Leviticus 23:1-5 The Feast of Passover

We’ve just entered a new season in the church year, the season of Lent. God gave the Jewish people several festivals to celebrate through the year, all helping to remind the people who he is and the things he’s done and keeps on doing in our lives. This is why we’re looking at the Jewish feasts during Lent. The festivals and feasts point to Jesus as he fulfills them; he lives out what they mean, showing us who God is. The feasts are sacred assemblies, given to us to help shape our souls and form who we are. They’re rooted in the stories of Israel, stories with the power to change us. The festivals are times of anticipation that remind the people how much God cares about them, times where God’s Spirit fills the people with strength and hope as they follow God.

We’re beginning with Passover. The Feast of Passover is all about God giving Israel a new identity. It’s about slavery and lambs and blood on door posts, it’s about God saving his people and leading them into freedom. Still today, the Passover reminds us that we’re no longer slaves to sin or to death. Our story begins with Adam and Eve who want knowledge like God so much that they disobey God’s one rule. They know the penalty for sin is death and still they eat the forbidden fruit. When sin enters the world, God kills an animal to give Adam and Eve clothes; innocent blood is shed so that Adam and Eve can be covered, hiding their shame. We’ve become slaves to our sin, needing someone powerful enough to free us, to cover us with their blood: we need Jesus.

The Passover’s a crucial moment in Jewish history. The people of Israel have been slaves for about 400 years now and being slaves is part of who they are. Moses was raised in the palace of Pharaoh, but when confronted by his own people over killing an Egyptian soldier, he runs away for 40 years before God draws him back to face Pharaoh. God uses Moses to inflict 10 different plagues against the Egyptian people before Pharaoh is frightened enough to let the Jews leave. The plague that finally changes Pharaoh’s mind is the angel of death, who is sent to kill all the first-born males. Their death brings freedom to Israel. The only protection from the Angel of Death is to kill a lamb and spread its blood on their doorposts and when the Angel of Death comes, it will pass over their houses, sparing the first-born sons.

The story of the Passover is Israel’s story of freedom and protection. Celebrating Passover involves a lot of careful preparation. Four days before the feast, each family chooses a firstborn male lamb from the flock, and in the days leading up to Passover that lamb is inspected to make sure that there are no imperfections. At twilight on Passover, all the lambs are slaughtered, and their blood’s spread over the door-frames of the family homes. This ritual reminds the Israelites of the night God delivered his people from slavery into freedom. Spreading the blood on the doorposts reminds the families that on the first Passover everyone who was in a home marked with blood was spared from death. The blood on the doorpost reminds Israel that a price of innocent blood has been paid to purchase the freedom of those in that home. The Passover becomes the symbol of freedom through God, freedom from slavery, freedom to completely be God’s people.

The Jews carefully prepare for the Passover, picking out their best lamb. God asks for our best because he gives us his best in his son Jesus. God’s not only a just God, he’s also a gracious God. God hands his son over to death on the cross; Jesus, who is completely God and completely human, takes the punishment of death on himself because we’re unable, as sinners, to pay the price ourselves. There’s nothing we can do to make ourselves acceptable to God, in fact we make ourselves guiltier every day. Jesus’ blood keeps the angel of death from us, washing our sin away. Jesus’ innocent blood is shed to protect us, shed to make us pure so that we can be called children of God, shed so that we can be free from the power of sin in our lives, free to be shaped more and more into who God is calling us to be as his children and people.

Because Jesus’ blood covers us, we’re set free from guilt and shame. For us, the Passover feast points to the greater Lamb, to the Lord’s Supper, and the great banquet feast in heaven where Jesus is our host. The night before his death, Jesus is questioned and tested by religious and civil leaders, just as the Passover lamb was examined to ensure that it was without fault. In the end, Pilate pronounces his verdict: “I find no basis for a charge against him.” Yet, at twilight on Passover, as lambs all around Jerusalem are being slaughtered, Jesus, our true Passover Lamb, is led to judgment and then to a wooden cross, and his blood poured out. But Jesus rises from the grave to show us sin and death have both been conquered! Because Jesus’ blood has been shed for our sin, ours never will be!

When Jesus first appears in the Gospel of John, John the Baptist calls out, “Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” John understands who Jesus is, why he’s come, but also what this means. Jesus comes to retell the story of God’s salvation and to live it out, changing the story from innocent lambs shedding their blood for us, to God himself shedding his blood for his people through Jesus. Because Jesus has changed the story, our story changes too; we change from being people who are slaves to sin and death, to people free to live rich abundant lives, free from fear and anxiety, free to embrace whatever is happening in our lives because we know that nothing can separate us from God’s love because of Jesus’ blood shed for us. Our identities are changed, we’re no longer slaves to the things that wrap us in their chains: our secret addictions, our false identities given to us by those around us, our work, our looks, or other people’s view of who we are.

Those who trust in Jesus are brought from death into life; we’re given new identities as children of God. We’re brought out of a life that is oriented to meaningless pursuits and empty promises, into the promise of life to the full. We often let other people give us our identity, good or bad. For years I thought I would always be a failure because I was told if I drop out of school, if I leave home, I’d never amount to anything. I looked for my identity in my parent’s approval and in the approval of the people around me. I never really fit in, so I dropped out of school and later felt useless and depressed. Change started when I let go of needing other people’s approval and realized it was Jesus’ approval I wanted. It was the Lord’s Supper that helped me realize he accepted me.

A young girl in the alternative high school in Allendale, Michigan thought she was worthless, that her only value lay in her looks and body. She looked for love in the arms of many of the boys in school and saw herself as nothing. I remember her crying one afternoon, wondering if that was all that life held for her. Imagine her surprise and wonder when I told her she was a princess, that she was cherished as a beloved daughter by God and that Jesus washes away her old identity and wants her to see herself through his eyes and not the eyes of the boys around her or her father’s eyes. Years later, I received an email from her; she had been baptized and was getting married to a man who called her his princess. She had told him about our conversation and from then on, he called her princess.

The Passover and the Lord’s Supper remind us that instead of finding our identity in the things and people of this world, we receive our identity as precious beloved children of God through Jesus’ sacrificial blood on the wooden frame of the cross, saved from the brokenness of our sin and set free to be life changers in the world as we share with others how much they mean to Jesus, that Jesus can give them a new identity, a new life. I learned that God loves me more than I could ever imagined, even dying for me. If God is king of the universe, you are each princesses and princes in the kingdom.

Following Jesus changes your life every day; know that he protects you, loves you, died for you and has given you his Spirit as a guide through life and a reminder that you are his sisters and brothers. You are a beloved child of God.