It’s Easter week and tonight, Passover begins. I celebrate Easter more completely since I attended a Passover Seder many years ago. It was a small Spirit-filled Methodist church, the one where I was born again in 1978. A family had come to our church who had a ministry to Jewish and Israeli people both in Ohio and in Israel. God had opened their eyes to the Old Testament feasts that foreshadowed New Testament events and fulfillment. They loved to share their understanding and celebrations with other believers and so we had a Passover Seder.
They planned a menu and shared recipes from Jewish traditions. One young man in the congregation was a Jew and he and his wife brought some family favorite dishes that went back generations.
The couple who sponsored and planned the event, Bill and Cindy, gathered all the materials needed for the ceremony and readings that accompany Passover. At the Seder, Bill related the traditional written passages and how Jesus fulfilled Passover’s promise of a perfect Lamb who took on Himself the sins of the entire world. During each segment, when the afikoman was hidden, when the questions were asked by Bill and Cindy’s son, and when the fulfillment of God’ purpose was clear, I saw Easter in a new way. I understood more completely about the plan made before the foundation of the world.
And so tonight, I remember the question that asks why this night is different from all others. I think on that frightening night in Egypt when the blood of lambs was spread on doorposts and lintels to mark the people of God. They trusted Him for protection during the last and worst plague with the result that they would be freed from slavery. And most of all, I give thanks that the blood of the Lamb of God marks me and my family as people of God and will keep us protected throughout eternity. Our sins are washed away by that blood shed on Calvary and we are freed from the slavery of our sins.