Passover
is a time to remember how God has redeemed us by the blood of the Lamb, first
from slavery to Egypt, and then from slavery to the world and sin. It is a time
to partake of our Lord, to eat Him symbolically in the form of the lamb, the
bread, and the wine, to act out taking Him into us physically to demonstrate the
spiritual reality.
In most of the Christian world, the day to celebrate our Lord's sacrifice,
Good Friday, is scarcely noted, all the attention being on Easter. For those of
us who are Messianic, while we also observe the true Resurrection Day, the Feast
of Firstfruits, Passover is the main event, as it were. It is the ultimate
Lord's Supper, containing not only the bread and the wine, but every element
that the
talmidim (disciples) would have had at their Last Seder: The bitter herbs
(which Judas "outed" himself when dipping into; Mat. 26:23), the haroset
(a sweet mixture of apple, herbs, and wine which resembles the mortar the
Hebrews used to make bricks), the Lamb, etc.
There are a few questions that those not in the Messianic movement often ask.
For example, "Can you find any evidence in the New Testament that the Christians
kept the Passover?" You mean besides the Last Seder? Indeed, I can. In his first
letter to the Corinthians, Sha'ul writes,
Your
boasting is not good. Don't you know the saying, "It takes only a little
hametz
(leaven)
to leaven a whole batch of dough?" Get rid of the old hametz,
so that you can be a new batch of dough, because in reality you are
unleavened. For our Pesach lamb, the Messiah, has been sacrificed.
So let us
celebrate the Seder not with leftover hametz,
the hametz
of
wickedness and evil, but with the matzah
of purity
and truth. (1 Co. 5:6-8, CJB)
One might argue, "Ah, but Paul meant that we should keep the Passover in a
spiritual sense." I agree, we should keep it in a spiritual sense, just as we
keep the Lord's Supper in a spiritual sense--but that doesn't mean that we
forego keeping it physically as well. Every ritual in the Scripture is designed
to let us "act out" something spiritual physically, so that full participation
in God's blessings would not be limited to intellectuals and mystics, but be
available to everyone.
The second question frequently asked is, "Don't you have to be circumcised to
observe Passover?" Indeed you do (Exo. 12:48). However, the issue of
circumcision is more than just a matter of a cutting of the flesh. By the 1st
Century CE, it was an entire rabbinic ceremony by which a Gentile ceased to be a
Greek, a Roman, etc., and became a full Jew, expected to keep all of the Torah
and the Jewish traditions. It was believed that only the circumcised Jews could
be saved (see
Acts 15:1), basically excluding Gentiles from God's Kingdom. Now note that
in Exodus 12:48, it does not say that the foreigner becomes a Jew when he is
circumcised, nor does the ritual act make him a citizen of Israel. When the
Apostles discouraged physical circumcision in favor of spiritual circumcision,
they were dealing with a rabbinical tradition that committed the sin of adding
to the Torah (cf. Deu. 12:32) and of Gentile exclusion.
It is wholly necessary for anyone celebrating God's deliverance of His people
to be numbered among and fully identified with those people. However, in Col.
2:11, we are told that we are indeed circumcised spiritually ("without hands")
when we trust in the Messiah, whether we are Jew ("circumcised" physically) or
Gentile ("uncircumcised"). Therefore we are grafted in to Israel (Rom. 11),
adopted into the family of Abraham (Rom. 4:11f, Gal. 3:29), whether or not we
have been circumcised under the extra-Biblical ceremony that the non-believing
Jewish rabbis and community would recognize.
Besides, if Sha'ul told the Corinthians, a mixed congregation (ch. 7-9) to
keep the Passover, it must be appropriate for all believers to observe it. Any
other decision would re-erect the wall of separation (Eph. 2:14) that Messiah
came to break down.
And finally, the question arises whether it is appropriate to have lamb, when
the Temple has been destroyed these last 2000 years (cf. Deu. 16:2). Many
Messianic Jews do forgo lamb and substitute another meat in accordance with
Jewish tradition and their own understanding about the requirement to have the
lamb only in Jerusalem. That's fine, and it's possible that they are right. Now,
it is correct that the proper Passover sacrifice, like all sacrifices (Deu. 12),
must be offered only in Jerusalem at the Temple. However, as Christian
commentators have so often observed, our proper sacrifice
has
already been offered in the proper place.
Therefore, to us, the Passover is no longer a proper sacrifice, but a
memorial: "Do this in remembrance of Me" (Luke 22:19). Note that Yeshua does not
repeat that formula for the wine, and yet every Christian considers it to
include the wine in the Lord's Supper. Messianics understand it it include the
whole of the Passover Seder as well, and at Beth HaMashiach, we believe it to
include the lamb as well.
To those readers who have never experienced the joy of having the Passover
Seder, I greatly encourage you to do so. It was one of the three life-changing
events that led me to becoming Messianic, for truly, every single element speaks
of our Lord.
Shalom!
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