Today marks the first day of Passover. Passover is directly related to the events of Holy Week between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday. However, the Jewish and Christian calendars usually don’t sync the two precisely. The Passover illustrated that the blood of the Passover lamb will protect against death before the escape from bondage from Egypt (regardless of nationality). Jesus was the Lamb of God, as proclaimed by John the Baptist, and it is Yeshua’s shed blood that overcomes death and leads us to freedom (regardless of nationality).
I always lament that the Christian Church over the centuries separated itself from its Jewish roots and that Holy Week is not celebrated or preached about with nearly enough connectedness to the Passover week that our Jewish brothers and sisters observe.
Just last week I was invited to The College of William and Mary, a Virginia state university, to present the history of antisemitism in Europe. My audience was two sessions of a junior-level 20th Century European history course. The students were studying World War 2, and I was asked to provide some context for antisemitism that preceded that era and present what antisemitic notions are still prevalent in today’s society.
I had over 2000 years of content to share in 60 minutes! But, the students were receptive and most of them never heard of “replacement theology” or supersessionism—the theology within the Christian Church that claims the unconditional covenants God has with Jewish people and the nation of Israel are null and void after the work on the cross, and that the Church is now the recipient of these promises. The land of Israel is allegorical and the Jewish people who reject the Christian message, are no longer relevant to God’s plan. To remove any identity or connectedness the celebration of Holy Week had with Passover, the church leadership moved the Holy Week to coincide with the pagan spring festival of Ishtar, the goddess of fertility, and that is how we get the term Easter and all the bunnies, and eggs as the prevailing motifs.
Interestingly, this replacement theology claims that the Church replaces Israel for all the blessings promised, but for none of the curses—those curses remain with Israel. So, the logic is flawed, God’s word is mutable, and the entire concept bred contempt and vitriol towards Jews across Europe, within the Holy Roman Empire, with the leaders of the Protestant Reformation, and even in the Eastern Orthodox Church. The Old Testament, or Hebrew texts, were not studied or preached. It was not until the Bible was distributed widely amongst increasingly literate people after 1500 AD (thanks to the Guttenberg press) that the notion of “replacement” theology started to be challenged. It was the Puritans, Quakers, and other ana-Baptists who, by reading the Bible themselves, began to realize the truth about Israel, the Jewish people, and the role of Gentiles and Jews in God’s plan for history (and history yet to come).
Unfortunately, in Europe, not enough Christians were able to counter the replacement theology narrative. Centuries of cultural indoctrination swept Europe and led to the death of millions of Jews under both fascism and communism—each secular ideology that replaced Christianity among the elites. Please keep in mind that individual clergy and community members in Europe treasured their Jewish neighbors, but indeed, not in the numbers needed to counter the sweeping persecution of Jews.
We at The Jerusalem Connection are grateful to be part of the generation that has God’s word in the palm of our hands. That we have resources from which to study it closely and we are in the age where God’s word is coming to pass—including the reestablishment of the nation of Israel. This May we celebrate 75 years of the establishment of the modern state of Israel. The diamond jubilee as it were! We are partnering with ICEJ and other Christian leaders in hosting two celebratory galas, May 7 in Nashville, TN, and May 17 in Washington DC. Please consider joining us at either or both locations if you live near or are able to travel to either city on those dates. Click here for details and tickets.
Passover and Easter 2023 are revered times wherein we must not see the events as tragedies but as triumphs! Triumph of God’s will and actions in our lives. We wish our Jewish and Christian friends the most blessed of weeks. Keep your prayers flowing, your gratitude growing, and your eyes lifted!
Shavua Tov, have a great week.