Passover and Easter

Passover and Easter are upon us. For Jews and for Christians these are foundational stories. 

Here is what I wish every Christian (and every Australian who has a holiday over Easter!) would know and remember:

Easter, the celebration of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, is a re-telling of the Passover story. 

Easter expands the scope of the blessings of Passover without ever diminishing the significance of Passover per se. 

The original telling goes as follows:

1. God’s covenant people, the Jews, were enslaved in Egypt. 
2. God remembers them and his promises to them. 
3. God sends a leader, a savior to lead them out of captivity. 
4. God defeats Israel’s enemy, Pharoah, through miraculous intervention, including the sacrifice of Passover lambs.
5. God leads His people through the parted waters of the Red Sea into the wilderness and then onto the Promised Land. 
6. God’s people still look forward to the final consummation of this story - “next year in Jerusalem”. 

The Easter retelling, in Christian theology, goes as follows. 

1. All of humanity is enslaved by sin and death. 
2. God remembers them and his promises to them (in creation and through law and the prophets). 
3. God, in the person of Jesus, becomes the savior of all humanity, a savior to lead humanity out of spiritual captivity. 
4. God defeats humanity’s enemy (sin and death) through his own death and resurrection, becoming, according to the Christian Scriptures, the Passover Lamb sacrificed for the sins of the whole world. 
5. God leads humanity (or those willing to follow his lead) through this wilderness of suffering and evil on towards the Promised Land of the New Heavens and the New Earth. 
6. All of reality looks forward to the final consummation of this story - “next year in the New Jerusalem”.

You can’t have the re-telling without the telling. You certainly can’t say the re-telling replaces the telling. 

In Christian theology the re-telling broadens the scope of the Passover to throw open its blessings of freedom and hope to all the nations. 

There is a double blessing in Passover/Easter. To the Jew first and then secondarily to the Gentile (to quote the Christian Scriptures in Romans 1:16). 

My plea to Australia is this - as we celebrate (or at least take a holiday at Easter), may we remember that we are sharing in a Jewish story, inheriting Jewish blessings, and that as a result, in this time of antisemitism and hatred we all have a moral duty to stand with those through whom all the blessings of Easter have come to us. 

Chag Sameach, Shabbat Shalom, and Happy Easter!