Hopefully, you have recovered from the Easter weekend.  I know for our family it was a very long, but a very rewarding weekend.  I love Easter.  For the obvious reason of celebrating the resurrection of our Savior from the grave sin victory over sin and death, but also for other reasons.  It is the unofficial beginning to Springtime, Reese’s eggs are infinitely better than the normal cups, Sunrise service is very labor intensive but fun, and we also get to celebrate the Passover.

“Woah, Passover? Isn’t that a Jewish thing?” I’m sure that some of you may be thinking that, and yes it is traditionally considered a Jewish celebration.  However, in recent years I have come to recognize that it is also a very Christian celebration as well.  We held a Passover Seder in our home this year.  The Seder is the telling of the story of how God delivered the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt to the promised land.  It involves a Seder plate that has on it: horseradish, parsley, a bowl of salt water, a roasted egg, the bone from a lamb shank, and a sweet mixture of apples, honey and nuts called Karoset.  All of these things represent a different part of the story.  There are questions asked by children, cups of wine (or juice), and matzah crackers that are broken and eaten.  There is also a meal shared with friends as a part of the evening.  If you have never been involved in a Passover Seder, I strongly recommend it.

The thing that makes the Passover so great, as a believer, is that every part of it points toward Jesus.  You see it in His provision for a way out of bondage.  You see it in the way that there is a point near the beginning where you take a piece of matzah and break it and hide it to represent Jesus.  You see it in the fact that at the Last Supper in the Gospels the cup that Jesus raises and blesses as the cup of the new covenant is the third cup that you drink in the Seder, and it is called The Cup of Redemption.  We had an incredible evening with friends gathered at our home celebrating Passover.

But honestly the thing that makes it all hit home for me is when you think about how the first Passover was celebrated in Egypt.  God told the Hebrews to take a perfect young lamb into their home at the beginning of that week.  Imagine that the children would have loved on that little lamb.  It would have been a part of the noise of the home for a few days.  Then on the evening when God told them, the father in the home would have gathered everyone in the family outside as they began to prepare for the evening.  They would gather around the lamb, and the father would put his hand on that lamb’s head.  There had to have been a moment where the eyes of the father would have looked from the lamb to his oldest son, and said, “I’m going to kill this lamb right now so that you don’t have to die tonight.”  He would then cut the lamb’s throat and begin to prepare the home by spreading the blood on the doorposts so that God would pass over the house when he came through for the final plague.  Here is the amazing part, God the Father did the same thing with Jesus for us after that last supper.  He put His hand on the head of the Son, the perfect Lamb, and then sacrificed Him so that we wouldn’t have to die.  Let that sink in for a moment.  As believers, we were bought with a great price.

So, the Passover isn’t strictly a Jewish thing.  Through the death and resurrection of Jesus, we are grafted into the family of God through salvation.  Therefore, the heritage of Jews of celebrating the Passover is now our heritage.  We are a part of that line of believers.  As followers of Christ, because of what Jesus did at the Last Supper, we join in with the same tradition and heritage that was celebrated by the disciples, the Israelites for centuries, and the Hebrews as they were delivered from Egypt and wandered in the desert.

The weekend was made even sweeter by the fact that on Good Friday, I had the incredible privilege of leading our second daughter, Sophie, to salvation at our house.  To have the tangible example of watching our Savior transfer my daughter from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of His glorious light is a humbling and amazing thing to get to experience.

All of that to say, I pray that Easter was more than just candy and bunnies for you.  I hope that God revealed more of himself to you this past weekend, and will continue to do so in the days ahead as we pray and fast together.

• Jason