part of Gods plan.  So He said to God ' I dont want to die, but if you want me to do this then I will do it'

When He was praying some soldiers came and took Jesus away.  Some of the people who didnt like Jesus had made up stories about Him and paid the soldiers to be mean to Jesus.  The soldiers hit Him and called Him names.  They pulled on his beard and took all His clothes away.  Then they made Him carry a really big piece of wood up a really steep hill.  All the time He was carrying it they were hitting Him and being really mean.  Poor Jesus.  He hadnt done anything wrong.

When He got to the top of the hill the soldiers made him lie down with his arms on the piece of wood and they took a big hammer and some long nails and they made big holes in Jesus's wrists and his feet. It was so so sore and Jesus was crying .  Then the soldiers picked up the piece of wood and hung it up so it made the shape of a cross.   That is why you see lots of cross shapes in churches.  Because we must never forget that Jesus died on a cross.

It was a very very sad day.  But it was also a very special day.   Because as Jesus was hanging on the cross all of a sudden all the bad things that have ever happened in the world started to appear in the sky.  All the mean words and thoughts.  All the wars and fighting, all the sickness, all the lies.  Everything bad that has ever happened in the whole world came towards Jesus.  The sky was black as if it was night.  All that dark blackness went into Jesus as He was dying on the cross and when Jesus died, all the wrong horrid nasty things in the world died too.   Jesus let God put all the badness of the world into Him so that it could die with Him.   That was an amazing thing to do.   

Jesus died.  His Mummy saw Him die and she was so sad.  His friends saw Him die and they were so so sad.  One of Jesus's friends took His dead body off the cross and put it in a cave to keep it safe.  They rolled a really big stone in front of the door and then they went home to bed crying because their friend Jesus had died.

Three days later some of Jesus's friends came to the cave because they wanted to see where it was.  But when they got there the big stone was rolled away, the cave was empty and there were angels standing outside who told the friends that Jesus was alive again.!   How do you think they felt?   They were super surprised and really really happy and they went running back to tell everyone that Jesus wasnt dead any more.

After that Jesus came and visited His friends again and told them more things about God.  But He also said that He couldnt stay long because God needed Him back in heaven.   But He said that He would send the Holy Spirit to be with us so that we would never be alone. 

Do you remember all that yucky stuff that came into Jesus when He died?   Well guess what?  When He came alive again none of that stuff came back.  It stayed dead and buried in the cave.  Sometimes when people are being mean to us or hard and sad things happen we can feel that the bad stuff is strong and powerful and scary.   But we need to remember that Jesus is stronger.  He put all that stuff in the cave and locked it up there. 

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1616397425456977  cute craft as an extra quick something to do at the end.