Preparing for the Passover - The Fifth Sunday of Lent

The readings this evening are both about preparations for keeping the Passover, the great Jewish feast which recalls the escape of the Hebrew people from captivity in Egypt. Thinking about Passover can help us as we look towards Holy Week, just a week on from today. For Easter is our Passover, our feast of liberation from sin and death.

For us it all starts here on Palm Sunday with its palm procession and donkeys. Then we have the evening services on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday with Jane Hedges giving the addresses. Jane was a Canon Pastor here from …to…Then Maundy Thursday with Jane preaching again at our evening Eucharist. This commemorates the Passover meal which we now call the Last Supper and continues with a vigil of prayer as we remember Jesus’s prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane; then there’s Good Friday as we follow Christ to the cross and then the blank emptiness of Holy Saturday which ends with the Paschal Vigil leading to the brightness of Easter Day.

So how did our Jewish and Christian ancestors keep the Passover? In our first reading, we heard how Josiah, the last great king of Judah prepared for the Passover to be observed in Jerusalem. This was a great moment of spiritual revival – Josiah had restored the Jewish temple and reordered its worship after a forgotten book of the law had been rediscovered during his reign.

As the writer of Chronicles puts it:

‘No Passover like it had been kept in Israel since the days of Samuel the prophet; none of the kings of Israel had kept such a Passover as was kept by Josiah, and the priests and the Levites, and all Judah and Israel who were present, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem.’

The original Passover, as described in the book of Exodus was a hasty meal of roast lamb with herbs and unleavened bread as the Hebrews, protected by God, made their escape from Egypt, while the angel of death punished the Egyptians, ‘passing over’ the Hebrew dwellings and enabling their escape…

Over the centuries the festival had become the defining ceremony of God’s people, and with the building of the temple under Solomon, Jerusalem had become the focus of the yearly pilgrimage. To be in Jerusalem for Passover became the aspiration for every pious Jew.

But there is a note of caution in this account, for after all the spiritual fervour of Josiah’s reform the Chronicler tells us that he made the critical mistake of entering into a alliance with Egypt, the ancient enemy, and this alliance led to Josiah’s death in battle. In the very next chapter the weakened nation falls to the Babylonian invasion. Jerusalem is destroyed and the people are taken away into captivity in Babylon. In the order of Hebrew Bible, this book is placed at the end, and these chapters are the last of all.

So Josiah’s Passover was almost the last to be celebrated with proper devotion before the exile.

The reading from Luke’s Gospel gives us an account of the Passover kept by Jesus and the twelve on the night before Jesus was arrested. Jesus brought to the Passover meal a new symbolism and significance.

He took unleavened bread, the visual and edible reminder of the flight from Egypt, and broke it. He took a cup of wine, (for four cups of wine are traditional at the Passover meal) and shared it. And he described the broken bread and poured out wine both as symbols of his coming death, and as signs of salvation that his death would bring.

John’s Gospel describes things differently, saying that Jesus’ last meal with his disciples took place just before the Passover, and this is because John understands Jesus as being himself the lamb of sacrifice, the lamb without blemish whose sprinkled blood saves us from death, protects us from evil and delivers us into freedom.

In spite of differences of detail, the significance and symbolism of Passover is clear. It is a feast of liberation and salvation. For Jews, it calls to mind the escape from Egypt, for Christians, liberation from sin and salvation from death…

So for both Jews and Christians a time of preparation for this defining festival is important. Josiah’s Passover is the high point of Old Testament history; while the whole movement of the Gospel accounts of Jesus’s life and ministry lead up to this point, the last meal on the night he would be betrayed, and the Crucifixion which follows.

The preparations which Josiah puts in place are extensive: people gather according to their ancestral houses and the priests and the Levites and the singers and the doorkeepers all perform their accustomed duties. The preparations which Jesus asks Peter and John to put in place are clearly well-understood and historic rituals: they don’t need to ask what he wants them to prepare, only where they should prepare it.

And so for us, as we begin Passiontide and look ahead to Holy Week, how do we prepare ourselves?

First, I would suggest, by remembering our Jewish roots. Christianity would not have happened had it not been for God’s ancient covenant with the Jews, the escape from Egypt, the giving of the Law, the promise of salvation.

In our Christian faith our Passover happens at baptism, when we pass through the waters and are born again to a new life in Christ. The cross-shaped font in the passage between the Nave and the Quire is a lasting reminder of our inclusion into the life of Christ, the promise of salvation which is for all people.

There is so much to threaten our world at the moment, so much injustice, oppression and fear. Yet even in a world that is so troubled, God can set us free from the fear that oppresses us, from the captivity we cannot escape by ourselves, from the terrible sense of exile and loss that overwhelms us at times.

God invites us into the kingdom of love and freedom that Jesus promised his disciples. Times change, challenges come to us all, but what God promised to his ancient people as they escaped from captivity, what Jesus demonstrated in the love poured out on the cross is all there in the waiting. We have these two weeks to prepare for our Passover from death to life, from captivity to Easter joy.