On The Passover/Easter Connection

Every few years the Jewish and secular calendars collide and the first night of Passover coincides with Good Friday.  When this happens I am taken with the Jewish/Christian connection.  The Last Supper was, of course, a Seder--a Jewish dinner at which the exodus from Egypt by the Jews is commemorated and discussed.  Christ--then known as Yehoshua--was first and foremost a Jew.  Not only a Jew but a Jewish rabbi or teacher.  The Temple, and consequently the Jewish religion was being run by bureaucrats who had a vested interest in the status quo.  Yehoshua was, as were many of his Jewish compatriots, no fan of the Temple leaders.  He was of the view that these leaders had strayed far from the basic principles of Judaism.  Thus did Yehoshua became a liability to the status quo.  While certainly killed by the Romans I am certain that there were no Temple tears shed over Yehoshua's untimely demise.  Yehoshua's followers were Jews as well and had no thought of breaking away from the mainstream religion of the day.  Christianity's foundlings as a separate religion was many years away.

The fact that Passover and Christianity are so closely related is no accident.  Passover is completely interwoven in the founding of Christianity and, for Jews, Yehoshua's participation in a Passover Seder is completely normal.  There are other common factors as well.  Passover is well known as a festival of freedom.  It commemorates the liberation of the Israelites from Egypt after 400 years of slavery.  The teachings surrounding Passover seem to indicate that, since the time of Joseph when Israelites first settled in Egypt, they were a separate and distinct people who observed their own customers and circumcised their male children.  The fact that this "nation within a nation" had to be liberated so that they could settle in Israel is not lost on modern day Zionism.  The fact that Pharaoh would not let them go is also curious.  It appears to me that Egypt relied on slave labour to make bricks and the Jew's departure would have resulted in an economic loss to Egypt.  Whatever the reason the withdrawal from Egypt of the Jewish slaves has been a clarion call to every enslaved people.  Negro spiritual songs are replete with references to Moses and the sales--and their eventual emancipation.  Teaching Negro slaves Christianity imparted Jewish values to the converts that created a backlash resulting in eventual emancipation.  When African Americans were politically emancipated in the early 1960s Jewish leaders walked beside Martin Luther King in solidarity with a people who craved real emancipation.

And yet the early Christians could not let go of Passover as one of the events that contributed to the founding of the breakaway religion.  Whether this link was necessary to persuade Jews to join the new religion will probably never been known.  Paul, when founding the Roman Christian religion. still hangs on the the Passover link.  It could just have been deleted as one of the arcane historical facts but it was not.

For me it is the link between Jews and Christians that will never be broken.  As a festival of freedom I can see that the emergence of Yehoshua was a break with the oppressiveness of the Temple hierarchy.  As a festival of freedom it gave millions a new way to communicate with God.  We have much to celebrate together.

Bernie.