Story for RE Sunday 2017
After some set up remarks, the older children in the CYRE program will act out the story being read by a teacher to the younger children who will be “in class” in our vignette. After the story, there are some questions the children will discuss just as they would in class. This is the story they will be acting out/listening to:
One day Jesus was asked how to be a good person, and he said “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” Does anyone know what that means? What is a neighbor? Jesus told a story to help people understand what he meant..
One day a Jewish man was walking from one town to another, from Jerusalem to Jericho, and some robbers attacked him. They took his money and all his possessions, and even his clothes. Not only that, but they hurt him badly, and left him lying on the road as though he were dead. Some time later, a religious man, a priest, was walking on the same road. He saw the injured man… and carefully stepped to the side and kept walking. A little later, an important man from the temple happened to walk by. He saw the injured man too….. And carefully stepped to the side and kept walking. What do you think he was thinking? And how did the man on the ground feel? Finally, a merchant with a donkey came walking down the road. He was from an area called Samaria, and he was called a Samaritan. The Jews and Samaritans had similar religions, but some of their beliefs were different, and unfortunately they had grown to dislike one another because of these differences. In fact, they often treated each other like enemies and fought. But this Samaritan saw that the Jewish traveler needed help. He took care of the man’s wounds [take out first aid kit], gave him some water and bread, covered him with a blanket and let him ride on the donkey. He took the wounded man to an inn in the next town, and gave money to the innkeeper to look after the man, and said he would be coming back through town in a few days and could pay for any other expenses then.