Why We Celebrate Passover

Growing up, I always enjoyed Easter.  It was a time to decorate eggs, open my basket full of candies, attend church in my new Easter dress, and then feast on honeyed ham and potatoes.  As a Christian adult, my celebration of Easter with my own family hasn’t been much different.  In fact, the only difference is that I try to emphasize for my children (and myself) that we are celebrating Christ’s resurrection from the grave and the redemption He offers us if we accept.  Yet, it seemed that message was always lost beneath the din of stuffed bunnies and chocolate eggs. Was I REALLY doing anything different from my non-Christians friends to celebrate this day?  Even some of them go to church on Easter!  I often thought, “this couldn’t possibly be how God wants His people to remember the greatest day in our history.”  And God has taught me that it’s not.

Easter is a time of celebration that was created by man.  There is a lot of mixed discussion about the origins of Easter.  I’ve read that the origins go as far back as the Tower of Babel, when Nimrod’s (Baal’s) wife , Semiramis, established herself as a moon goddess.   Her name was later changed to Ishtar and the word Easter is derived from her name and the spring celebration that honored her.  I’ve also read that the word Easter is derived from the name of a pagan goddess called “Ostara” by early Germans and “Eostre” by early Anglo-Saxons.  She was a goddess of  fertility and of “the radiant dawn” and was worshipped during the Spring Equinox.   According to historical texts, Eostre had a pet hare and could turn herself into a hare. 

Though the first century church continued to celebrate the Passover Feast, by the second century, Gentiles had begun the process of removing Jewish influence and customs.  It was the first seeds of anti-Semitism.   As the church grew, it became shaped by Greek and Roman secular traditions.   The Roman Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity and worked to separate Christianity from Judaism.  During the first Council of Nicea in 325, in order to be sure the “Christian Passover” didn’t coincide with the “Jewish Passover”, the date was moved from Nisan 14 to the first Sunday after the first full moon following the Spring Equinox. 

So, we have a holiday name created by man, traditions created by man, and a date created by man.

The Feast of Passover is a time of celebration that was created by God.  The word feast in Hebrew means “appointed time.” The word Passover comes from the Hebrew word pasach, which means to “spread wings over.” From it we get  pasoach, meaning “passing over” and pesach, meaning “Passover”.  All three words are spelled identically in Hebrew.

Passover happened on Nisan 14 of the Hebrew Calendar.  This is the date when the Israelites sacrificed a lamb, dipped hissop in the lamb’s blood and marked their door posts with the blood so that God would pass over their homes and protect their firstborn children from death.  Christ died on Passover.  The date of Passover never changes.  When we celebrate Passover, we know THIS is when it happened.  Year after year after year, we can say THIS is when God delivered the Israelites from slavery and THIS is when he delivered believers from their sin.  Observe the other two feasts associated with Passover and you’ll find even more significance; Christ died on Passover, was in the grave during the Feast of Unleavened Bread and rose from the grave during the Feast of Firstfruits!  Let’s take a brief look at each of these feasts that follow Passover.   The Feast of Unleavened Bread begins the day after Passover and continues for seven days.  During this time, Jewish people eat only unleavened bread.  Leaven is the agent that causes fermentation and, in the Bible, is symbolic of sin or evil.  Leavened bread, bread made with yeast, will decay.  Unleavened bread will not decay.  During the Passover Feast, Christ broke the BREAD and said, “this is my body given for you.”  What happens when a dead body is put in a grave?  It decays.  What happened when Christ’s body was put in a grave?  It did NOT decay!  This was prophesized in Psalm 16:10, “ – you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay.”  Do you see the prophesy of the Feast of Unleavened Bread fulfilled in Christ’s body not decaying in the grave!?Not only did He not decay in the grave, but He ROSE from the grave on the third day, which was the Feast of Firstfruits!  During the Feast of Firstfruits the first sheaf of the barley harvest was cut from a field on the Mount of Olives and presented to the Lord at the Temple on Mount Moriah.  God’s acceptance of the firstfruits was a pledge on His part that He would accept the full harvest when it came out of the ground.  Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of this Feast.  He IS the Firstfruit; being the first to conquer sin and death, rise from the grave and present Himself to God as Holy.  It is only through our belief in His death on the cross and His resurrection that we will also be seen as Holy and acceptable when we are resurrected and standing before God.

Are you not just blown away by the Messianic symbolism represented in these Passover Feasts?!  How meaningful they are for us who believe in Christ!   And we have an invitation from Jesus himself to celebrate these feasts and to remember Him!  The first century church accepted that invitation and continued to celebrate the Passover Feasts.  Oh, how much more meaningful it must have been for them to know that the Feasts had been fulfilled through Christ! 

When we celebrated Passover the first time, I felt like I was treading on Jewish customs.  I felt like I was encroaching on someone else’s territory.  God has shown me how wrong I was to feel that way!   Isaiah 11:1 says, “A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.”  The stump is Israel, the shoot is Jesus and the fruit represents Christians.  As Christians, we need to remember that we owe our salvation to the covenants God made with Israel through Abraham and David and we have been “grafted into” those promises.  “If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, do not consider yourself to be superior to those other branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you” Romans 11:17-18. The root is Israel and we, Christians, are the wild olive shoot that has been grafted in.  The promises that God made to Israel for redemption are also our promises.  As Christians, we know the promise of a Savior has been fulfilled and the promise of His return is still to come.   My family hasn’t stopped our Easter traditions of colored eggs, Easter baskets, church and honeyed ham, but we’ve stopped trying to cram Christ into a secular holiday.  He just gets lost.  Instead, we celebrate the Feasts of Passover; remembering God’s plan for redemption and how Christ fulfilled it.  These are feasts that God commanded His people to continue to celebrate in remembrance of their deliverance from slavery.  When Jesus ate the Passover feast, he broke the bread and passed it around, saying, “this is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me” Mark 22.19.  Christ came and fulfilled the Passover Feasts, and He asked His followers to continue observing the Passover feast as a remembrance of Him.  The Israelites celebrated Passover to remember their deliverance from Egypt where they had been slaves to Pharaoh.  Jews today still observe the Passover; remembering their deliverance and hoping for the Messiah and the rebuilding of the tabernacle in Jerusalem.  As Christians, we know that Christ WAS the tabernacle; the dwelling of God with man, and through His sacrifice and blood on the cross, we have forgiveness of our sin.  Christ wants us to observe Passover as a remembrance of our delivery from the slavery of sin.  He wants us to remember that He was the sacrificial lamb and the one who bore our sins.  “For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed”  1 Corinthians 5:7. Therefore, we SHOULD celebrate the Passover Feasts!  It’s a feast that was given to us by God and fulfilled by Christ.   I don’t have a problem with Easter baskets and chocolate bunnies, and my kids will still get those.  But I’ve made a resolution to observe the holy convocations God gave us rather than try to make holy the secular holidays man invented.