Respond to the Word: Free to believe?

Bind: This is not a particularly original activity but that does not diminish its value. Ask a volunteer to stand in a (remote and confined, if possible) corner of your building and then invite a group of people to bind up him or her in toilet tissue until their whole body is covered. Then gather everyone around the bound body in the tomb-like corner and invite them to shout, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ The bound person then moves, breaking the bindings. However, they will not all fall away and people will need to help, and gather up the resulting mess. Invite the bound person to share how it felt to be confined in this way and ask people to reflect on times when they have felt constricted and bound.

Search: Invite people to read through the Passion section of your hymn book and select phrases they particularly remember or identify with. Write these out on slips of paper with fat felt pens, then stick them on a large sheet of paper or board to create a passion graffiti wall. Anyone who prefers drawing to writing might contribute diagrams and doodles so that you have a mixture of word and image.

Model: Give people a ball of clay or some other modelling medium and invite them to make a tomb.

Build: Build a tomb out of stones or whatever else is available. Leave this in place throughout the next two weeks. It might be used on Good Friday and can form the centre of an Easter garden, transformed with flowers, plants and joyous images for Easter Day.

Pray: Pray for those who watch and wait with people who are seriously ill.

Listen: Invite people to share stories of unexpected events in their lives that left a lasting memory.

Write: Invite people who enjoy writing to write a reflection on the events described in the Gospel passage as though they were one of the participants.