This week I presented the Faces of Easter VII lesson for a second time, giving the children a chance to bring materials to the story, which we were unable to do on Easter Day.
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Story materials brought to the circle: Trinity symbol and Baptism materials, the Presentation in the Temple, Christ candle, Advent materials
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Vandriver said to me this morning,
I wonder if there's any part of this story that we could leave out, and still have all the story we need? Well, Father Berryman seems to think we can leave out the Resurrection.
He was partly joking, but it was also a comment on my frustration with this lesson. And it was a reminder that I have lots more I want to write about the tensions in wanting to honor Berryman's model, scripts, ethos, etc. while also needing to be true to my own understandings and beliefs. This post will likely only scratch the surface a bit more, but here it is.
The lesson asserts,
Jesus had died on the cross, but somehow he was still with them, as he is with us, especially in the bread and the wine. But never does it say,
He is risen. Left out of the story are the angels, Mary's encounter with Jesus in the garden, indeed any resurrection appearances at all. (Berryman has now finally released new lessons which may incorporate some of these post-resurrection appearances, "Knowing Jesus in a New Way", but for the time being, apart from part 1, the only way to get these texts is to buy a $200
package from the United States.)
My frustration was compounded by the fact that the picture on the final plaque in the
German series I have been testing out, by
Juliana Heidenreich, does not show Jesus at all. Instead there is a shaft of light, and a community of Christians sharing bread and wine. But I was not about to present a lesson which included no representation of the risen Christ in word or image, especially not on Easter Sunday!
What I ended up doing visually was faithful to my understanding of Berryman and still something I was comfortable with myself. I used the image of an icon of the Eucharist which includes representations of Jesus, grain and grapes, bread and wine, and a Gospel book or Bible.
I felt that this worked as a representation of the Risen Christ today, who, as we know from the Holy Family story, is no longer bound by space and time. It visually conveys Berryman's emphasis that Christ is present to us today in the bread and wine of Holy Communion. And it is so different from all the other plaques that it emphasizes the line about the fact that the Mystery of Easter changes everything.
As for the words of the story, I added one line of my own to the story of the women finding the empty tomb: Angels explained that Jesus had risen. I added the line Berryman uses in "Knowing Jesus" part 1: The tomb could not hold him, and then my own partial summary of ideas from the "Knowing Jesus" series: Over the next hours, and days, and weeks, Jesus' friends had to learn new ways to recognize Jesus - in the sound of his voice, in the breaking of bread, and in the memory of that empty tomb (which at first had seemed so sad). And these are still ways that we know Jesus today.
