Why do Christians celebrate the Jewish feast of Passover? Are we crashing their party? Is there good reason for church people to break out the seder plate and ceremonial foods and remember the miracle of the Exodus from Egypt?
I did not know the answer to this question until I was an adult in my thirties. I watched a Messianic Jew named Zola Levitt explain the history and symbolism of Passover on a Christian TV channel. As this bearded rabbi unfolded the truths of this ancient Jewish practice, I was mesmerized. I called my husband Jim into the room. Jim and I had met at Oral Roberts University and soon after we married had founded a non denominational church in Jim’s home town of Shreveport. As a seminary student Jim had accompanied Oral Roberts and a musical team to Israel not long after the Six Day war in 1967. He had seen first hand the miracle of the Jewish state reborn after centuries of the Jews being dispersed and destroyed in every country under the sun. He had a heart for the Jews and a hunger to understand their place in God’s plan for the planet.
Jim was caught up in the televised presentation about the Passover like I had been. He said with sudden energy, “I am going to invite Zola to our church to teach us these truths in person.” And thus my love affair with all things related to the Jewish feasts began. The very next year on Easter Sunday, Zola Levitt stood in Zion Christian Fellowship in Shreveport, Louisiana and helped us discover our Jewish roots in the Passover. He made the Lord’s Supper come alive as it was foreshadowed in the Seder meal . This new/old feast day prefigured our redemption through Christ in a pageant so simple any child could understand its holy and transcendant meaning.
Let me share some of the truths about this Jewish meal as it relates to Christians that the Messianic teacher taught me that day. First of all the father of the household wears an all white linen robe and ceremonial hat as he stands at the head of the table. Zola said, “I stand here hosting this holy table of remembrance as a type of the risen Lord.” How striking he was in his priestly robe beaming down on us from the raised section of the sanctuary of the church. Then he called for a woman to come up on the stage to light the candles on the table. Since I was the pastor’s wife, he called my name and I mounted the steps somewhat cautiously. He handed me some matches to strike and indicated the candles he wanted me to light. He explained to the congregation that a woman in the Jewish home traditionally brings the light to the proceedings. Since Mary was the virgin mother who brought the Messiah -the Light of the world-into human flesh, this tradition honors her with prophetic foresight.
Next the father pours the first of four cups of wine –the cup of sanctification- and then he blesses the wine and the bread. In praying he follows a program that reaches back 3500 years to the time of the Exodus. This program is called the Haggadah, and it has served the purpose of preserving all the very old practices connected to celebrating Passover throughout the centuries that have come between us today and the first celebrants.
After drinking the first cup, the host takes three pieces of the unleavened bread and places them in a matzah cover. He takes out the middle piece of matzah and breaks it in half and then wraps one half in a linen napkin and then buries it. It is hidden somewhere close to the table but out of sight. Perhaps under the cushion the guests are reclining on. Later the children will search for it and earn a reward for bringing it up out of hiding.
Then the youngest child will ask the four questions starting with “Why is this night different from all other nights?” This gives the host an opportunity to tell the story of God’s miraculous rescue of His people when they were slaves of Pharoah in Egypt.
“Why do we eat bitter herbs?” is the next question. The host can then remind the child of the bitterness of slavery and how the tears we shed when we eat the bitter herbs are like the tears our forefathers shed when they were slaves.
‘Why do we dip the parsley in the salt water two times?’ and “Why do we all recline at this meal?” are the third and fourth questions.
These questions refer to the seder plate in the center of the Passover table. This special plate is on a rotating stand and displays the ceremonial foods: bitter herbs (horseradish), charoses (an apple, nut, date mixture that represents the mortar the Hebrew slaves had to make to hold the bricks together,) charred shank bone of a lamb representing the protective mark of the blood of a lamb the Hebrews were instructed to put on their doors against the angel of death that visited the houses of the Egyptians that fateful night, salt water in a bowl which symbolized the tears of the children of Israel and parsley for dipping in the salt water and a boiled egg.
This egg is not found in Biblical passages but crept in over the years to the proceedings. It is certainly a tip of the hat to pagan fertility rites and symbols which still persist to this day even in our modern observances of Easter. Eggs, rabbits and chicks are all fertility symbols and have nothing to do with our redemption story. One rabbi has wise observed the hard boiled egg is a symbol of the Jew. Always in hot water and resilient.
After father has answered the four questions, he drinks the second cup of wine and slowly drips ten drops of the red liquor on a white plate as he calls out the names of the ten plaques God sent on the Pharoah to soften his heart and make him willing to release God’s people into the wilderness to worship Him.
After this dramatic part of the story telling, the best meal of the year is served. Since the Temple no longer stands where lambs were offered to God, the Jews in modern times do not serve lamb but rather chicken or beef as well as the bread without leaven. The night of their deliverance the Jews had to eat in haste, and so there was no time for the bread to rise. Prior to the feast the mothers and homemakers gave a good spring cleaning to their houses and searched for any tiny bit of leaven. If any crumbs of leavened bread were found they were scraped into a wooden spoon and burned. This fire symbolizes the judgement of God on “chametz” (leaven) and so we too must cleanse our hearts of the leaven of sinful pride which puffs us up and causes us to act in unacceptable ways in God’s eyes. This is why the Scriptures admonish us to “Purge out the old leaven from you that you would be a new lump, just as you are unleavened bread. Our Passover is The Messiah, who was slain for our sake.” I Corinthians 5:7
Upon the conclusion of the passover meal, the children search for the hidden piece of matzah. This is especially touching to me. The children are looking all around for the middle piece of a trinity of matzahs. This matzah is striped and pierced like the body of our Lord. It has been wrapped in a linen cloth and hidden or buried. What a picture of Jesus this is. When a child discovers the hiding piece of matzah, there is great celebration including the giving of gifts and the singing of songs. This piece is brought forth to the table and so this piece of bread along side the third cup of wine makes up the elements of the Lord’s Supper. Jesus at this point in the seder on that first Holy week night pronounced the new reason to take and eat the bread and drink the wine. Not in remembrance of the first Passover and their deliverance from Egypt BUT in remembrance of Him.
Now do you see that Christians are not crashing a Jewish party when they celebrate the Passover but are embracing their own story of salvation? The Lord’s Supper grew out of the old, old story of Moses and the parting of the Red Sea. We follow the Lord in water baptism as the children of Israel followed Moses through the sea after the blood of an innocent lamb had been shed to release them from their slavery. The key is humble repentance and asking for that blood to cleanse us from our sin. Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us. Let us eat the bread of HIs flesh and drink the wine of His blood and be delivered from the rule of sin and Satan every time we observe the Last Supper. In the words of the Apostle Paul in I Corinthians 5:8 in the International version, “So let’s keep celebrating the festival, neither with old yeast nor with yeast that is evil and wicked, but with yeast-free bread that is both sincere and true.”
lindamusings 