The Gospel According to Fourth Grade:
Students Present Their Interpretation of Passion of Christ

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Jesus prays in the Garden of Gethsemane.


It was a fourth-graders' eye view of the Gospels.

The students had read all four New Testament accounts of the events of Holy Week, compared them, and interpreted them in a series of skits performed throughout the campus on Holy Thursday.



The entire Lower School student body and many parents trailed after them as they performed an annual ritual of the Christian education program at CCES, known as "Journey to the Cross."



So, while the students sang reverently

and portrayed seriously such events as the raising of Lazarus,



being children, they also, in the words of St. Paul, "spoke as a child, understood as a child, and thought as a child," for example, by waving the palms frenetically for Christ's entry into Jerusalem, and by adding their own flourishes to the Biblical stories.



Thus, the sleepy disciples in the garden protested vigorously about being "too tired," and the centurion who offered Christ the vinegar-soaked sponge complained loudly of the "smell."



The money changers in the temple were hawking cute, toy Easter ducks,



a student cock crowed lustily when Peter betrayed his master, and the servant whose ear Peter struck removed a dramatic, "blood-soaked" hand from her ear.



But as the children performed such scenes as the Washing of the Feet



and the Last Supper, although they sometimes flubbed their lines, they showed an engagement with the stories they had learned



about Jesus' trial before Herod and Pontius Pilate



and a recognition that the cross Christ carried was indeed a heavy one.



The reenactment concluded with the death of Jesus



and a performance by the Lower School handbell choir as students filed back to their classrooms before dismissal for the Easter holiday.



Lower School chaplain Valerie Riddle, who annually coordinates the sweeping spectacle of Journey of the Cross, was pleased with the fourth-graders' hard work.

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