The Jewish Passover and the Christian Lord’s Supper are times to both reflect and resolve.
After great battles, it has been common to say things like “Remember the Maine,” the battle cry of the Spanish-American War. “Remember the Alamo” was popular during the Mexican-American War. “Remember Pearl Harbor” rallied the U.S. after the Japanese aerial attack on December 7, 1941. Well, God wanted His people to remember this battle, too. “This day shall be to you a memorial; and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord throughout your generations…by an everlasting ordinance” (Ex 12:14). Why call it Passover? Because when God saw the sacrificial lamb’s blood on the doorway, He said He would pass, or hover, over that house, protecting its inhabitants from the Destroyer. Once they entered Canaan, they were to enact a special seven-day holiday every spring. On Day 1, they must search the house to remove all leaven, or yeast. In the Bible leaven is a picture of the corrupting influence of sin. The leaven of the Pharisees, we are told, is hypocrisy (Lk 12:1). How hypocrisy bloats us! Jesus hated hypocrisy because as long as we pretend to be what we are not, we can never become what He designed us to be. The leaven of the Sadducees (Mt 16:6) seemed to have been their intellectual pride that rejected the supernatural, while the leaven of the Herodians (Mk 8:15) was compromise with the world. It all has to go! So, writes Paul, “Purge out the old leaven,…since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us” (1 Cor 5:7). Do you see? Christ the Lamb has died to save us from sin, so we should cooperate with Him in rejecting these corrupting influences like pride, hypocrisy, and compromise in our lives. Then let’s celebrate Christ. Remember the Lamb!