Bible base:

Luke 22:7-30

Teaching objectives:

To show that Christians believe Jesus’ death was part of God’s plan.

You will need:

• The words ‘I must die because it is part of God’s plan’ written in sections on separate pieces of card.
• A Strange Twist pdf (3996 downloads )  visual aid, copied on to a large piece of paper that will be visible to the assembly.

Introductory activity:

Bring about twelve pupils to the front and get them to stand in two circles of six facing inwards. Ask them all to stretch their arms out in front of them and then take hold of two hands at random. The two groups should then race to untangle themselves without letting go of each other’s hands.

Everyone’s arms were twisted together and it took a while to untangle them! Today’s story has a twist in it, and it might take a while to work out how to untangle it.

The story takes place when Jesus is in Jerusalem, where King Herod is ruling. Herod was unpopular, but a lot of people really liked Jesus because he helped them and cared for them. When he arrived in Jerusalem, the people greeted him as a king.

The Bible says that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem to be their king, but the story wasn’t as simple as they perhaps thought! Jesus would be King one day, but he wasn’t going to go to King Herod’s palace and overthrow him as the people might have expected. Our story takes place one night, when Jesus was having a meal with his followers and began to reveal his secret plans to them. Can you read what the plan was? Unscramble the words to find out.

Arrange the words on cards at the front, making sure that the order is muddled up.

The plan was twisted up so that we could not read it at first – it was not obvious. And as a plan, it’s not a very obvious way to become King either. What a strange twist! It seems like a strange idea, to plan to die, but this was actually Jesus’ winning idea. Long before they had gone to Jerusalem, and long before this meal they were now sharing, Jesus had told them that this was God’s plan for him.

Hold up the unfolded large ‘twisted tale’ sheet.

This is the outline of God’s plan. It doesn’t look very clear, but that is because there are a few twists in the tale.

Fold the paper along the lines so that what the assembly can see are the words ‘Jesus will be king’.

Jesus will be king, just as the people hoped, but (flip the paper over so that it says ‘Jesus will be killed’) before he becomes king, he will be killed.

How could he be killed and then become king? There is another twist to the tale!

Lift the flap at ‘A’ to reveal the words ‘Jesus will come back to life’.

Jesus will come back to life! And then, when he had overcome death, he would be King in God’s kingdom (lift flap at ‘B’ so that the sentence ‘Jesus will be King’ is revealed).

We are back at the sentence we started with, ‘Jesus will be King’. But there were amazing twists in the tale, which meant that Jesus was going to be a special King like no other. The Bible says that Jesus would die and would then become King in God’s kingdom for ever.

Optional prayer time:

Pray that God would help us to understand the twists in the amazing story of Jesus’ life and death.