Just occasionally it’s good to lean back on classic church Sunday School crafts, and for this parable of the banquet guests where ‘welcoming in’ is such a feature, I’ve chosen the classic door hanger. On one side the banquet host is all alone and looking rather worried, on the other side he is surrounded with guests welcoming more in.
There are two retellings of this story, and if you’ll forgive the simplification. The telling in Luke mostly sticks to the bare bones of the story, the idea that there was a banquet where everyone uninvited was welcomed. The Matthew one, by contrast, puts in some deep symbolism. It ‘ups’ the banquet to a wedding, talks about the servants being killed when they went to collect the guests, and ends with a puzzling passage about a man being thrown out for dressing incorrectly. All these are great to explore further with older groups, but I’ve stuck to the simple form for this retelling.
This retold version of the Bible passage is supplied for inspiration, feel free to omit or embellish to give it your personal voice.
Main Passage : Luke 14 Additional Passage : Matthew 22
It was hard to explain quite what God’s kingdom would look like to Jesus’ friends, so Jesus told stories instead. One of his favourite images was a big party, a banquet with many guests.
“A man prepared a huge party” Jesus told his friends, they settled down to listen, they all loved Jesus’s stories.
“The tables were set with huge platters of food, the room was decorated, and the smell of freshly roasted meat hung in the air as the servants made sure every place had plates and goblets for wine.
Then the man shouted everything was ready, it was time to go fetch the guests he had invited. The hall went quiet as many servants left and the man waited.
Slowly the servants started to arrive back, but they were alone.
“Where are the guests, the man questioned, tears in his eyes”
“The one I went to collect has a new field he must tend” said one servant.
“The one I went to collect is newly married and will not leave” said another.
“Mine has 5 new oxen and would like to try them out” said a third.
Slowly each servant reported their excuse to the man until he shouted in anger “stop” for not a single invited guest had arrived.
The man stood up and looked at the wonderful party he had prepared.
“It seems those I invited did not deserve to come.” he said to himself. Then, raising his voice, so the servants could hear, he gave them new instructions “Go out to the town, go into the city, go to the backstreets where the poor and the lame and the blind lay and invite all you find.”
And so the servants went. They brought everyone they met, the good, the bad, the poor, the rich, the young, the old, everyone who could come did. But there was still room, so the man sent his servants to the country roads, the tiny villages, the footpaths, and the hills until the hall was bursting with people enjoying the banquet.”
Jesus’ sat back and looked at his friends. He could see them picturing the hall full of all those different people — some looked horrified that they were all mixed together, others delighted. The kingdom of heaven was going to be noisy and smelly and chaotic and joyful, and this was just a whisper of what was in store.
The point of this parable about the bad tenants is where this craft resides. We see the rejected prophets becoming the very stones that God’s kingdom is being built upon. It ties into the idea of Jesus as the cornerstone but also that the contribution of those beaten, stoned and killed prophets gave in their service as God’s messengers.
To make this craft, you will need the 1-page template printout, scissors, glue, and foam spacers (or small pieces of thick cardboard).
Cut out all the stones and the background.
It really helps if you solve the puzzle at this point!
(If you are short on time you can simply glue the pieces in place flat like this, but it looks much better if you take some extra time to give it depth)
Add spacers on the back of a stone, double up for some stones and use none for others so the surface isn’t uniform.
Here I used a mixture of 0, 1, and 2 layers of spacers.
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For each passage, there is a collectable card alongside high-quality character images and a colouring page. All other graphics are extra’s!
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I love acting out stories, puppets, props, crafts, they can all highlight elements of the story and breath gusts of energy into dry dusty words – these blow life quite literally as you blow them across the table. Move the servants across the table on his way to collect from the Tenants, send the vineyard owner, his son, and a servant, who is returning beaten and broken. Talk about the different characters, What were they feeling on their journeys? What obstacles did they face? What would they meet at the end of their travels?
