Happy Easter

Thursday night, we had a modified seder meal to remember the Lord's Supper. The Jewish culture is so rich in story telling that we took our cues from there and modified the Passover meal to not only tell the story of Moses and the Passover, but also the crucifixion of Christ. Our seder plate was not kosher by any means since we had to come up with some of our own symbolic foods. We used romaine lettuce as our "karpas" to dip in salt water. The stems tend to be bitter like the slavery of the Israelites, but the green vegetable is a symbol of life. The salt water helped us talk about the Israelite tears and the Red Sea. Jacob's favorite part was the pyramid built out of rice krispie treats and icing. Jewish seder plates usually have something called choreset which is a fruit and nut puree meant to remind us of the mortar that the Jews made for Pharaoh's bricks. Jacob did not like it last year. So, rice krispies became the bricks and icing the mortar. Plus we not only talked about how Pharaoh tried to build his kingdom this way, but how we become the "bricks" Christ uses to build His Church. We had hard boiled eggs to represent the hard heart of Pharaoh and how our hearts get hard toward God. But at the end of the meal, we peeled the egg to show how Christ can remove the hardness of our hearts. We went through the four cups that Jesus went through, each one representing parts of the story of redemption. We did a foot washing and broke the bread. Jacob really enjoyed it and it challenged me to learn more as well.

Jacob's other hands-on learning experience was the tomb. On Good Friday, we put Jesus on the cross and posted a soldier to keep watch. Friday afternoon, we took Jesus down and wrapped him in a cloth and placed him inside the tomb.

The Roman soldier stood guard outside until this morning. Jacob found the stone rolled away and Jesus is missing. He had to find the "risen" Christ figure somewhere in the house.

Jacob later came and asked, "Jesus came after Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve sinned and we all have sinned. How did Jesus not have sin?" We had to explain that Jesus was God in the flesh. When God took on a human body, he had two wills: the will of God and the will of a man. Jesus never sinned because his human will always submitted to God's will. There were times I'm sure that Jesus' human will wanted to give into anger or violence. I'm sure there were times he wanted to say something that God's will would not want. But Jesus always submitted to the divine will. We were able to tell Jacob that we often choose to do what we want to do even when it is not what God wants and that is sin. I told Jacob that Jesus could have sinned if he wanted to, but he always chose not to. Since he was not born through a man and woman, but through a woman and the Holy Spirit, he was able to make that choice freely. If Jesus had ever sinned, his work on the cross would have been for nothing. It would not have saved us. Jacob understood the need for Jesus' purity. He asked, "You mean if Jesus sinned, we wouldn't have a savior?" That's right, Jacob. And the great news of Easter is that we do have a Savior.
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