This week, I got to go to several Pesach (Passover) meals which happens to be about the same time as Easter.

Many people think Easter has been distorted from its original story of Jesus’s death and resurrection into a nonsensical pagan feast of eggs and rabbits, but actually the original Passover feat as a lot more in common with Jesus’s ultimate sacrifice.

The way the set of items are used in a Jewish Passover tradition is quite long, so I will just touch on a few of them;

The lamb shank bone is an interesting one, Jesus is often represented a lamb who was slain.

The matzah bread, which is really a large cracker wheat, has a pattern of holes and patterns, pierced and striped, the same injuries Jesus took on the cross.

Also, the matzah bread is often served covered with a linen cloth, something that also could be considered part of Jesus’s burial as his body was cleaned and wrapped carefully.

This passage from the Tannak says it best:-

Isaiah 53
¹ Who has believed our message  and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
² He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

³ He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
⁴ Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted.
⁵ But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.
⁶ We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
⁷ He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.
⁸ By oppression and judgment he was taken away.  Yet who of his generation protested? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was punished.
⁹ He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.
¹⁰ Yet it was the LORD’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the LORD makes his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand.
¹¹ After he has suffered, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities.
¹² Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors.  For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

Don’t get me wrong, I like easter eggs, but only as I like chocolate in general, and the shiny packaging, and would be happy if this type of packaged confectionery was sold year round, this morning  I decided to shove some chocolate spread on this bit of matzvah 🙂

This is a special event is well worth experiencing.