Jesus Without Language

We can forget our influence as established members of a community. Too often we glorify the those who travel to ‘spread the faith’ and loudly proclaim the special relationship God has with the poor and suffering. All that doesn’t mean God does not also have a special role for the established and secure. To be like Lydia and change a community. To be like Lydia and host. But, perhaps, not to be quite as bossy as Lydia was!

This retold version of the Bible passage is supplied for inspiration, feel free to omit or embellish to give it your personal voice.

Main Passage : Acts 16
Additional passages : Acts 9

This is part of a single lesson pack, all ready to print and go.

I wonder if you know someone who is a little bit bossy? Someone who knows exactly what they want? That’s a bit like the woman Paul meets in today’s passage, but first let’s chat about Paul!

Paul was once called Saul, and he spent his time chasing all those who followed the way of Jesus the Messiah so he could put them in prison. But then his life changed dramatically when Jesus appeared to him on a road and told him to change his ways and his name! Soon Paul was the church’s early missionary, travelling around from town to town telling people about Jesus.

One night, Paul had a dream of a man begging him to come visit them next. The man was dressed like a Macedonian (southern Europeans), and so Paul got in a boat and sailed North. He travelled many days until he reached the trading city of Philippi. When the Sabbath came, he went outside the city walls, near the river, where the Jewish community used to pray because they did not have a synagogue. Paul sat down with a group of women and told them all about Jesus.

One of the women was called Lydia. Lydia had grown up in a town called Thyatira where purple cloth was made. But Lydia didn’t want to make cloth; so she moved to Philippi to trade the expensive purple cloth there. She was very good at trading and had become wealthy. She had a big house in Philippi with many rooms and many servants. However, the most important thing about Lydia was that she knew God.

While the other women were unsure about what Paul told them, God had opened Lydia’s heart and she believed the message Paul was sharing. She believed Jesus was the Messiah! Lydia believed so fully she asked Paul to baptise her and her whole household, even the servants. They all went into the river and did just that! Paul was delighted. Lydia was the first European believer in Jesus.

Lydia told Paul that he and his friends should come and stay at her house. Paul wasn’t so sure. He didn’t want people to say he had targeted the rich women of the city so he would get free accommodation. But Lydia was not going to take no for an answer. Paul had told her the believers cared for each other; saying no would be saying she wasn’t a real believer! Paul threw up his hands and laughed; Lydia was not someone to be argued with. Plus, she really did have room for them all to stay.

Lydia helped to grow not only the Church in Philippi but also in her home town of Thyatira. The teachings of Jesus spread through Europe and out to the rest of the world.
 

Today’s text is not a straight story but an interactive event.
Start by gathering the children in a circle and putting as large a cross as you can find in the middle. Explain that today we are going to talk about what happened when Jesus was on the cross. It’s a sad part of Jesus’s story, but we know that it’s not the end of Jesus’s story. The witnesses to the event did not know this, though! Choose one of these three ways of sharing the story.

1. Split the large group into 3 small groups and give each group one of the accounts. Gather and share after 10 minutes of group discussion.
2. As a whole group, use three actors to read the three accounts.
3. Hand out one of the story cards and have the children read them individually. Give them a moment to be quiet before discussing as a large group. Repeat process with the next character.

This retold version of the Bible passage is supplied for inspiration, feel free to omit or embellish to give it your personal voice.

Main Passages : John 19, Matthew 27, Mark 15

Salome’s Story:

When Jesus left after the evening meal, we knew whatever was going to happen would be soon. When one of the disciples finally returned, he was alone. Jesus had been arrested. We stood in the streets and heard the whip hit his back, watched as he carried the wooden cross to Golgotha wearing that stupid crown of thorns. Would he save himself from the cross? Mary Magdalene, Jesus’s mother, and I edged closer and closer and saw him looking at us. Three hours we waited until he shouted the words, “it is finished.” Jesus was gone. It was over. They laid him in a tomb, and I went to collect spices to put on his body. But it was too late. The Sabbath was coming, and the spices would have to wait. That Sabbath was so quiet. We were so afraid. We were so lost. Our lives had become all about Jesus, and now he was gone.

The beloved disciples Story:

Jesus called me the one he loved, but I ran just as fast as the rest of the disciples. I ran when I saw Judas turn up with the crowd of men. I ran when I saw their swords. I was scared they would take me too. I didn’t stand up in court or plead with Herod or Pilate. For 3 years, he was my family, and I did nothing. The crowds in Jerusalem were thick with people. I followed at a distance, keeping my head down. I saw the men with gold coins for those who shouted “crucify,” and I did nothing. Why am I so afraid? I can see him looking from the cross for his friends. I got near enough to see his mother and the women. He wanted to say something to me. He told me that I am to take his mother as my own and that she is to take me as her son. Even as he left, he gave me a new family.

The Centurion’s Story:

We got handed this man straight from the steps of Pilate’s house. He’d been whipped already, but he was still standing. Pilate looked irritated. This was the crowd’s decision, not his. It was about half a mile to Golgotha, but we didn’t think he’d make it. The crowd was crazy. There were a few weeping, but most of them were shouting abuse and spitting in his face. He had this good robe on and a crown of thorns. We gambled for the robe and put up a sign saying “King of the Jews.” The Jews didn’t like that. He was nailed up to the cross as the sky went black. It was midday. He didn’t say much up there, and he didn’t last long. But he asked God to forgive us and said we didn’t know what we were doing. When he died, I realised this was no ordinary man: We’d killed the son of God.

Click this image to get the printable story page. Split into 3 cards once printed.

This passage is so quoted and used, it’s a key part of understanding the “love” theme that echoes through scripture. It is, however, rather abstract, and this retelling used the instance of Paul writing it to frame the passage into a story.

This retold version of the Bible passage is supplied for inspiration, feel free to omit or embellish to give it your personal voice.

Main Passage : 1 Corinthians 13

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This is part of a single lesson pack, all ready to print and go.

Paul was in the midst of writing to all the people in Corinth about the gifts God could send them through his Holy Spirit when he suddenly stopped and threw his hands in the air. In all his talk about the great gifts and the way they all worked together, he’d forgotten the most important things of all… Love!

It didn’t matter if you had every gift God could give; if you didn’t have love, then they were nothing, nadda, zip, diddlysquat, useless! Love was the thing that tied everything together.

But what kind of love. After all, there are many kinds. We may love chocolate or football, but we love our parents with a different kind of love. And God loves us with a love even greater than that. So, Paul tried to do the impossible: he tried to write out exactly what this “love” was.

Love is patient and kind.
It does not envy, boast or be rude.
Love thinks first of others and keeps no record of wrongs.
Love finds no joy in brokenness but rejoices in the truth.
It holds all things, believes all things, hopes all things, suffers all things.
Love never, ever ends.

Paul sat back and read the long list of things about love. It was something he was still learning about. It was something too big for him to ever know everything about. It was like he could only see part of the picture.

He described it as looking at a reflection in a dull mirror. He knew it was God’s love, and he knew a lot about it, but the image was still blurry. His greatest wish was that one day he would see God’s love face to face, to discover what he already knew in part, but then to know fully.

Paul picked up his pen one last time for the day. He would stop after this and continue the letter tomorrow, but this last sentence needed adding:

Now these three remain: faith, hope, and love—
but the greatest of these is love.