The Shrewsbury Passion – Good Friday 19th April 2019

We are inviting you to join us as we present a depiction of the last twelve hours in the life of Jesus of Nazareth.

We start in the courtyard at St Mary’s Church at 10.30am where Jesus is brought before Pontius Pilate, the prefect of the Roman province of Judaea, for his sentencing. Pilate listens to the accusations levelled at Jesus by the Pharisees. Realizing that his own decision will cause him to become embroiled in a political conflict, Pilate defers to King Herod in deciding the matter of how to deal with this difficult situation. However, Herod returns Jesus to Pilate who, in turn, gives the crowd a choice between which prisoner they would rather see set free–Jesus, or Barabbas. The crowd chooses Barabbas. Thus, Jesus is handed over to the Roman soldiers and is brutally flagellated. Bloody and unrecognizable, he is brought back before Pilate who, once again, presents him to the bloodthirsty crowd–assuming they will see that Jesus has been punished enough. The crowd, however, is not satisfied. Thus, Pilate washes his hands of the entire dilemma, ordering his men to do as the crowd wishes.

We then follow Jesus with the cross as he moves down Pride Hill – the Walk of Witness where Jesus places the cross in The Square as we come to the end our journey on this Good Friday morning. All will be invited to witness a whipped and weakened, Jesus on the cross.

We are looking for members of you congregations to be actors, helpers, crowd members so if you have a disciple or someone who wants to be in the crowd can you please let me know. We are suggesting that each church has someone as a contact point and then they can let us know who wants to be involved.