In the spring of each year both Christians and Jews
respectively celebrate the foundational events of both of their faiths. For
Jews it is the Passover and Christians Easter. At Easter, as you know, we
celebrate the Resurrection of Christ. On Passover, Jews remember the Exodus of
their people out of slavery in Egypt. The two festivals often fall close to one
another, although it so happens this year that Easter is rather early and
Passover rather late this year. We will
celebrate Easter this coming Sunday on March 27th but Passover won’t begin until April 22nd.
The proximity of the two festivals to one another is not coincidental. There is
a historical and theological relation to one another. In fact in many places in
the world Easter is called Pascha which is Greek for Passover.
On the night before the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ—the
night we commemorate today on Maundy Thursday—he gathered with his disciples in
the upper room to celebrate the Passover feast with them. As observant Jews
this was their custom.
The meal commemorates the meal that their ancestors ate in
Egypt when God sent his destroying angel to strike down the first born of every
house in the land. The Jews who kept this feast were passed over, they were
spared the awful plague, and ultimately delivered from slavery. God commanded
his people to keep this feast until the end of the age, and the scriptures give
instruction for how it is to be observed. Let’s go over the basic liturgy as
described in our reading from Exodus.
First, an unblemished male lamb a year old was to be chosen
from the flock of each household. The lamb was to be male because it was to be
a kind of substitute for the first born son, but also because the male lambs
were considered of more value. This was to be a costly sacrifice. The people
were to offer their best and most healthy, not the crippled or the lame.
Second, the lamb was to be taken and sacrificed. At the time
of the Exodus, any head of the household could offer the sacrifice on behalf of
his family but later in the history of Israel this privilege was preserved for
the house of Levi, the priests, after the majority of the other tribes lost
their right when they worshiped the Golden Calf. In Jesus’ day, the lambs had
to be sacrificed in the Temple and eaten in the city of Jerusalem and so the
holy city was brimming with pilgrims during the feast. Not only were the lambs
sacrificed, they were also erected on skewers of wood, you might even say they
were crucified. Justin Maytr in his dialogue with the rabbi Trypho writes,
“The Lamb, which is roasted, is roasted and dressed up in the form of a cross. For one spit is transfixed right through from the lower parts up to the head, and one across the back, to which are attached the legs of the lamb.”
The third step in the Passover liturgy was to spread the blood of the lamb. In the Exodus story the blood was spread on the door post. When the angel saw the blood on the door posts he would pass by the house and the people would be sparred through the blood of the lamb. In Jesus’ day the blood of the lambs would be poured out on the altar by the priests.
Finally, the fourth step in the Passover liturgy was to eat
the lamb. This is the meal that families gather together to observe. The
sacrifice was not completed at the slaughter of the lamb, but by a kind of
communion by which the people shared in the sacrifice by feasting on its body. The Passover is meant to be more than just a remembrance, it
is an actual participation in the events of the original exodus so that those
who keep it can say not just that “our fathers were delivered”, but “we were
delivered.”
So was this what Jesus was doing with his disciples in the
upper room? Yes and no. Jesus was not just celebrating the Passover, he was
inaugurating a new exodus and proclaiming a new Passover sacrifice. There were
similarities, but there were also differences. For instance there is no
reference to a lamb in the gospel descriptions of their meal. There may have been one present, but the emphasis is shifted away from it. Instead when
Jesus explains the meaning of the unleavened bread, as it was the hosts’ duty
to do, he took it and said, “This is my body.” When he took the cup of wine he
told them, “This is my blood.” In doing so, he was proclaiming himself to be
the Passover lamb, the sacrifice that would deliver them from sin and lead them
out of bondage.
The original Passover celebrated the exodus from Egypt lead
by God’s anointed prophet Moses, but Moses foretold of another greater prophet and deliverer yet to come, a
messiah who would come at the end of the age to deliver God’s people. Because
of this, the Passover became a night of vigil for the coming of the messiah and
the salvation he would bring.
In the upper room Jesus was saying, “Now is the end of the
age. I am he. The long promised messiah, and salvation will come through me. I
will be offered as a sacrifice, lifted high on a cross like the Passover lambs,
my blood poured out for the redemption of the world. In order to share in that
redemption you must eat my flesh and drink my blood.”
Just as God commanded the people to keep the Passover as a
perpetual remembrance of their deliverance from Egypt, so Jesus commands his
people to celebrate the Eucharist with bread and whine as a remembrance of his
death until he comes again. Just as the people of Israel shared in the exodus
through the Passover meal, the Church shares is Jesus’ death through the
Eucharistic feast. As Saint Paul writes, “The cup of blessing that we bless, is
it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it
not a participation in the body of Christ?”
Brothers and sisters, Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us, therefore let
us keep the feast!
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