Good Friday's Early Christian Meal

Last night was a special Good Friday service at our church called the Early Christian Meal. One of our church members saw this performed at her daughter's church up in North Carolina and thought it would be a great idea for us. Turned out wonderfully as a very moving experience.

The whole premise is that Mary Magdalene (played by Mommy) invites the friends and followers of Jesus to her home to share in a meal and fellowship after Jesus has been crucified on Friday. Then during the meal, different people who knew Jesus get up and speak about their memories of him and their feelings. At the close of the meal, one of the disciples (played by Daddy) gets up and leads the whole group in the partaking of communion. Then Mary Magdalene finished her testimony and sang "Something Beautiful" before offering the benediction.

Mommy worked with the actors for the last several weeks. They picked out their own characters, did their own research and wrote their own scripts. Of course, several of them took poetic license in writing them since there often aren't a great many details shared about these folks in the Bible. In addition to Mommy and Daddy as characters last night we had the disciple Andrew, the disciple Simon Peter, a shepherd Zachary, Joseph of Arimathea, the Canaanite woman Justa and Lazarus. All the servers and table hosts also dressed up in costumes as well as the choir, who also came and sang several numbers.

Grandma and Grandpa also came to be part of things last night. Here's a picture of Grandpa entertaining Wesley afterwards during the cleanup (Parker was helping to put things away):