Stories of Jesus for Children 7 - the saddest day

When Jesus let the important people arrest him, they took him into Jerusalem and started telling lies about things he had said and done. When people asked him if these lies were true he stayed quiet, and didn't complain. Then they ordered the soldiers to hurt Jesus, and after that they made him pick up a great big wooden cross and start to carry it through the streets so everyone could laugh at him.

Does that make you feel sad? It is a very sad and shocking thing to happen to anyone. It seems even worse that it happened to our kind and loving Jesus, who helped people and told them about God's love, doesn't it?You need to know about crosses - they were the way that the worst criminals were punished in those days. Criminals were put onto a cross for people to look at until they died. It's hard to imagine that because we know how wrong it is nowadays, but in those days it didn't seem so unusual - look, there are two other crosses for criminals, as well as for poor Jesus.

Can you see who has stayed with Jesus? It's his mother, Mary, and the other women who are his friends. The men have mostly run away, because someone might want to put them on a cross too. I'm very glad that some of his family and friends stayed with him, though. They stayed there until he died. Poor Jesus and Mary.

When he had died, a secret friend decided to be brave - he told the women that they could put the poor body in his own special cave. It was a cave for burials. This is what the cave in the Easter Garden is for. How sad the women were when they put Jesus' poor body in the cave.

Activity: Put a cross made of sticks, or a palm leaf one from church, into your Easter Garden, and find a big stone to put in front of the cave - the important people put a huge stone in front of Jesus' tomb, big and heavy so that no one could go and steal his body away.
Question for younger children: Do you like Hot Cross Buns? See if you can eat one today, because the cross can remind us of Jesus. Question for older children: Do you remember what Jesus said about the bread and the wine? He said they were his body and his blood. Does that make any sense when you think about Jesus dying on the cross? (You can eat a Hot Cross Bun too!)