Category Archives: Passover

May 19, 2013 · 12:00 am

The Season of Pentecost

The Jewish festival of Shavuot (Hebrew: שבועות‎, lit. “Weeks”) is one of three main annual pilgrimage festivals in the Judaism. It commemorates God giving the Ten Commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai and it also celebrates the conclusion of the grain harvest in Israel. The date of Shavuot is directly linked to the celebration of the Jewish Passover. The grain harvest began with the harvesting of the barley during Passover and ended with the harvesting of the wheat at Shavuot. The time in between was seven weeks or fifty days. This time frame also represents the time between Israel’s Exodus from Egypt until the giving of the Law at Sinai.

Pentecost is a major feast day of the Christian liturgical year. It is the Christian counterpart of Shavuot. The word Pentecost (Ancient Greek: Πεντηκοστή) means “the Fiftieth [day].” It occurs fifty days after Easter or Resurrection Sunday which roughly coincides with the Jewish festival of Shavuot. This is not coincidental. Just as Easter is the prophetic fulfillment of Passover, Pentecost is the prophetic fulfillment of Shavuot. The two feasts, Shavuot and Pentecost, have much in common, both historically and spiritually.

During the celebration of Shavuot the Jewish people were reminded of God’s Law:

Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.  (Deut. 8:3-4)

Often Jewish participants would spend all night during Shavuot studying the Torah. They would read significant portions of the Torah aloud.

Pentecost has to do with God’s Law as well. The Prophet Jeremiah wrote of a time that the Law would come in a new way:

But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.  (Jeremiah 31:33)

This is what happens to us when the Holy Spirit comes upon us as it did on the Day of Pentecost for the early disciples. Jesus said that He came not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it (Matthew 5:17). It is the action of the Holy Spirit to bring us more into alignment with God’s Law. We cannot keep the Law by our own efforts, but we can yield to the Holy Spirit whom Jesus said would lead us into all truth and make alive His teachings.

Pentecost is not simply a static day of celebration of the historical birth of the Christian Church. Surely it marked the beginning of the Church. As with Shavuot for the Jewish people, Pentecost is a time for us to reflect upon God’s Word, allowing the Spirit to renew our zeal for both the Law and the Gospel.

The Season of Pentecost is the longest season of the liturgical year. The Sundays following Pentecost and extending up to the beginning of the new liturgical year in Advent are filled with readings concerning Christian growth. To live in Christ one must grow in the Faith. Spiritual stagnation could ultimately lead to spiritual death and a forsaking of God’s Holy Law.

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Filed under Law of Moses, lectionary, liturgical preaching, liturgy, Moses, Passover, Pentecost, prophecy, Shavuot

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March 30, 2013 · 12:02 am

Holy Saturday

8940635-largeO Grave Where Is Thy Victory?

Job 14:1-14 or Lamentations 3:1-9, 19-24; Psalm 31:1-4, 15-16; 1 Peter 4:1-8; Matthew 27:57-66 or John 19:38-42

Jesus did not rest in the grave. We say in the Apostle’s Creed that before His resurrection He descended into hell. His mission remained the same: “To seek and to save those who are lost.”

Therefore it says,

“WHEN HE ASCENDED ON HIGH,
HE LED CAPTIVE A HOST OF CAPTIVES,
AND HE GAVE GIFTS TO MEN.”

(Now this expression, “He ascended,” what does it mean except that He also had descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is Himself also He who ascended far above all the heavens, so that He might fill all things.)   (Ephesians 4:8-10)

In a moment of greatest defeat we discover the greatest victory. Do we dare participate in this victory? If so, let us first taste of this defeat. It is a defeat of our flesh. It is a defeat of our will. It is a defeat of our pride.

Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same intention (for whoever has suffered in the flesh has finished with sin), so as to live for the rest of your earthly life no longer by human desires but by the will of God. You have already spent enough time in doing what the Gentiles like to do, living in licentiousness, passions, drunkenness, revels, carousing, and lawless idolatry. They are surprised that you no longer join them in the same excesses of dissipation, and so they blaspheme. But they will have to give an accounting to him who stands ready to judge the living and the dead. For this is the reason the gospel was proclaimed even to the dead, so that, though they had been judged in the flesh as everyone is judged, they might live in the spirit as God does.  (1 Peter 4:1-6)

Perhaps some of us are still dead in our sins. Now is the time to hear the message of the Gospel. Now is the time to live in the Spirit and die to the flesh. Now is the time for God’s favor. Now is the time for salvation. Jesus is our Passover. God has passed over our sins because Jesus took them upon Him on the cross and paid the penalty for us. Can we neglect such a great salvation?

We must pay the most careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away. For since the message spoken through angels was binding, and every violation and disobedience received its just punishment, how shall we escape if we ignore so great a salvation? This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard him. God also testified to it by signs, wonders and various miracles, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.  (Hebrews 2:1-4)

If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.  (Hebrews 10:26-27)

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March 28, 2013 · 12:00 am

Maundy Thursday

valentin-de-boulogne-the-last-supperHoly Communion

Exodus 12:1-4, (5-10), 11-14; Psalm 116:1, 10-17; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26;  John 13:1-17, 31b-35

Let us begin by saying that Jesus’ last supper with His disciples was not the Seder. It was not the Passover meal. This was a time of preparation for the Passover. The Passover meal could not be served until the slaughtering of the lambs outside the city which would occur the next day.  (Of course, Jesus, the Lamb of God, would also be slain on that same day which we call Good Friday.)

Jesus was doing something new. It was not a reenactment and remembrance of the Jewish Passover and escape from Egypt, although what He was about to do would be related to that event in a significant and spiritual way. Jesus was instituting a new meal that He told His disciples to observe in perpetuity.

The Apostle Paul writes about this special meal in today’s Epistle Lesson:

For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.  (1 Corinthians 11:23-26)

What was Jesus doing with His disciples? He was proclaiming His death before it actually happened. He said that His body was going to be broken and that His blood was going to be shed. He was saying that He was going to be the last lamb to be sacrificed for the sins of the people. He was to become the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world once and for all.

How is the Holy Communion related to the Jewish Passover? We remember that the blood of the lambs were sprinkled over the doors of Jewish homes so that the angel of death would pass over them as they prepared to escape from Egypt the following day. Jesus’ blood covers us so that we might escape the punishment for our sins and be set free from the bondage of Sin to live in newness of life in Christ.

Jesus was rehearsing with His disciples what He would be doing in a symbolic way. The bread represented His body and the wine represented His blood. He was not only rehearsing. He was asking His disciples to keep in their memory what He was about to do by partaking of this special meal as often as possible. They would not just be remembering with their minds what had happened but they would actually be participating themselves in the event of His saving act on the cross by reenacting the event in a spiritual way which is mysterious and not fully explainable, but altogether real. John’s Gospel speaks of both the power and the necessity of the Communion service.

Very truly I tell you, the one who believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”

Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”

Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.”   (John 6:47-58)

As disciples we not only need to remember Jesus’ sacrifice, but to experience and participate in His sacrifice. We do this by observing what we now call the Holy Communion or Eucharist. We need to feed on Jesus for spiritual sustenance which helps us to strengthen our faith.

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