Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us. St. Paul wrote those words in a letter to the Corinthians and we know them from our Eucharistic celebrations. On Good Friday, those words take on an even deeper resonance as we consider Jesus’ death as the lamb of God who takes away the Sin of the world. This Holy Week, the sermons have been focusing on different ways of interpreting and understanding the cross of Christ. Today, as the cross is on full display, we consider the cross through the lens of Passover.
Even
before Israel was a nation, the Passover was a part of Jewish identity. The
people were enslaved in Egypt and God became their savior. The event that led
to their release from enslavement was the Passover. There was a plague of death
that swept through Egypt, killing every firstborn child. However, the Hebrew
people were saved from this death by God’s instruction to take a lamb, slaughter
and eat it, and smear some of its blood on the doorpost of their homes. This
would signal to Death to pass over that family. It was this plague of death that
caused Pharaoh to relent and let the people go. God then led the people out of
Egypt and into the Promised Land, providing their final salvation from slavery
at the Red Sea as the waters were driven back and the people passed through on
dry ground.
From
this point on, the idea of sacrifice was embedded in the tradition as lambs,
goats, and bulls were routinely offered to God. The reading from Isaiah gives
us an insight into this mindset: “He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet
he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a
sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth… he bore
the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.” This
understanding of a sacrifice that saves the people is attached to Jesus when
John the Baptist refers to him as the “lamb of God.” And Jesus himself carries
this mantle when he teaches that he is the Good Shepherd and that love has no
higher expression than to lay down one’s life for another.
The
idea of sacrifice had become embedded in the people’s understanding of how the
world worked. Sacrifices were tangible demonstrations of the truths of God’s
provision and mercy. And lest we think that we are superior to them or have evolved,
we have practices that might appear just as silly to others. As it’s just about
tax day, so think about a tax credit. You owe a particular amount of money and
yet you do not have to pay a part of it because you lost some money in business
or donated to charity. In both instances, we are let off the hook for paying
what is owed – in one instance with a sacrifice and in another with a made-up
numbers game. The fact of the matter is that different cultures have different
ways of understanding how we are let out of debts that we have accrued.
The
saving events of the Passover are recalled annually in the Jewish faith,
including in the year that Jesus was crucified. John, in his telling of the Passion
of Jesus, hyperlinks this idea of sacrifice to the death of Jesus. He writes, “Now
it was the day of Preparation for the Passover; and it was about noon.” It’s
not so much that John is trying to be a journalist who is giving us the exact
date and time of Jesus’ crucifixion, instead, he is pointing us toward what it
means. Noon on the day of Preparation is the time the lambs were slaughtered
for the Passover celebrations. It is no coincidence that this is the time that the
people shout “Crucify him” and that Jesus is led to Golgotha. It is why we
likewise gather at noon some two-thousand years later.
So
when we look upon the cross, what do we gain by seeing it as Christ our
Passover being sacrificed for us? For those who were embedded within that culture
of sacrifice, the meaning was obvious – just as the people had been spared from
the plague of Death by the blood of the Passover lamb, so too are we spared
from the finality of death in Jesus. The reason why we can be confident of our eternal
life in God is because this has been demonstrated in the death of Jesus. They would
have also understood the great reversal of the cross. No longer do the people offer
sacrifices to God for the forgiveness of their sins, but as the author of
Hebrews puts it, we can have boldness before the throne of God because Jesus
has put an end to all sacrificing as he himself becomes the final and ultimate
sacrifice to take away the Sin of the world.
Sometimes
people will ask though – why did there need to be so much blood? Couldn’t have
God forgiven us without a sacrifice? The is, of course, “yes.” God can do
anything that God chooses to do. But God chose to offer salvation in such a way
that it would make sense to the people who saw what happened. Jesus, who has been
called the Lamb of God, is executed on the same day and at the same time as the
Passover lambs are being slaughtered. Sometimes people say “just give me a sign.”
Well, as far as signs go, it doesn’t really get any more obvious than this. And
if we were waiting for a literal sign, we even have one placed on the cross
that reads “Jesus, the King of Jews.” Sure, that was the charge against him and
it was intended as a cruel joke, but it was the truest thing ever written.
This
sacrifice shows us that violence never wins, as love is stronger. We may never have
a full and sufficient answer for why there remains suffering and evil in the
world. The cross does not necessarily answer that for us; but the cross does
tell us, without question, what the answer is not. The answer is not that God
doesn’t care or that God doesn’t love us. No, that can’t be it. In Jesus, God
demonstrates a love beyond our ability to fathom. The creator of all that is
comes to us in the flesh and is subjected to our ridicule and rejection. Jesus
suffers shame and torture. And he suffers an excruciating death. If God didn’t
care about us there’s no way God would do this. If God did not love us, there
can be no explanation for this.
Up
to this point, God had been known as the one who called and redeemed Israel. Again,
this was solidified when God saved the people in Egypt and led them through the
Red Sea. In the cross, God is doubling down on this identity. God saves us not by
a miracle from on high with another plague or parting of the waters. Instead,
in Jesus, God takes on the plague of death himself and blazes the trail from
death into eternal life. In Jesus, God is doing for all of creation what had
already been done for Israel. It is why Jesus said, “When I am lifted up from
the earth, will draw all people to myself.” Jesus is the sacrifice that allows
us all to pass over from guilt to forgiveness, from fear to hope, from death to
life.
In
Hebrews, we heard that Jesus was obedient in his suffering. One theologian has
said that at the heart of sacrifice is obedience. In taking something and
giving it to God, we demonstrate trust in God. How much truer this is when what
we give is our life? Obedience is at the heart of sacrifice because puts us in alignment
with God. Obedience is not about springing to attention and doing as we are ordered.
No, obedience is about harmony with God. In obedience, we trust that all things
belong to God and that God is a life-giving, liberating, and loving God. So
nothing given to God is ever lost, only transformed. Jesus’ life is not lost on
the cross, it is opened wider so that it belongs to us all. It’s a truth that
we would do well to learn from – obedience to God, just like walking the way of
the cross, is truly the way of life and peace.
Throughout
the New Testament, the authors struggle to explain how exactly it is that Jesus
is a sacrifice, but they all direct us toward this understanding of Jesus as the
personification and perfection of the Passover. The one thing they are all very
clear on is that through the cross, the love and liberation of God flow forth
just as Jesus’ blood was shed. Just as the first Passover was about God’s great
love for the people that led to their liberation, so too does Jesus’ cross assure
us just how foundational and true it is to say that God is love. It is a love
that makes all things well. This is what Jesus directs us towards when, with
his final breath, he declares that “It is finished.”
There
is nothing else for us to do when it comes to salvation, only to receive. There
is nothing else for us to worry about when it comes to our forgiveness, only to
enjoy. There is nothing else for us to fear about death, only to pass through
it just as the people passed through the Red Sea into the Promised Land. There
is nothing else for us to focus on, only the love of God that goes to the cross
to make it clear that all has been made well. It is finished because Christ our
Passover has been sacrificed for us.
