The beginning of the Passover ceremony goes something like this.
A child asks:
"What makes this night different from all other nights?"
And the answer: "We were slaves in Egypt, and God delivered us with an outstretched hand."
What a tremendous line through which to frame our experience of the great Passover feast at Easter.
I am told that the lambs designated for sacrifice at Passover were run onto spits cruciform, their entrails wrapped around their heads like crowns. The boy Jesus, entering Jerusalem for the first time to celebrate the feast that He knew He came to fulfill, could not have escaped the sight of the crucified lambs all around Him.
This is my body, broken for you. This is my blood, spilled for you.
The perfect, spotless sacrificial Lamb flooded the Passover table with divinity and went willingly to death. His blood shook the earth as the old, broken world and the new, redeemed world collided in the overlap formed by the bloodied arms of the cross. The perfect Lamb, crucified.
The perfect Passover sacrifice became a breaker of chains. We pass into freedom and life through his passing into death to conquer it. Through his consumption by the grave, He consumes the grave.
How is this night different from all other nights?
In the great fulfillment of the Passover sacrifice, we who once were slaves are now free indeed.
Christos Anesti, my friends.
