The cloth and the fish finger

It was back to school for St James's School today and we started the term off with our beginning of term Easter service.

First I needed to gather my props. Ideally I needed a piece of grilled fish but on this occasion a fish finger had to do, and I needed the cloth from the empty tomb in the church narthex.

A fish finger and a cloth?

The cloth was all they found when they went to the tomb on the first Easter Day. The cloth had been used to wrap the body of Jesus in, but, as the angel explained to the woman, Jesus was not there, he had been raised.

There was no body, just the cloth there in the tomb.

As for the fish; later that evening Jesus appeared to the disciples. They were terrified. They thought it was a ghost. Then Jesus said 'have you anything to eat?'

They gave him some grilled fish (fish finger, in our retelling of the story), and he ate it. They knew he was not a ghost but a real live human being in a newly resurrected body.

So, I said to the children, remember the cloth and remember the fish. Together they tell us that Jesus was alive. He had come back from the dead. He is alive forevermore.

That's the best news of all, and we celebrated it in the song that the whole school has been learning: celebrate Jesus is alive.