1 Experience Easter Outdoors begins with Jesus as a prisoner brought before Pontius Pilate.
We start at the big cross in the garden near the church door.
Try as they might, the Jewish religious leaders, gripped by a toxic mix of fear of Jesus’s popularity and determination to keep hold of their own power, couldn’t come up with any crime that would convince Pilate, the much more powerful Roman governor, that Jesus had done anything wrong. All the accounts in the Bible say that Pilate wanted to release him. His wife had even sent a message to say that Pilate should not condemn Jesus, calling him a ‘just man’.
But the cross is right in front of us, and we know how the story ends: Pilate was trapped by fear that the Emperor would think he was disloyal; the Jewish leaders sent an innocent man to his death to protect their own power; Judas, who betrayed the friend and teacher he had been following, tried to force Jesus to be the kind of Messiah he had been expecting and then could not live with what he had done.
Ask Yourself
What is trapping you, preventing you from living your best life? What chains burden you, weighing you down, causing you to lose sleep? Do you ever wish you could ask someone to help you carry them?
The good news is you can entrust your worries, problems and difficulties to Jesus, rather than trying to carry them yourself.
Below the first board are some paper chains. You can use them to stand for the chains that burden you. Make a chain – If you like, you can write on the plain side of each link what burden you want to stop carrying. Then make your chain, taking care to put the last link round one of the strings on the arms of the cross, and fasten it there. Remember what Jesus said: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” You might like to think or say this as you look at your chains now safely in Jesus’s arms:
Lord Jesus, I come before you today, admitting that I am burdened.
Help me to trust in your strength and wisdom, knowing that you can carry all my burdens.
I cast these burdens upon you, Jesus, and ask you to take them from my shoulders.
May your peace, which surpasses all understanding, guard my heart and mind as I release these worries to you.
Thank you, Jesus, for your promises of grace and comfort, and for being my constant source of strength.
