The Relationship of Easter to Passover
Easter and Passover share more commonalities than simply occurring in the same calendar month of April. Although many think that Passover is a specifically Jewish festival while Easter is for the Christians, the two holidays relate in many other ways. In both cases, God acts to save His children from their sins. This forgiveness is meant to show humanity how to forgive one another in the purest way despite the wrongdoings that make us human. For this reason, literary scholars as well as religious people say that the Passover prefigures, or points to what Easter later does for Christians.
Passover originate among the signs of God's grace in the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Jewish Torah, which later became the beginning of the Old Testament in the Christian Bible. This happened when Yahweh rescued the Israelites from the clutches of the Egyptian Pharaoh. This king had not listened to Moses through nine other plagues ranging from frogs, flies, and gnats, to medical conditions such as boils designed by God to make Pharaoh stop enslaving the Israelites.
As a last resort, at the time that Pharaoh refused to let God's people go, each Israelite household was to take an unblemished lamb and prepare it for the ritual supper. If any household was too small for its own lamb, it was to team up with a neighbor to share the flesh of the lamb. Then, the lamb's blood was to be painted above the door to the household so when the Angel of the Lord came upon the homes that night, he would know to pass over any that had the lamb's blood on them, for those were the homes of God's children, while only the firstborn sons of Egyptian families were to be killed. Finally, when Pharaoh awoke the next morning and saw the destruction, he let the Israelites go free, so Passover is celebrated as a day of freedom by Jewish people.
This story relates to Christians and Easter in several ways. First of all, Jesus was Jewish and frequently taught in the Temple about Passover and other Torah lessons during His ministry on earth. Passion, or Palm Sunday, celebrated by Christians the Sunday before Easter, happens in remembrance of Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem. This happens the Sunday before his crucifixion, which as recounted in Mark 11:1-2 is the day the Passover feast was about to begin. The feast gave Jesus the reason to return to Jerusalem that day after his time away in ministry, during which He has said that a prophet is not welcome in his own city.
He celebrated the Passover meal that Thursday with the Disciples. His meal of unleavened bread and wine, along with the prayers he said thanking his heavenly Father for the meal became the basis for the Holy Communion feast, celebrated on Easter and many if not all other Sundays throughout the church year. As the group celebrated that Passover meal, Jesus revealed to His Disciples more of what would happen to Him in the days to come. It was at this feast that they began to understand what would truly happen in God's plan for saving the world.
To those who study religion and its symbols, the sacrificial lamb on the first Passover comes to symbolize Jesus as the Lamb of God during Holy Week. The spilling of His blood on Good Friday to atone for the sins committed between the time of Moses and Jesus' time links the Good Friday story to the painting of the Passover lamb's blood on the doors of the Israelite's homes. In both cases, God uses blood as the element showing where His children are and sparing them. He first saves the Israelites from the destruction meant for Egyptian tormenters, then several centuries later rescues all of His children from the sins which separate them from His eternal love through the sacrifice of His only Son, who could not have been raised from the dead to give believers an Easter to celebrate without having been crucified.
Thus, one can see that although humanity continues to sin and grieve the heart of God, He has set forth examples of forgiveness in both Passover and Easter. Learning about and remembering why God has done this brings believers closer to the Lord in the grace and love so freely given to all who simply accept it.
