To the Editor:
By Judith Niewiadomski
In this area we have a long break for Easter and Passover. Usually Passover is in the same week as Easter, a few days before or a few days after. But because our calendar is based on the phases of the moon and the Hebrew calendar is lunisolar (based on both moon and sun cycles), sometimes they don’t sync. Our calendar adds a day every four years, the Hebrew calendar adds a leap month every two to three years to keep the calendar in sync with the astronomical seasons and to keep the major holidays at the same time of year.
Whatever the distance between the celebrations, the core values of Passover and Easter (more accurately, Resurrection day), are spiritually linked. Passover is an eight day celebration remembering the deliverance of the children of Israel from 400 years of slavery in Egypt. When the sons of Israel first moved to Egypt during a worldwide famine, they started off as honored guests, the family of Joseph. Joseph’s brothers had sold him into slavery but he did his job as though he were doing it for God and had become second in command behind Pharaoh. But when a new administration came in, jealousy and the love of power and money led the Egyptian to make the children of Israel slaves until Moses (almost murdered at birth by Pharaoh’s order) rose up to deliver them. (Read the book of Exodus.) This record not only inspired conductors on the Underground railroad such as Harriet Tubman, whose code name was Moses, but several of the spirituals that sang out information and instructions for those escaping slavery in the American South.
Joseph’s life showed that with God, one could prosper and deliver others, even though he was legally a slave.
Jesus Christ changed the world, even though he lived in a country with a corrupt and unbelieving religious hierarchy, who had forgotten God’s deliverance and who were as hard on their people as the pagan Romans that occupied their country. Jesus Christ taught men and women how to be free regardless of their circumstances.
In the first Epistle to the Corinthians, the Apostle Paul tells Christians that “Jesus Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.” Christians do not celebrate Passover, but communion as a memorial commemorating Christ’s fully accomplished deliverance from the consequences of Adam’s sin and for our healing. (1 Peter 2:24 (KJV) Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.)
The religious authorities of Christ’s time were legalistic, harshly enforcing the letter of law that no man except Jesus Christ could live up to. But they displayed no power of God. Caught in their legalism and lust for power, neither could they bring loving deliverance. They wanted to stone a woman accused of adultery. Jesus Christ showed her how to change.
Because of Christ’s perfect fulfillment of the Old Testament law, Christians no longer have to struggle to obey the extensive details of the Old Testament law–he did it for them once and for all.
So, what slavery do we need to be delivered from today? Story after story in print and other media notes high rates of depression, fear, mental illness, including gender dysphoria and confusion brought on and exacerbated by the systems and ideologies of the world. Church attendance is down as churches more and more conform to the world around them, rather than teaching the Word of God with power. But there are answers. God does not change, but when people forsake Him, the fountain of living waters and hew out for themselves broken cisterns (or more accurately in many cases, septic tanks) that can hold no water, they are enslaved. The imagery emphasizes the constant life giving refreshment of God’s eternal principles versus the unreliable and destructive systems of the world that bring at best illusion or short term results, but ultimately weakness and destruction.
So, let’s not diminish the deliverance from political and economic slavery that Passover celebrates to rote words and rituals, nor the price paid by Jesus Christ who that year was the Passover lamb, but seek the day to day application that will deliver us from the confusion and fear and oppression of the world. The truths of Passover: look to God for deliverance from what seems overwhelming and impossible, continue in simpler memorial and remembrance, the communion ceremony of bread and wine instituted by the Lamb of God. There is deliverance in communion when one believes what it means: shed blood to pay for sins and broken body for physical, emotional and mental healing. Whichever holyday you celebrate, claim that healing and deliverance.
Judith Niewiadomski, Yonkers
