Easter Egg Assembly

 

I wasn’t sure what to do for a school Easter assembly but big thanks to Anne and other Clergy Mummies who suggested this idea. I have seen various scripts and this is my version of theirs, feel free to re-use!

Resources needed:

10 plastic refillable eggs – have seen them in Poundland but I got mine from Hobbycraft, 20 for £3.

Crate or basket

props to go in the eggs. I used:small flag, leaf, small piece of bread and toy cup or goblet, money, thorny plant, small cross and nails, sign saying ‘INRI’, 

Fill and number the eggs and either use a script or I put a slip in each one with the relevant bit of the story. You can either read them yourself or pick children to read them out during the assembly.

1. Jesus has been travelling around telling people about his Father and his Kingdom – the kingdom of Heaven, and now he is going to the city of Jerusalem. There is a special festival called Passover and Jesus and his disciples were going to the city to celebrate it. He rode into the city on a donkey and people treated him like a king and waved big palm leaves (a bit like we might wave flags if the queen came!).

prop: small flag or leaf

2. To celebrate the Passover, people would have a special meal together, a bit like we might do on Christmas Day or maybe on Easter Sunday. Jesus had a special meal with his friends and during that meal they had some bread and some wine, sometimes in church we have bread and wine to remember that meal.

prop:  piece of bread or toy bread, toy cup or goblet

3. Not everyone liked Jesus, there were some people who worked in the temple (which was a bit like the church of the day) who thought Jesus was a trouble maker, some of them thought he wanted to be a new king, and they wanted to get rid of him. These men paid one of Jesus’ friends, Judas, to do a terrible thing – he told them where Jesus was so they could arrest him.

prop: small coins

4. When they arrested him, they made fun of Jesus. They made him dress like a king, but not in a nice crown, instead they made him wear a crown made of thorns, like you get on a Blackberry bush, and they treated him badly, whipped him and beat him too.

prop: piece of a thorny plant

5. The temple leaders didn’t just want to put Jesus in prison, they wanted him killed, so he would be out of the way forever. They wanted him crucified, which means he was nailed to a cross. They made him carry his own cross to the top of the hill and nailed him to it.

prop: small cross and nails

6. Even when he was dying they carried on making fun of him. They put a sign on his cross which said INRI – which means ‘Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews’. They didn’t understand he was talking about the King of heaven, not of their world.

prop: paper sign with INRI on it

7. Jesus died soon after. And this is what we remember on Good Friday – the Friday before Easter Sunday. Some of his friends took his body down from the cross and took it to a cave, which was going to be his tomb or grave. When someone died back then they would wrap the body in special spices and fabric and leave it in the tomb.

prop: spices and small piece of fabric

8. Then a huge stone or boulder was put in the entrance to the cave to stop anyone going in and some soldiers came and stood outside.

prop: pebble

9. Later, on Sunday morning, one of Jesus friends, Mary, went to the tomb to remember him. But when she got there the stone had been rolled away and there was no one in the cave, Jesus had gone. Mary was upset and wondered who had taken him, but then Jesus appeared, he was alive and he spoke to her! He told her to go and tell all his friends that he was alive.

prop: none! empty egg = empty tomb

10. And that is what many of us as Christians still do, we tell people that Jesus is alive!

When we celebrate Easter on Good Friday we remember the day that Jesus died. He was an innocent man, he had done nothing wrong, but he took an awful punishment on that day, representing all of us, and all of the bad things we have ever done and he did that because he loves every single one of us so much.

And on the third day, Sunday, that we celebrate on Easter Sunday, he rose from the dead, he won a great victory, so that each of us could have the choice to live in God’s kingdom too, away from all the bad things of this world. If we want to, we can choose to believe in Jesus, to try to follow his teaching and to love him as he loves us.

prop: small heart