Spring is a time for flowers to burst into bloom, trees to tremble with new leaves, showers to scrub the skies until a rainbow shows through — all signs of new life!
Fittingly, the joyful religious events of this season in both Judaism and Christianity bear the promise of freedom and a new life for those who will believe.
Though some solemn events were part of its past, a light-hearted spirit will mark Judaism’s ritual meal of the Seder this Saturday night launching Passover, a week-long celebration of the freeing of the Jews from slavery in ancient Egypt.
Symbolic foods eaten at appropriate references during the retelling of the exodus story are reminders of the bitterness of the life of slaves making bricks and mortar to build elaberate Egyptian structures.
Central to the story is the lamb bone. It represents the sacrifice, in the Biblical account, from which blood was used to mark the door post of the home of a believing Jewish family. Seeing the blood, the death angel sent by God would “pass over” that home while taking every first-born son found in an unmarked Egyptian home to force an evil Pharaoh to let the Jewish people go.
That same theme — freedom and the sacrifice that makes it possible —is a part of the Christian observances this weekend. Many church services tonight will contain some form of a replica of the Last Supper, likely a Seder celebrated by Jesus and his closest disciples.
It was during that meal when the one whom the Bible described as “the Lamb of God slain from the foundation of the world” made a veiled explanation of how his coming death on the cross would spare a believer from a spiritual death, much like the blood of the sacrificial lamb spared the Jewish families who believed and followed God’s direction.
Explaining that they represented his body, Jesus broke off pieces of a loaf of bread and gave them to the disciples. When he distributed the wine, The Christ said it represented his blood “shed for many for the remission of sins.”
That hope is behind the symbolic communion service with the unleavened bread and wine (or grape juice) which remains an integral feature of Christian worship.
Figuratively, Christians hold that when the unblemished blood of the one described as Emanuel (God with us) is applied to the heart — sort of the door post of the human soul, the sin there is covered and the believer is freed from its inevitable consequence. Through faith, he or she is eternally free to live a new kind of life.
So it is that on Good Friday Christians look back at the crucifixion of Christ with a mixture of remorse and gratitude. The entire process is seen as the fulfillment of that familiar Bible passage found in John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son so that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
Even for the most ardent believer, all of that would have been meaningless without the event most celebrated by Christians — Easter, the joyful commemoration of the resurrection!
Because Jesus rose from grave the conqueror over death, it is evidence to believers that he is who he said he was — one with God the Father. The Savior who said, “Come unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden…and you shall find rest for your souls.”