Paschal Observance

I’ve been asked to offer a brief “Easter Observance” for a local service organization. Here’s the reflection I’ve prepared.

Paschal Observance, 2018 B

Holy Week is the climax of the Church’s liturgical cycle. It is our Sunday for the entire year. In it we remember our Lord’s Passion, Crucifixion, and Resurrection—His Passover from death to life. Because that’s what Easter really is: It is the Christian Passover, Pascha in Greek. That’s why we refer to Jesus as the Paschal Lamb and the great Easter candle as our Paschal Candle.

Easter is a Germanic word, meaning dawn, and it is only in Germanic languages that we still call it this. For the vast majority of Christians throughout time and space, Christ’s Resurrection is literally the Passover. So it might help to remember what exactly Passover means.

The great story of God’s people Israel in the Old Testament is that of the Exodus, of God sending Moses to lead His people out from slavery in Egypt to freedom in the Promised Land of their ancestor Abraham. On the night before their deliverance, God instructed His people—not only the Hebrew slaves but anyone in Egypt who wished to partake in His promise—to eat a simple meal of lamb and flatbread. Yet the meal itself was both promise and prophecy.

The people were to eat bread that had not time to rise, as an indication of how swiftly God would deliver them. They were to eat it with their loins girded, ready for action, ready for God to act out His promise. With the blood of the lamb they were to mark the posts and lintels of their houses’ doorways, as a sign of the covenant, a sign that they trusted in God.

At night the destroyer, the angel of death, passed through Egypt, striking down the firstborn of every household, save for any that were marked by the blood of the lamb. Those houses were passed over, spared God’s judgment, and given God’s mercy. Keep in mind that the firstborn of Egypt were the inheritors, the wealthy, the powerful—the slave owners. God strikes down the mighty in order to deliver the oppressed.

The people of Israel were instructed to share this meal together every year in order to tell the story anew to each new generation. This was not remembrance in the modern sense, looking back on something that happened long ago and far away. The technical term is anamnesis, which means that we remember an event in a ritual and religious way that mysteriously binds us to the original event. In other words, those who share in the Passover meal are in some very real sense there at the Passover, at the Exodus from slavery to freedom, from death to life. Thus God did not simply deliver our ancestors long ago, but delivers us, now, today!

In the last week of Jesus’ mortal life—Holy Week—our Lord came to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover with His disciples. On Palm Sunday He was welcomed as the Son of David, the rightful King of Israel, which indeed He was. He was met with Messianic furor because the people of the city had seen Him very publically raise Lazarus from the dead not two miles away. But He chose to ride in on a donkey, as ancient kings would do to show their peaceful intentions. This told the Romans that He wasn’t there to start a fight—but also affirmed that He was the true King.

On Wednesday, Spy Wednesday, one of His 12 Apostles, Judas Iscariot, agreed to betray Jesus to those who sought His life. Like Judas, they thought He had come to start an insurrection, a war against Rome. Judas, I think, wanted to force Jesus’ hand. He wanted to force Jesus to fight. The rest, the Roman and Judean elite, just wanted Him dead—one less messiah to worry about. But they had to do it away from the adulation of the crowds, lest they start a riot.

On Maundy Thursday, Jesus celebrated the Passover with His disciples, but He did something remarkable: He told the story of the ancient Passover, but reinterpreted it, gave it new meaning. From now on, He said, this bread is My Body; this wine is My Blood. Jesus Himself is the Passover Lamb, whose Blood no longer sets one people free from slavery, but all peoples free from slavery to sin and death! And He commanded them to serve as He served them, and to love as He first loved them, and then—quite abruptly—He got up and left before the meal had ended. He did not drink the final closing cup of wine. “I will not drink of the fruit of the vine again until I taste it in My Father’s Kingdom,” He proclaimed.

We know the story from here. He left the city by night to pray in the Garden of Gethsemane, the garden of the olive-press. Judas led the soldiers to Him, away from the crowds, away from those who would protect Him. Jesus was arrested, tried before the High Priest, the Tetrarch, and the Roman Governor, then turned over to be crucified. Rome will brook no rival kings.

And it is from the Cross on Good Friday that our Lord calls out, “I thirst.” And after they had stuck a sponge full of sour wine on the end of a stick for Him to taste, He announced, “It is finished,” commended His Spirit to His Father, and expired with a loud cry. But what was finished? The Passover Meal! The Crucifixion was the sacrifice of the Passover Lamb, the Lamb of God. This had all been part of the Passover, and from that Cross God’s Kingdom was now inaugurated. Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! His Blood marks the New Covenant, the forgiveness of sins, life for the dead. All prophecy is fulfilled in Him.

Three days later He would rise from the Tomb with all the glorified dead resplendent in His train, having conquered sin, death, and the devil, having harrowed hell. And He would rise triumphant into Heaven, to send us His Holy Spirit, making us one in His Body, preparing a place for us in His Father’s House, and sending us out to prepare the world for His return in glory.

When we share in the Eucharist—the New Passover of the New Covenant—we do not simply remember something that happened long ago and far away. We, we ourselves, are transported to the Last Supper, to the foot of the Cross, to the shattering of hell and the Tomb burst asunder! Thus is every Sunday Easter Sunday, as we gather to remember, to be reborn, to die to sin and death and rise anew in Christ. Easter, Holy Pascha, is the Passover of the Church.