Making the most of Easter with childrenMartyn Payne |
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I wonder whether you have ever stopped to reflect on the commercial litany of the card shop between New Year and Easter? In January the displays have no sooner put away their Christmas and New Year stock only to replace them with the hearts and flowers of approaching Valentine's Day. And then, once the Feast of Young Love is past, it is the celebration of Motherhood that hits the shop windows with ever-bigger cards that say thank-you at the Feast of All Souls Maternal. Finally, once the thank-yous have died down, we come to the Feast of All Things Fluffy. Rabbits and chickens hop and cheep among the serried ranks of cards for sale urging us to make the most of the Feast of the New Born... Animals. And yes of course, there are eggs by the dozen, though in fact that tempting cream egg has already been crying out for our attention from early January to prepare us for Resurr-egg-tion Day! Where once Chronos time was enriched by Kairos time, marked by the Feasts and Festivals of the Church, to remind us that there is more to life than just the passing of days and months, now we have commercial time to shape the calendar of our lives at this time of year. Is this all that our children will remember? And don't we have much more to offer them than this? Even in our churches there is an increasing tendency to lose touch with this alternative way of marking time that the cycle of our faith stories can give us. This is particularly so of course when some of those festival moments fall during the week, such as Candlemas or Ash Wednesday, or where churches have gone in for sermon series that are more concerned to teach particular doctrines rather than follow the story. This can mean that all of us and particularly children are swept on in a disconnected way from Jesus in the manger to Jesus on the cross in just a few months, which is confusing to say the least! The great events of Holy Week and Easter didn't just happen out of the blue as this can so easily suggest, but they developed slowly, particularly during those important weeks of Lent, and we owe it to our children to help them to get ready for this amazing moment that changed the world for ever. There are of course all sorts of courses and materials, both published and home-produced, that leaders like yourselves will be using with your children on a Sunday, during the week or maybe in school; but whatever you use, can I urge you to make sure that Easter does not just come suddenly, unexpected for your group. Ideally at least the Sundays in Lent – the six weeks leading up to Easter – should be a time to focus on the life and teaching of Jesus. Why not spend time exploring some of the miracles and parables to help children get ready for that momentous week when Jesus knew he had to go to Jerusalem for the last time; the moment when he surprised everyone with a final parable and miracle that broke the power of death and robbed sin of its victory for ever. However it is language about Easter like this that highlights another important consideration when it comes to making the most of this festival with children. How can we present such a mystery to children – or, I hear you whisper under your breath, to adults too? Surely a defeat is a defeat. The superheroes of the children's world don't by and large let themselves be killed. They don't go all weak and feeble on us. They don't get humiliated and crushed like Jesus did. There is one response to this problem, which is understandable but dangerous. Namely, that we skip over the difficult bit – the ugly part – and direct all our attention onto the events of Easter morning. Now of course we must make the most of that glorious day. As St Paul reminds us 'If Christ has not been raised, then we are still in our sins...and our faith is empty'. The resurrection is the vital heartbeat of the gospel message but at the same time we must not forget its very glory comes because of what went before, not despite it. The defeated Christ of Good Friday and the victorious Christ of Easter morning are two sides of the same coin; the two halves of the Easter message which cannot be divided. We need both the empty cross and the crucifix to fully comprehend the love of God for us. So let's not leave out half the story with our children! I would urge every children's leader to press their minister hard to involve the children in every possible way in marking the events of Holy Week and Good Friday as much as on Easter Day. Good Friday has in the past, and is still in some churches, felt to be too dreadful, too serious and too adult a day to involve children. And so they have been left out. But the result of that approach is a resurrection without a death! No, we must tell the children the whole story and in fact they will surprise you by being able to enter it for more fully than you thought they could. Children already know about the dark side; about betrayal, about anger, about hurt, about fear and death. And if we do not tell them that God loves us so much that he is ready to dive into the midst of all this darkness so that he might both share it and transform it for us, we're not being honest about where children are (and of course will increasingly be as they grow up) nor honest and faithful in proclaiming what God has done. One of the most moving parts of our annual Good Friday morning service for the whole church family in recent years has been the moment when all the children pick up a large wooden cross to carry it up the aisle, leading the adult congregation from the last of our stations up to the chancel where they plant it in the centre of a circle so we can all gather round. I am sure you will have examples of your own on like this… maybe special events outdoors or other interactive ways in which you walk with Jesus on his last journey. I will never forget when I was visiting Syria to see children's work there as part of my last job how I heard the rehearsals for the Good Friday possession in the streets of Damascus. It would an occasion for all Christians – the whole family, from the youngest to the oldest – marching to the accompaniment of trumpets and singing! This really is stepping into the story and we need to explore ways like this of making it possible for children to step into the story of stories. But surely we can't tackle all the awfulness of what crucifixion means when children are present? Well of course there is so much about that dreadful form of execution that could be said, but in fact I would question whether we need to dwell on every detail, even with adults. Interestingly the gospel writers, in contrast to the recent filmmaker, did not dwell on the terrible pain of that day. It was what it meant that mattered and that it really did happen; and as in the best horror movies, the worst parts are left to our imagination. So much can be said in just a few words and with appropriate space and silence. This is the moment when history turned a corner; the moment when the unimaginable happened and so, as the words of an ancient anthem urge us, it is rather a time for all flesh to keep silent. It has always been strange that in comparison with the 'full-frontal' activities surrounding the celebration of Christmas, Easter has suffered by contrast and been seen as a rather child-unfriendly festival. This is in effect how the world has chosen to dumb down this mysterious event that is central to our faith, happy simply to ‘bunny’ away the real meaning of this Feast of Feasts. But we must not give in to a watering down of Easter or opt out of telling our children the whole story. They need to hear about the climax of God's rescue plan for their lives; they need to hear that sacrifice is the strongest superhero weapon of all; and to hear that life comes only out of death. This is of course a mystery for all of us but it is at the heart of what we believe. In fact children are far less likely to misunderstand or reject this than we think. After all Jesus tells us that the deepest mysteries of the kingdom are more likely to be understood by children than by adults, so we should not be afraid to talk with them about it, acknowledging that we too don't know all the answers. The Barnabas Team and Barnabas Publications are fully committed to telling the whole story of Easter in this way and there are plenty of ideas on the website as well as some excellent books that will help you be creative and thoughtful in this way with your children, Good Friday and all. There is a list of links to these at the end of this article. Not long ago we all saw and experienced the publicity and excitement that surrounded the showing of the film The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. It was interesting how this film was billed as a film for Christmas, in part due to the famous line in the book about Narnia being ' a land where it was always winter but never Christmas'. In fact this story has much more to do with Easter (and of course a lot more!). In the powerful episode where Lewis describes how Aslan took Edmund's place and allowed himself to be killed on the stone table, we catch a real glimpse of the meaning of Easter. However, the breaking of that stone table and the work of the deeper magic only make sense if we have sat with Lucy and Susan behind the bushes and witnessed the awful things that happened beforehand. We have to have the whole story to begin to appreciate the love of God; a love that is revealed both in the darkness of Good Friday and the dazzling glory of Easter Day. So let us prayerfully look for ways this Easter of passing on this story to our children as of first importance and certainly well before we start thinking about which card and Easter egg to buy! Barnabas Resources Easter and Holy Week Ideas in the Ideas section of the web site under Christian Year
The Story of Easter
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