Christ our Passover – Sacrificed for Us
By Kathy Walzer

Fifteen people gathered in the undercroft for our Maundy Thursday interpreted Passover seder meal and table Eucharist. “Seder” is the Hebrew word for “order” and the Passover meal (like our Eucharist) is ritual meal that celebrates the salvation of our God in delivering us from the power of our enemies. The Jews annual celebration of the Passover (commanded in the Law) is a commemoration of the deliverance God wrought for the Hebrew people in bringing them out of bondage in Egypt and into the promised land as a free people.

In reenacting this meal annually, the Jews celebrate that foundational event that constituted their formation as a nation, but it is also a participation in that deliverance, an owning of it for themselves, a recognition that “I” was a slave in Egypt and would still be in bondage if God had not acted to deliver “me.”

It is no accident that Jesus chose the Passover meal to institute the sacrament of the “new covenant in my blood” that He was about to shed for our deliverance from the bondage of sin and death. In commemorating God’s mighty act in creating His ancient people, He was pointing to the “new thing” He was about to do (prophesied of old by Isaiah and Jeremiah) – to reconstitute the people of God as His Body. He is the Passover lamb whose shed blood covers us and delivers us from the death that our sins deserve. It is faith in Him, and, by faith, participation in the benefits of His passion and death, of His blood shed for our salvation, that now constitutes the people of God. So He offers us His body and blood and asks us to trust in Him for our salvation so that the Destroyer may pass over us.

Tom Atwood was our guest who spoke to us of Christ in the Passover and the origins of various aspects of the seder before and after the time of Christ. After the meal and the Eucharist, following the example of our Lord Jesus Christ, those who wished to participate washed one another’s feet as a sign of our service to our Lord and to one another, before proceeding to the sanctuary for the stripping of the altar. It was a holy night of fellowship, commemoration, and participation in Christ and very special way to take part in Holy Week celebrations.