Schools are queuing to hear the message of Easter creatively told in an interactive, child-friendly way.

Some 10,000 primary pupils in the South Yorkshire town of Doncaster – statistically at the bottom of the church attendance league table at just 2% – have been discovering the amazing story of the death and resurrection of Jesus over the past seven years.

Christians around the country have been taken by surprise at the openness to the Gospel now found in the teaching establishments of this northern metropolitan borough – geographically the largest outside London but with a population of only 300,000.

Eye-Catching Atmosphere

For the eighth successive year a project known as the ‘Easter Journey’ is being offered to Key Stage 2 pupils of the town, with Tuxford in north Nottinghamshire also now benefitting.

A total of 1,300 pupils from eight schools will experience the unique journey this year, taking them through five stages of the Easter story – Palm Sunday, the Last Supper, the Garden of Gethsemane, the Cross and the Resurrection – each told by volunteers (some in costume) in different classrooms specially set up with appropriate props and backdrops, creating a peaceful, eye-catching atmosphere in which the children are encouraged to interact with the story and think about what they are hearing.

Over the last seven years, some 10,000 primary pupils in Doncaster have been discovering the amazing story of Jesus’ death and resurrection.

At the Last Supper, for example, the children are asked to gather round a long table laden with jars of water and ‘wine’ along with bowls of grapes and pitta bread, candles and serviettes – and even a money-bag (for Judas). We explain something of the significance of the feast of Passover and, with the help of a bowl and towel, enact the servant nature of Jesus in washing the disciples’ feet, though due to practicalities and time constraints we usually invite just one pupil to have his or her hands washed instead!

Wide-Eyed and Excited Pupils, Enthusiastic Staff

Often spell-bound by what they see and hear as they are transported to the Holy Land at the time of Jesus, the pupils leave the 75-minute experience wide-eyed and excited while matching enthusiasm from staff means there is always a waiting list of schools wanting to host the event.

Because there are simply not enough volunteers to meet the need – “the harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few” – a rota ensures that those missing out get priority the following year or instead have the chance of hosting a ‘Christmas Journey’, which is restricted to Key Stage 1 pupils.

Backed by the Doncaster Schools Worker Trust, supported by a number of local churches and in associating with Scripture Union, the project is headed up by Linda Gardner, who has been teaching Christianity in the town’s primary schools for over 20 years through RE lessons, Bible classes and assemblies. With the addition of a secondary school worker, Dan Budhi, and a host of teams taking assemblies using the Open the Book (Lion’s Storyteller Bible) method, the Trust is currently supporting over 50 of the town’s schools.

The pupils leave the 75-minute experience wide-eyed and excited and there is always a waiting list of schools wanting to host the event.

Spreading the Gospel

The Easter and Christmas journeys follow the success of a project celebrating the Pilgrim Fathers when coach-loads of pupils enjoyed a day of discovery in the nearby village of Scrooby, where the founding fathers of the United States first gathered 400 years ago before being hounded out of the country for their passionate faith.

Along with all the other regular school visits throughout the year, the journeys allow the Trust not only to help schools meet their curriculum requirements on religious education and outside visitors, but also to carry out the Great Commission in spreading the Gospel.

Clifford Denton offers some reflections on Good Friday.

This weekend we will celebrate the most important event of all history, an event only to be equalled by the Lord Jesus' return to bring the Kingdom of God fully in. It is more important than the created universe (Luke 21:33). As deep as was the Flood to drown a sinful world, deeper still is the love of God who sent his own Son into the world to redeem from sin all who would believe.

The sky darkened, the earth shook, the curtain in the Temple was torn from top to bottom and many saintly people rose from their graves as Jesus defeated the power of sin and death on that eventful day (Matt 27:45-56).

What Abraham Looked Forward to!

2,000 years before, Jesus' sacrifice had been foreshadowed when God said to Abraham, "Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you" (Gen 22:2).

God had already, in the most dramatic way of cutting a covenant (Genesis 15), made a promise that depended only on his own faithfulness, that Abraham's offspring would be as numerous as the stars in the sky and dwell in the land promised to them by God. Isaac was the son of promise through whom this line would come in the physical sense, yet God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son on a mountain in the Moriah range.

Just at the point of Abraham's making the sacrifice, an angel intervened and Isaac was spared. A ram was sacrificed instead (Gen 22:13). Under Abraham's knife was not just Isaac but all who would descend from his physical line. The ram was the substitute. The ram died and all the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were able to live. The principle of substitution began.

Abraham looked forward in faith to see how God would fulfil his covenant responsibility, spending his life living in tents but waiting "for a city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God" (Heb 11:8-10).

When God provided a ram for sacrifice instead of Abraham's son Isaac, the principle of substitution began.

The Passover Sacrifice

The covenant pathway was never easy for Abraham's descendants, as Joseph found when he was taken captive to Egypt, followed by the entire family of Israel (Gen 37-50). 430 years later, when the nation of Israel had grown whilst in captivity, Moses was chosen to lead Israel out of Egypt.

On the night chosen by God, henceforward to be celebrated annually as Passover, one of the prescribed Feasts of Israel, God judged the sins of Egypt but preserved the Israelites who through faith, family by family, each sacrificed a lamb and painted their door-posts with its blood (Ex 12).

This principle of faith was to be engraved into the consciousness of all Israelites. They were soon to be taught what was right and wrong in God's eyes through the Covenant at Sinai, to know the path of forgiveness through the sacrifices of the Tabernacle and Temple ministries, though still to have no permanent remedy for sin (Heb 9:1-10).

A Temple on Mount Moriah

The City of Jerusalem was founded by King David when, about 1,000 years after Abraham, Israel had settled in their Land (2 Sam 5:6-10). Since then, Jerusalem has been the chief city in the world for God to centre his purposes. David longed for a Temple so that the ministry of the Tabernacle from the wilderness years could have a permanent centre.

He purchased the land on the same mountain range where Abraham had taken his son Isaac. This was the place where the angel of death was commanded by God not to destroy Jerusalem on account of David's sin in taking an unlawful census (2 Sam 24:16-17). David's son Solomon built the Temple on the threshing floor of Ornan (Araunah) on Mount Moriah (2 Chron 3:1). The worship and sacrifice centre of Israel was completed.

1,000 years after Abraham nearly sacrificed Isaac on Mount Moriah, King David purchased land in the same area for the building of God's Temple.

It was destroyed at the Babylonian captivity in 536 BC, rebuilt by Zerubbabel on return from captivity, 70 years later, and modified by Herod into a more ornate structure. Central to the life and hopes of Israel for all these long years was the covenant with Abraham, the Feasts (including Passover) and the substitutional sacrifice for sin through the blood of the lamb.

Jesus the Messiah

Though there was an expectation for a coming Messiah to Israel, it was beyond human intellect to put all the prophecies together to see clearly how God would fulfil his promise to Abraham. A king from the line of David was eagerly awaited, with most Jews expecting a saviour to come in glory and raise an army against the occupying Romans of Jesus' day. Without the revelation such as Peter had at Caesarea Philippi (Matt 16:13), they did not understand that Isaiah pointed clearly to a suffering Saviour (Isa 53), accurately fulfilled by Jesus on the Cross.

He entered this world as God's only Son, echoing the experience of Abraham and Isaac so long ago. He grew up in the Jewish tradition, totally representing the nation, and ministered for three and a half years in fulfilment of all the scriptures pointing to Messiah. Then, riding on a donkey as a man of peace, with a clear climax to his ministry soon to occur, he descended the Mount of Olives and crossed the Kidron Valley to the City of Jerusalem.

With great expectation palm branches paved the way for the coming King of the Jews – as some recognised him to be. Yet only he knew how the rest of the scriptures would be fulfilled. He was, with the crown of thorns, the ram in the thicket that replaced Isaac, the saviour of Israel through substitutionary sacrifice. He came to be the Passover lamb that for all those years had pointed to him.

With the crown of thorns, Jesus was the ram in the thicket that replaced Isaac, the substitutionary sacrifice, the Passover lamb.

Perfect Sacrifice

He shared the traditional evening Passover meal with his disciples ensuring that they would remember that this was now to be shared as a memorial to him. The next day at the time of the Temple Sacrifice - one sacrifice for all the people - he willingly died on the Cross to release all who would accept his sacrifice for their sin – one Lamb for the entire family of faith.

The night before, in all Jewish homes there had been a service of remembrance of the first Passover and the atoning blood of the lamb. All history right up to that night prepared the way for the intercessory prayer from the Cross of the dying Saviour – "Forgive them Father for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34) and his victorious cry of "it is finished" (John 19:30) that still echoes to us across the centuries. No-one knows the exact spot where it took place but this too was on the range of hills named Moriah.

Today

All over the world the Jews still celebrate Passover in the traditional way, ending the seder with "next year in Jerusalem". There is an ongoing desire for God to complete the promises made to Abraham. Those with eyes opened by the Spirit of God see how all the prophecies and the types and shadows of Israel's history were fulfilled in Jesus. It was far more than a release from the captivity of the Egyptians, the Babylonians or the Romans that he came to accomplish – it was freedom from the chains of sin that ensnare us all.

Those with eyes opened by the Spirit of God see how all the types and shadows of Israel's history are fulfilled in Jesus.

The Gospel went to the Gentile world and the Christian Church increased in numbers, fulfilling the promise to Abraham that his seed would be as countless as the stars in the sky and sand on the seashore. Grafted into believing Israel we too celebrate Passover whenever we take communion. It is unfortunate that Christians renamed Passover as Easter and moved the date slightly so that Easter always falls on a Sunday. Nevertheless, on Good Friday, as it is called, Christians around the world will be celebrating the Lord's death on the Cross once more.

Remember the history of it all as you pass around the bread and the wine reading Paul's injunction:

For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which he was betrayed took bread; and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "Take, eat; this is my body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of me." In the same manner he also took the cup after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me." For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death till he comes. (1 Cor 11:23-26)