“The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt, ² “This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year. ³ Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb^[a] for his family, one for each household. ⁴ If any household is too small for a whole lamb, they must share one with their nearest neighbor, having taken into account the number of people there are. You are to determine the amount of lamb needed in accordance with what each person will eat. ⁵ The animals you choose must be year-old males without defect, and you may take them from the sheep or the goats.⁶ Take care of them until the fourteenth day of the month, when all the members of the community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight.⁷ Then they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the doorframes of the houses where they eat the lambs. ⁸ That same night they are to eat the meat roasted over the fire, along with bitter herbs, and bread made without yeast. ⁹ Do not eat the meat raw or boiled in water, but roast it over a fire—with the head, legs and internal organs. ¹⁰ Do not leave any of it till morning; if some is left till morning, you must burn it. ¹¹ This is how you are to eat it: with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand. Eat it in haste; it is the Lord’s Passover.

¹² “On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn of both people and animals, and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the Lord. ¹³ The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.” Exodus 12:1-13

“I have become convinced, that we need to understand how worldviews work. If you have been born and bred within a culture that tells certain stories, observes certain customs and festivals, practices particular domestic habits, and sings particular songs, and if these things all go together and reinforce one another, a single phrase or action may well carry multiple layers of meaning. That complexity is likely to increase when you go to a place like first-century Jerusalem at Passover time, with pilgrims singing those psalms again and families getting ready to tell one another the story they already know, the story of God and Moses and Pharaoh and the Red Sea and the hope of freedom at last, while the Roman soldiers are looking down from their watchtowers and while an excited procession comes over the Mount of Olives, led by a man on a donkey, and starts to sing about the kingdom that is going to appear at any minute…” (“The Problem of Historical Complexity”, Simply Jesus,  N. T. Wright, p. 23)

When we consider the action Jesus took on that day he rode into Jerusalem, sitting on a donkey, while his disciples shouted “hosannas”, this small act was not so small – his humbleness perhaps not seen as so humble. In fact, what Jesus is doing is quite radical, quite noticeable, and quite seditious. It took guts, real guts for Jesus to ride into Jerusalem while his followers called out “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord.”. Jesus rides into Jerusalem by a back entrance, while the Herod rides in through the main gate as his presence announces to all, Roman and Jew, that he is the “King from G-d”. The stage is set for a confrontation – and Jesus will be the one to be killed. Are we ready to ride into the world to die for our faith? That may seem like a drastic and dramatic question, yet our world, and our country needs help – from just such a king as Jesus. And Jesus needs our help to share his message to this broken world.

Pastor Dave