Before the Session
Facilitator: In advance of the session
- Have the Bible Background Video ready to view.
- Review today’s scripture text and the session activities to help better facilitate the discussion.
- Encourage your group to listen to the Faithelement podcast ahead of the next session (Share the link via email or social media).
- Research current events on the Internet, or use the in-session links to review some issues you may wish to discuss while establishing your context.
- Bring some newspapers and/or magazines – enough to allow every one or two group members to peruse as part of the context for the session.
Context (From the Mind Session Page)
Distribute some magazines to the group and encourage them to take a few moments to look through the newspapers and magazines, particularly the advertisements, to see how much we’re worried about death. After a few minutes, ask:
- Death is something most of us seldom talk about, but that controls so much of what we do. In what ways are we trying to “cheat” or delay death?
- In what ways do terrorists, politicians, entertainer,s and advertisers take advantage of our fear of (and fascination with) death?
- Why do you think that we human beings – both Christian and non-Christian – fear death so much?
- What might cause someone to not fear death so much and why?
Content (From the Current Session Page)
Read Luke 24:1-12, then watch the Bible Background Video.
Ask questions like these:
- What do you think prompted the women to visit the tomb on that Easter morning, when apparently the male members of Jesus’ followers did not plan to do so?
- In what ways might their relationship with Jesus led to the differences between the male and female roles in this story?
- Given the cultural distance between us and Jesus’ original followers, how might modern characters act if they found themselves in the same situation and why?
- Nikki mentions “We’ve never done it that way before” thinking as a sort of looking for faith among the dead, rather than the living. In what ways do our approaches to the Easter event represent “looking for the living among the dead” and why?
- At what points can Easter, as seen through this narrative, help free us from such “seeking the living among the dead” in our understanding of faith and community?
Closure (from the Media Session page)
Play the you do not know what is coming movie clip and continue by asking:
- What things that are dead should we stop pretending are alive?
- What things that should be alive do we tend to pretend are dead?
- In what ways does facing death help us see such things more clearly??
- In the video clip, how was Stephen handling being told he would die?
- How did Jane handle it and which is a better way to approach death?
- What does Jesus’ death and resurrection teach us about our approach to something that so many see as inevitable?
- In what ways might our faith help others who seek hope in the face of hopelessness?
Close in a prayer of thanksgiving…