Resurrection Parade

by: Sam Hargreaves

This Easter Sunday we are planning a Resurrection Praise Celebration. We are splitting the teaching into two halves - in the first half the preacher will show a giant paper world, and talk about how God created everything perfect. He will then rip the world into pieces, talking about how we have sinned and ruined God's perfect creation.

He will then ask what we should do with this ripped world - throw it out and start again? This is probably what we would do. But God is in the business of re-creating his broken world. And he did this by sending Jesus as a baby at Christmas (we want to make the connection for those who only come twice a year!)

We will then explain that we are going to have a time of worship, where the children and anyone else who wants to can colour in a piece of the broken world, whilst everyone else sings some songs, to symbolise us joining with God in remaking his broken world. At the end these pieces will be collected in, and a couple of people will begin to stick these pieces to a cutout of the resurrected Jesus (we are cutting around a projected image of the Rio de Janeiro 'Christ the Redeemer' statue, to make a life-size MDF silhouette).

The second half of the talk will unpack these verses from the Message Version of Colossians 1:18-20:

"He [Jesus] was supreme in the beginning and - leading the resurrection parade - he is supreme in the end. From beginning to end he's there, towering far above everything, everyone. So spacious is he, so roomy, that everything of God finds its proper place in him without crowding. Not only that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe - people and things, animals and atoms - get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of his death, his blood that poured down from the cross."

We will explain that we are going to join in the 'Resurrection Parade' that Christ is leading by having our own little parade behind our cut-out of Jesus, who has now been covered in the colourful pieces of our world, stuck back together on him. The band will play something celebratory as people who want to follow the figure around the church.

Feel free to steal or adapt this idea, or let us know what you've got planned or have done in Easter's past!

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We slightly adapted Sam's idea for our Easter service - using the introduction, ripping a picture of the world which the children coloured in during the sermon on being an Easter people (and many other ripped maps). After the talk 'Christ the Redeemer' was brought forward and we all said the Colossians passage together - then sang some songs with the risen Christ stationary at the front - due to its large and heavy base.
A carpenter in our church had made such a fantastic, freestanding, almost lifesize copy of Christ the Redeemer that I spent some time the following week fillling in the gaps with colour printed, ripped maps and He now stands resplendent in our entrance, fully visible from the street, greeting all who enter - The Message passage is prinited and laminated on the wall beside the 'statue' so all can understand the symbolism.
Great idea!

Ruth - 3:57am - 20 Apr 2009

Thanks for this feedback Ruth! We actually ended up doing a similar thing - we didn't 'parade' the figure around the church (partly because we'd already done a parade on Palm Sunday, and also because our church is half-full of scaffolding!)

Sam - 12:21pm - 20 Apr 2009

I am a Methodist local preacher, and I was planned to take a Parade Service in my own church on Easter Day. I found this idea on your website - talked it over with a few people who I thought would help - and everything fell into place beautifully. A retired carpenter said ''Yes of course' when I asked if he could cut the statue out of plywood. He did so very carefully, and asked the help of one of his friends, an artist, in getting the face right. A lady from Messy Church volunteered all the pens, sticky bits etc. and what I thought was a real indication of God's spirit working among us, Rachel, who organises the band, came up with various ideas for videos, among them Easter Epic, from JavaCasa music, a 2 minute runthrough of the 'work of Christ' ending with a picture of Christ the Redeemer! Young and old joined in the parade through the rear premises, and then outside to come in via the main door - even the forecast snow did not arrive! The only problem, if you can call it that was that the arms (all done to scale) were so wide that the statue had to be turned sideways to get through most of the doors. No-on worried . They had been given percussion instruments for the parade, - a really joyful occasion though with a huge depth of theology, as recommended by you in your explanation. Many thanks indeed. Gwen

Gwen - 4:07am - 04 Apr 2018

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