Stay Holy, Stay Home: Passover

(Original series written Easter of 2020 during the beginning months of COVID-19.)

Do you remember the last time you broke bread with your friends or family? It feels like forever since we have sat across the table from someone, eaten a good meal and enjoyed the presence of people. Reading today’s passage brings longing to my heart and breaks it simultaneously. Here’s Jesus sitting with his closest friends, eating and drinking all the while shady Judas is plotting to betray him. What impeccable timing, Jud! But this is how the story unfolds; this is where the journey to the cross begins for Jesus and how fitting for it to begin during the Passover feast.

Read: Matthew 26:17-30

At the beginning of this series, I mentioned the ways the first Passover in Exodus 12:1-14 and our current situation with COVID – 19 seem to correspond. Much like the Israelites who painted the doorways of their homes with blood from a lamb in order for the spirit of death to passover, we too are huddled in our homes waiting for the spirit of death to pass. We are waiting for COVID-19 to pass-over on Passover. As the Israelites waited in their homes, they prepared the lamb to eat. Even in those dark hours, they feasted and drank in wait. Jesus and his disciples did the same. In the dark hours before Jesus’s betrayal, they ate and drank while Jesus waited for his time to come.

This is a crucial moment that begs us to pause and sit for a moment. Jesus is about to take on death. His body and blood will be spilled out so that the spirit of death will forever be vanquished! Hallelujah! Jesus is the Lamb painted on the doorframes of our souls! Death will pass over! Though we may be huddled in our homes today, death has no power over us.

We huddle in our homes now for the safety and love of our neighbors.

We huddle in our homes to obey the greatest commandment to love God and love our neighbor.

So let us feast and drink, and wait. We wait for tomorrow, the most dreaded glorious day of Calvary where Christ cries out “Lord, forgive them!”, knowing that God’s sacrifice has delivered us and is still delivering us from the clutches of death.

Activity

Have a feast of soup, bread and wine tonight! If your community is having a Passover feast via Zoom I would encourage you to join them. If not, Zoom with a small community of friends and/or family during dinner and take communion together. Read this passage before taking communion:

For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also he took the cup, 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