I'm doing the Resurrection Eggs with my kids these few weeks leading up to Easter. This is the first time I've ever gotten to teach Bible classes at PROMESA and, as much as it fills up my schedule and makes life a bit more hectic, I'm loving it at the same time. So I decided to start off the year with the Resurrection Eggs. For those who don't know, they're simple plastic Easter eggs with a Christian symbol of Easter inside. I'm enjoying seeing how the kids are really "getting it", as well as getting into it.
Today's Easter egg was supposed to contain bread. As I was contemplating this morning how to make this memorable (besides giving my kids some bread to eat), suddenly Isaiah 53 connected with the Last Supper in my mind. "This is my body, broken for you."..."For surely he has borne our sorrows and our infirmities...He was pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities. The judgment that brought us peace was upon him." And God gave me an idea, which actually spoke to my heart too.
I took some bread with me to school. And we talked about how the bread represented Jesus' body. And then I put it inside a plastic bag and laid it on a student's desk.
Math books are about the heaviest thing in my classroom, especially a stack of 20 of them. So I passed the kids' math books out to them. "Right now," I told them, "these are not math books. These are your problems and the times you get sick and all the bad things you do. How many of you have problems?" The air filled with hands. I know some of their problems. Divorce. Fighting at home. Trying to learn languages. Alcoholism. "How many of you get sick?" Again, hands filled the air.
And then I tossed my math book on top of the bread.
The kids' eyes got big. "You're killing the bread!" the boys shouted. (They seemed to think this was rather cool.) "Who wants to put their book on top of the bread?" I asked. Hands shot up and one by one they all gently placed or smacked their book on top of the stack. When the piece of bread had been smashed by the weight of 20 math books, I took it out, now more closely resembling a tortilla than a piece of bread.
And then I read, "He was pierced for our transgressions." "What does it mean to be pierced?" I asked them. And then I stuck my finger through the bread and stood there with it on my hand. "No, don't!" said some of them. Poke. Another hole. Poke. Poke. Poke. And I stood there with my holey piece of bread in hand. "This is what Jesus went through.
"He was crushed for our iniquities," and I tore the piece of bread in enough pieces for each of us to have one.
I held up the bag with the pieces of bread. "This is what I deserved. This is what you deserved. But Jesus took that punishment for us. And He carried all our problems, so that when we enter into a problem, we find that Jesus is already there and He is helping us in the midst of our problems."
I can't say they were all sitting there in reverent awe, deeply aware of their sin and how Jesus is already present in their problems. I can't say there was deep repentance. I can't say I saw fruit.
All I can say is that Jesus is touching me. And hopefully He is touching them also.
